Becoming King
Martin Luther King Jr. and the Making of a National Leader
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
This biography sheds new light on King's development as a civil rights leader in Montgomery among activists such as Rosa Parks, E.D. Nixon, and others.
In Becoming King, Troy Jackson demonstrates how Martin Luther King's early years as a pastor and activist in Montgomery, Alabama, helped shape his identity as a civil rights leader. Using the sharp lens of Montgomery's struggle for racial equality to investigate King's burgeoning leadership, Jackson explores King's ability to connect with people across racial and class divides. In particular, Jackson highlights King's alliances with Jo Ann Robinson, a young English professor at Alabama State University; E. D. Nixon, a middle-aged Pullman porter and head of the local NAACP chapter; and Virginia Durr, a courageous white woman who bailed Rosa Parks out of jail.
Drawing on countless interviews and archival sources, Jackson offers a comprehensive analysis of King's speeches before, during, and after the Montgomery bus boycott. He demonstrates how King's voice and message evolved to reflect the shared struggles, challenges, experiences, and hopes of the people with whom he worked. Jackson also reveals the internal discord that threatened the movement's hard-won momentum and compelled King to position himself as a national figure, rising above the quarrels to focus on greater goals.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
An oft-told story, this account of the Montgomery desegregation struggle benefits from a subtle shift in focus to the ordinary men and women who served as the foot soldiers in the 1955 bus boycott. Besides a dutiful overview of King's formative years, pastor and editor Jackson (The Papers of Martin Luther King Jr., Volume VI) shines a spotlight on Montgomery community leaders like E.D. Nixon, a member of the influential Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, and Jo Ann Robinson, of the local Women's Political Council, who fought for civil rights (and clashed over tactics) long before King arrived on the scene. The decisive battle began as a modest attempt to gain concessions such as hiring African American bus drivers and restraining white drivers from verbally abusing black passengers; though King and Rosa Parks brought the boycott unprecedented attention, the movement's greatest resource was its historic alliance of working and professional classes-men and women who rarely mingled but suffered alike at the hands at the whites. Success was bittersweet: King outgrew the Montgomery crisis; Rosa Parks, destitute, left the city for Detroit; remaining leaders squabbled or succumbed to the white backlash. Jackson's storytelling skill and broad perspective make this a worthy addition to the literature of the U.S. civil rights movement.
