Premiering Tonight On PBS, TAVIS SMILEY REPORTS "MLK: A CALL TO CONSCIENCE"

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Closest Advisors Examine Famed "Beyond Vietnam" Speech and Turbulent Final Year; Host Tavis Smiley Explores Relevance of King's Controversial Anti-War Stance and Its Parallels to the Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

A new primetime special on PBS will examine the forgotten agenda of Martin Luther King Jr., whose famed "Beyond Vietnam" speech, given at Riverside Church in 1967, led to an abrupt loss of his popularity in the last year of his life. In exclusive interviews on the second installment of TAVIS SMILEY REPORTS, King's closest advisors discuss the divisions within the civil rights movement over King's opposition to the war in Vietnam - and the political and public fallout from his criticism of American foreign policy. The program explores the relevance of King's anti-war position to the current U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the significance of the Nobel Peace Prize, an honor bestowed upon both King and President Barack Obama.

TAVIS SMILEY REPORTS "MLK: A Call to Conscience" airs tonight (Wednesday,  March 31, 2010), 8:00-9:00 p.m. ET on PBS.

In the interviews, Dr. Vincent Harding, who is co-credited with writing the "Beyond Vietnam" speech, tells Tavis Smiley that King's inner circle worried about the ramifications of the speech, both before and after he delivered it.

"We were concerned, he was concerned, but he had really come to the point, as the speech is trying to say, where if he was to be a man of conscience, a man of compassion, he had to speak," said Dr. Harding.

He added, "But it was precisely one year to the day after this speech that that bullet which had been chasing him for a long time finally caught up with him. And I am convinced that that bullet had something to do with that speech. And over the years, that's been quite a struggle for me."

TAVIS SMILEY REPORTS "MLK: A Call to Conscience" is based on dozens of hours of interviews with King's friends and with scholars who study his legacy, including:

* Dr. Vincent Harding, drafter of the "Beyond Vietnam" speech;
* Clarence Jones, King's legal advisor;
* Dr. Cornel West, a leading expert on race in America;
* Dr. Susannah Heschel, daughter of activist Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel;
* Dr. Clayborne Carson, director of the King Institute at Stanford University;
* Marian Wright Edelman, organizer for the Poor People's Campaign with King;
* Taylor Branch, Pulitzer Prize-winning King historian.

Regarding contemporary comparisons between Nobel Peace Prize recipients Martin Luther King Jr. and President Obama, Smiley says, "During these interviews, I heard over and over again that the similarities between Martin Luther King Jr. and President Obama are limited. They are both strong black leaders, and Obama's success is in part due to King's achievements. But one was a Christian preacher who advocated non-violence and the other is a wartime president. The comparisons can only go so far."