The Kneeling Man
My Father's Life as a Black Spy Who Witnessed the Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
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3.8 • 6 Ratings
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
BCALA Literary Award Winner
The intimate and heartbreaking story of a Black undercover police officer who famously kneeled by the assassinated Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr—and a daughter’s quest for the truth about her father
In the famous photograph of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. on the balcony of Memphis’s Lorraine Motel, one man kneeled down beside King, trying to staunch the blood from his fatal head wound with a borrowed towel.
This kneeling man was a member of the Invaders, an activist group that was in talks with King in the days leading up to the murder. But he also had another identity: an undercover Memphis police officer reporting on the activities of this group, which was thought to be possibly dangerous and potentially violent. This kneeling man is Leta McCollough Seletzky’s father.
Marrell McCollough was a Black man working secretly with the white power structure, a spy. This was so far from her understanding of what it meant to be Black in America, of everything she eventually devoted her life and career to, that she set out to learn what she could about his life, his actions and motivations. But with that decision came risk. What would she uncover about her father, who went on to a career at the CIA, and did she want to bear the weight of knowing?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Seletzky debuts with an intriguing study of her father, Marrell "Mac" McCollough, a police officer and CIA agent who was seen kneeling over Martin Luther King's body in a famous photograph taken just after the civil rights leader was shot on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis in 1968. Seletzky begins with a visceral account of the assassination ("Potent, suffocating odors closed in—burning gunpowder and a sweet cologne overlying sulfurous notes from King's facial hair depilatory") then rewinds to her father's Mississippi Delta childhood, military service, and spur-of-the-moment decision to apply to the Memphis police department in 1967. Recruited by the department's Domestic Intelligence Bureau, Mac infiltrated the Invaders, a local Black Power group involved with King and others in the Memphis sanitation workers' strike. Mac's conflicting roles as an undercover police officer and a Black man moved by King's cries for racial progress are at the forefront of Seletzky's narrative, which includes a fascinating reunion between her father and former Atlanta mayor Andrew Young, who was also on the balcony that day. The result is a nuanced and insightful look at the complex spaces African Americans have navigated in the pursuit of racial justice.
Customer Reviews
A severe lack of objectivity
Law, after law, after law, were put on the books for more than 300 years legalizing the oppression of Black citizens, and in the moment Black Americans decide it’s time to right the longstanding injustice, Marrell McCullough decides he needs to protect the state, not the people. In the bloody south, filled with lynchings and courts that barely recognize people of color McCullough chooses to make sure the oppressed are following the rules. That’s probably why the Agency hired him, they couldn’t believe it either.
McCullough believed it a solid choice to confirm his identity to the Agency by sending in a picture of him holding MLK’s murdered head? McCullough is garbage, total trash. However, the redeeming qualities of the book are that he received karma at every turn, not even realizing it.
In life, most adult children are never able to rise to the challenge of critically analyzing their parents’ bad acts, this book is no different. The question was asked but not answered, did McCullough get King killed? We’ll never know.