Combining the latest insights from KIng biographies and movement histories, this book provides an up-to-date critical analysis of the relationship between King and the wider civil rights movement. Delivering a fresh perspective on the relationship between 'the man and the movement', Kirk argues that it is the interactionbetween national and local movement concerns that is essential to understanding King's leadership and black activism in the 1950s and 1960s. Kirk examines King's strengths and his limitations, and weighs the role that king played in then movement alongside the contributions of other civil rights organizations and leaders, and local civil rights activists. Suitable for undergraduate courses in 20th century US history.
In this fast-paced biography, Harvard Sitkoff presents a concise, stunningly relevant and radical Martin Luther King, Jr. whose greatest accomplishments may have been yet to come. King's murder in April 1968 did far more than cut tragically short the life of one of America's most remarkable civil rights leaders. In commemorating King's achievements at the end of his life and ignoring his defeats, too many Americans quickly relegated the civil rights struggle to the past, halting the progression of the activist's evolving movement. King: Pilgrimage to the Mountaintop honestly assesses his successes along with his failures--as an organizer in Albany, Georgia and St. Augustine, Florida; as a leader of ever more strident activists; and as a husband. Harvard Sitkoff weaves both high and low points together to capture King's lifelong struggle, through disappointment and epiphany, with his own injunction: "Let us be Christian in all our actions." By telling King's life as one on the verge of reaching its fullest fulfillment, Sitkoff powerfully shows where King's faith and activism were leading him--to a direct confrontation with a president over an immoral war and with an America blind to its complicity in economic injustice.
From Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s daughter, Dr. Bernice A. King: "My father's dream continues to live on from generation to generation, and this beautiful and powerful illustrated edition of his world-changing "I Have a Dream" speech brings his inspiring message of freedom, equality, and peace to the youngest among us--those who will one day carry his dream forward for everyone." On August 28, 1963, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington, Martin Luther King gave one of the most powerful and memorable speeches in our nation's history. His words, paired with Caldecott Honor winner Kadir Nelson's magificent paintings, make for a picture book certain to be treasured by children and adults alike. The themes of equality and freedom for all are not only relevant today, 50 years later, but also provide young readers with an important introduction to our nation's past.
Named a Best Book of 2017 by NPR The New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice The Washington Post's Books to Read in 2017 USA Today, "New and Noteworthy" Read it Forward, Favorite Reads of January 2017 A Parade Magazine Pick "This book is distinctly Coretta's story . . . particularly absorbing. . . generous, in a manner that is unfashionable in our culture."--New York Times Book Review "Eloquent . . . inspirational"--USA Today The life story of Coretta Scott King--wife of Martin Luther King Jr., founder of the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change (The King Center), and singular twentieth-century American civil and human rights activist--as told fully for the first time, toward the end of her life, to Rev. Dr. Barbara Reynolds. Born in 1927 to daringly enterprising parents in the Deep South, Coretta Scott had always felt called to a special purpose. While enrolled as one of the first black scholarship students recruited to Antioch College, she became politically and socially active and committed to the peace movement. As a graduate student at the New England Conservatory of Music, determined to pursue her own career as a concert singer, she met Martin Luther King Jr., a Baptist minister insistent that his wife stay home with the children. But in love and devoted to shared Christian beliefs as well as shared racial and economic justice goals, she married Dr. King, and events promptly thrust her into a maelstrom of history throughout which she was a strategic partner, a standard bearer, and so much more. As a widow and single mother of four, she worked tirelessly to found and develop The King Center as a citadel for world peace, lobbied for fifteen years for the US national holiday in honor of her husband, championed for women's, workers' and gay rights and was a powerful international voice for nonviolence, freedom and human dignity. Coretta's is a love story, a family saga, and the memoir of an extraordinary black woman in twentieth-century America, a brave leader who, in the face of terrorism and violent hatred, stood committed, proud, forgiving, nonviolent, and hopeful every day of her life.
History has a way, it seems, of turning men in to convenient myths: witness Martin Luther King, whose provocative anti-war sentiments and zealous advocacy of the poor are often shunted to the background to make room for more comfortable outpourings such as his "l have a dream" speech. This book contains five all-but-forgotten speeches from the end of King's life, including "Youth and Action" and "Nonviolence and Social Change". Reaching far beyond his earlier agenda of sit-ins and marches, King reveals here his deepest yearning: the renewal of our apathetic and destructive society through a massive sea-change of hearts.
