On Thursday night, Baltimore’s Parkway Theatre hosted an advance screening of the HBO documentary “King in the Wilderness,” which tells the story of the last three years of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s life, from 1965 to 1968. The film debuts on HBO tonight, April 2nd.
Taylor Branch, the eminent King historian and an OSI-Baltimore Advisory Board member, was co-executive producer of the film and conducted many of the extended interviews featured in it. After the screening, he joined Jed Dietz, director of the Maryland Film Festival, and civil rights activist DeRay McKesson for a discussion (pictured).
Branch noted that, as many of the civil rights leaders interviewed in the film have aged, they have become more comfortable revealing new context and nuance from the events chronicled in the film. The footage and discussion of the complicated relationship between King and his increasingly militant protege Stokely Carmichael was particularly fascinating
