About the Authors
Clayborne Carson, PhD, was a participant and observer of African American political movements during his undergraduate years at UCLA. Since receiving his doctorate in 1975, he has taught at Stanford University, where he is now professor of history and director of the King Papers Project. He has also been a visiting professor at American University, the University of California, Berkeley, and Emory University and a fellow at the Center for the Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford. His scholarly publications have focused on African American protest movements and the political thought of the period after World War II. His writings have appeared in leading historical journals and numerous encyclopedias, as well as in popular periodicals. His first book, In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s, won the Frederick Jackson Turner Award of the Organization of American Historians. Dr. Carson has lectured at many colleges and universities in the United States and abroad on a wide range of topics, including King, Malcolm X, the Black Panther Party, Black-Jewish relations, and the need for a multi-cultural curriculum.
Keith David is a classically trained actor, Emmy Award winner and Tony Award nominee. He stars, alongside Zoe Saldana, in the upcoming Netflix limited series “From Scratch.” Keith was featured in Jordan Peele’s latest film “Nope.” His expansive film credits include 21 Bridges, Night School, Disney’s The Princess and the Frog, Requiem for a Dream, Men at Work, They Live, Crash, There’s Something About Mary, The Thing, Platoon and many others. Keith completed 5 seasons starring in Greenleaf for Oprah Winfrey’s OWN network. Other TV credits include NCIS: New Orleans, Blackish, MacGyver, Fresh Off the Boat, Community, Enlisted, and Mister Rogers Neighborhood. Keith’s collaboration with Ken Burns earned him 3 Emmy Awards for his narration of Jackie Robinson, The War, and Unforgivable Blackness – The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson. Most recently, Keith narrated the documentary Ali by Ken Burns. Some of his other voice acting credits include Adventure Time, Bojack Horseman, Rick & Morty, Spawn, and Gargoyles. On Broadway, he starred in Seven Guitars and Jelly’s Last Jam (Tony nomination). As a singer Keith has toured for the past several years with Too Marvelous For Words, in which Keith recreates Nat King Cole. Keith is currently creating a show about legendary blues singer Joe Williams. Born and raised in New York City, Keith is a graduate of the New York High School of the Performing Arts and the Juilliard School.
About the Narrators
Edward M. Kennedy (1932–2009) represented Massachusetts in the United States Senate for forty-seven years, making him one of the longest-serving senators in American history. In 2004 he began interviews at the Miller Center of the University of Virginia for an oral history project about his life. For his 2009 memoir, True Compass, he drew from his fifty years of contemporaneous notes from his personal diaries and worked closely on the book with Pulitzer Prize winner Ron Powers, coauthor of Flags of Our Fathers and author of Mark Twain: A Life.
Simon Vance (a.k.a. Robert Whitfield) is an award-winning actor and narrator. He has earned more than fifty Earphones Awards and won the prestigious Audie Award for best narration thirteen times. He was named Booklist’s very first Voice of Choice in 2008 and has been named an AudioFile Golden Voice as well as an AudioFile Best Voice of 2009. He has narrated more than eight hundred audiobooks over almost thirty years, beginning when he was a radio newsreader for the BBC in London. He is also an actor who has appeared on both stage and television.
James Langton, an Earphones Award–winning narrator, trained as an actor at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama and later as a musician at the Guildhall School in London. He has worked in radio, film, and television, also appearing in theater in England and on Broadway. He is also a professional musician who led the internationally renowned Pasadena Roof Orchestra from 1996 to 2002.
Bryan Kennedy was born and raised on Long Island and has been working as an actor and comedian in New York for the past several years. He has done numerous theater productions, voiceovers, commercials, and audiobooks.
Andrew Young earned a bachelor’s degree at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a law degree at the Wake Forest University School of Law. He served as a volunteer for John Edwards’ winning campaign for US Senate. Hired in 1999, Young became Edwards’ longest serving and most trusted aide. He raised more than $10 million for the politician’s various causes and played a key role in Edwards’ efforts to become president of the United States. Now a private citizen, he lives in Chapel Hill with his wife and their three children.
Martin Luther King
Jr. (1929–1968) was born in Atlanta, Georgia, the son and grandson of
pastors. He graduated from Morehouse College and Crozer Theological Seminary,
becoming the pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama
at age twenty-five. He subsequently earned his PhD from Boston University. In
1957, he and other civil rights leaders founded the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference, an organization he led until his death. A proponent of
Gandhian principles of nonviolence, he led many protests and demonstrations for
civil rights, including the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August
29, 1963, where he delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. Winner of the
1964 Nobel Peace Prize, he continued to fight for civil rights, the eradication
of poverty, and the end of the Vietnam War. He was assassinated on April 4,
1968 in Memphis, Tennessee.
Martin Luther King
Jr. (1929–1968) was born in Atlanta, Georgia, the son and grandson of
pastors. He graduated from Morehouse College and Crozer Theological Seminary,
becoming the pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama
at age twenty-five. He subsequently earned his PhD from Boston University. In
1957, he and other civil rights leaders founded the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference, an organization he led until his death. A proponent of
Gandhian principles of nonviolence, he led many protests and demonstrations for
civil rights, including the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August
29, 1963, where he delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. Winner of the
1964 Nobel Peace Prize, he continued to fight for civil rights, the eradication
of poverty, and the end of the Vietnam War. He was assassinated on April 4,
1968 in Memphis, Tennessee.
Coretta Scott King (1927–2006) was an American civil rights activist, international human rights champion, author, the wife of Martin Luther King Jr., and the mother of four.
Coretta Scott King (1927–2006) was an American civil rights activist, international human rights champion, author, the wife of Martin Luther King Jr., and the mother of four.
Kiff VandenHeuvel, voice talent and audiobook narrator, is originally from Grand Rapids, Michigan, and is an alumni of the Second City comedy theater. He is an accomplished improviser and sketch comedy director, and he teaches voice-over, improv, and directing at Second City Hollywood. He has appeared in hundreds of television and radio commercials and is well known in the video game community as the voice of Zachary Hale Comstock in Bioshock: Infinite.