This dual biography of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King upends longstanding preconceptions to transform our understanding of the twentieth century's most iconic African American leaders. To most Americans, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. represent contrasting ideals: self-defense vs. nonviolence, black power vs. civil rights, the sword vs. the shield. The struggle for black freedom is wrought with the same contrasts. While nonviolent direct action is remembered as an unassailable part of American democracy, the movement's militancy is either vilified or erased outright. In The Sword and the Shield, Peniel E. Joseph upends these misconceptions and reveals a nuanced portrait of two men who, despite markedly different backgrounds, inspired and pushed each other throughout their adult lives. This is a strikingly revisionist biography, not only of Malcolm and Martin, but also of the movement and era they came to define.
In the three decades since April 4, 1968, when Martin Luther King, Jr., was shot to death in Memphis, scores of books and articles have questioned whether James Earl Ray, King's killer, acted alone or was part of a larger conspiracy. Now, based on explosive new interviews, confidential files, and previously undisclosed evidence, bestselling author Gerald Posner finally resolves the simple truth of the last great political murder mystery of the 1960s, definitively proving that Ray acted alone. Beginning with a straightforward narrative of the events before, during, and after the shooting, Posner untangles the case's leading puzzles: Was there a mysterious person named Raoul who directed Ray in the year leading up to the murder? Were the FBI, the CIA, or an arm of the Mafia involved? Did the military have a covert team of snipers in Memphis on the day King died? Was James Earl Ray a patsy, as the King family has publicly declared? At the heart of this book is an in-depth profileof Ray himself, a fascinating profile of a career criminal from one of the most forsaken parts of poor white America. Posner re-creates the memorable dramas of the case: Dr. King's rousing "mountaintop" speech the night before his death; the chilling moments of the assassination; Ray's frantic flight across four countries as he tried to escape justice; and the shock of the King family's embrace of Ray just before his own death in jail. A riveting search for justice, Killing the Dream finally thwarts James Earl Ray's efforts to take his secrets to the grave, and proves the identity of King's killer beyond a shadow of a doubt.
On April 4, 1968, at 6:01 PM, while he was standing on a balcony at a Memphis hotel, Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot and fatally wounded. Only hours earlier King--the prophet for racial and economic justice in America--ended his final speech with the words, "I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight, that we as a people will get to the Promised Land.” Acclaimed public intellectual and best-selling author Michael Eric Dyson uses the fortieth anniversary of King’s assassination as the occasion for a provocative and fresh examination of how King fought, and faced, his own death, and we should use his death and legacy. Dyson also uses this landmark anniversary as the starting point for a comprehensive reevaluation of the fate of Black America over the four decades that followed King’s death. Dyson ambitiously investigates the ways in which African-Americans have in fact made it to the Promised Land of which King spoke, while shining a bright light on the ways in which the nation has faltered in the quest for racial justice. He also probes the virtues and flaws of charismatic black leadership that has followed in King’s wake, from Jesse Jackson to Barack Obama. Always engaging and inspiring, April 4, 1968 celebrates the prophetic leadership of Dr. King, and challenges America to renew its commitment to his deeply moral vision.
With imagination and power, the award-winning Pinkney duo celebrates MLK's nonviolent struggle for civil rights -- as he transforms America through the spirit of love.A Washington Post Best Book of the YearA Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the YearA New York Public Library Best Book of the YearA School Library Journal Best Book of the Year* "Unique and remarkable." --Publishers Weekly, starred review* "Each poem trembles under the weight of the story it tells... Martin Rising packs an emotional wallop and, in perfect homage, soars when read aloud." --Booklist, starred reviewIn a rich embroidery of visions, musical cadence, and deep emotion, Andrea and Brian Pinkney convey the final months of Martin Luther King's life -- and of his assassination -- through metaphor, spirituality, and multilayers of meaning.Andrea's stunning poetic requiem, illustrated with Brian's lyrical and colorful artwork, brings a fresh perspective to Martin Luther King, the Gandhi-like, peace-loving activist whose dream of equality -- and whose courage to make it happen -- changed the course of American history. And even in his death, he continues to transform and inspire all of us who share his dream.Wonderful classroom plays of Martin Rising can be performed by using the "Now Is the Time" history and the 1968 timeline at the back of the book as narration -- and adding selected poems to tell the story!
In spite of extensive research and publishing on King, insufficient attention has been given to the convergence of ideas and action in his life. In an era where people are often sorted into the categories of "thinker" and "doer, King stands outa rare mix of the deeply profound thinker and intellect who put the fruit of that reflection into the service of direct social action.