In conjunction with WKYC, Cleveland's NBC affiliate, producer Chris Cantergiani and author Jim Robenalt have created a six-part podcast on the book, Ballots and Bullets, Black Power Politics and Urban Guerrilla Warfare in 1968 Cleveland.
In this first episode, the stage is set, taking listeners back to 1964, when Malcolm X first delivered his famous "Ballot or Bullet" speech in Cleveland at Cory Methodist Church. Nine days later, the speech was recorded in Detroit and this episode contains some clips from that influential speech.
Cory Methodist Church, built as a Jewish Synagogue in the 1920s was sold to an African American Methodist church after the Second World War. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., visited Cory one year before Malcolm X, coming straight from Birmingham, Alabama, to raise bail money for the thousands arrested in King's direct action campaign to end segregation in Birmingham.
Thus Cory Methodist Church appears almost as a character in the book, holding within its walls the three Abrahamic traditions: build as a Jewish synagogue, visited by a Christian minister in Dr. King and then by an Islamic teacher in Malcolm X.
Take a listen:
