Ken Hechler - on the road, on NPR to show link between MLK and environmentalism
Hechler in late October 2008
Ken Hechler is a very busy person these days. Just as he said in his biographical film, “Ken Hechler - In Pursuit of Justice,” “I like to do many things including write and teach.” He will be flying to Minneapolis, Missouri and Washington, DC in the next two months. He was also interviewed recently for a NPR story to be broadcast on MLK Day, January 19th, connecting MLK and environmentalism.
Today Ken flew off to Minneapolis to give a presentation at the Harold Deutsch WWII History Roundtable about his interview after WWII of Hermann Goering. He will be speaking atFort Snelling, a restored frontier fort. Latter he will be speaking at the Minneapolis-Saint Paul Committee on Foreign Relations and MSP-SP Committee on Foreign Relations and at St. Thomas University, lecturing to a class on history and foreign relations.
Next week he will spend Monday and Tuesday at Park University in Missouri, lecturing about politics to two different classes as well as speaking at a banquet.
In January, Ken will be returning to the Pentagon to speak at a program about MLK. A woman who works in the Pentagon heard him speak last August about President Truman desegregating the U.S. military and federal workforce. She was so impressed she invited him back a second time. Last Sunday, he was interviewed by a visiting NYC environmentalist, Majora Carter. She is interested in doing a story about the link between environmentalism and MLK. Hechler was the ONLY sitting Congressman to march with MLK at Selma. He is, of course, one of the few WV politicians who actively opposed stripmining and mountaintop removal mining.I was reminding Ken of the Highlander Center in Tennessee that was instrumental in training MLK, Rosa Parks and many others. There is a great 1930s film about the center, “People of the Cumberland.” There is also a great recent feature documentary about co-founder Miles Horton, ” You Got to Move”(1985) that has been reissued.
