BEARING THE CROSS: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, 1955-1968

by David J. Garrow ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 5, 1986

Garrow's two previous books about King (Protest at Selma, The FBI and Martin Luther King) were mere exercises compared to this exhaustively researched biography. Unfortunately, the 200 pages of end notes that anchor this titanic study betray its core problem: although academician (political science/CCNY) Garrow skillfully weaves together the facts of King's combative life, his insistence on scholarly exactitude doesn't let him exercise the artist's license necessary to vivify his fascinating, complex subject. The author opens with Rosa Park's refusal to give up her bus seat to a white rider in December, 1955, an act of defiance which sparked the Montgomery bus boycott, the entire modern Civil Rights movement, and King's stormy career. At once, according to Garrow, the two dominant themes of King's life manifested: the perennial confrontation with governmental authority (so frequent were King's incarcerations that at times his enemies resorted to bailing him out to void his bids for martyrdom), and his lifelong sense of being caught on a whirlwind he couldn't control. Garrow also makes much of a little-publicized event coincidental with the boycott: a mystical encounter with Christ in King's kitchen, an experience from which King drew strength throughout his life. The rest is history, although never before so carefully laid out in every detail: the perennial jockeying between black leaders; King's love/hate relationship with the Kennedys; his absolute insistence on nonviolence; and, on the domestic level, King's chauvinistic treatment of his wife and his Rabelaisian sexual escapades (which Garrow treats with the utmost tact). An encyclopedic piece of research, but so flat in its exposition that only the scholarly inclined will have the fortitude to embrace it.

Pub Date: Dec. 5, 1986

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Morrow

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1986

Categories: NONFICTION