The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. - Hardcover

Carson, Clayborne

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0446524123 ISBN 13: 9780446524124

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing, 1998

Synopsis

First-person account of the extraordinary life of America's greatest civil rights leader. It begins with his boyhood as the son of a preacher, his education as a minister, his ascendancy as a leader of civil rights, & his complex relationships with leading political & social figures of the day.

About this title

Review:

Celebrated Stanford University historian Clayborne Carson is the director and editor of the Martin Luther King Papers Project; with thousands of King's essays, notes, letters, speeches, and sermons at his disposal, Carson has organized King's writings into a posthumous autobiography. In an early student essay, King prophetically penned: "We cannot have an enlightened democracy with one great group living in ignorance.... We cannot have a nation orderly and sound with one group so ground down and thwarted that it is almost forced into unsocial attitudes and crime." Such statements, made throughout King's career, are skillfully woven together into a coherent narrative of the quest for social justice. The autobiography delves, for example, into the philosophical training King received at Morehouse College, Crozer Theological Seminary, and Boston University, where he consolidated the teachings of Afro-American theologian Benjamin Mays with the philosophies of Locke, Rousseau, Gandhi, and Thoreau. Through King's voice, the reader intimately shares in his trials and triumphs, including the Montgomery Boycott, the 1963 "I Have a Dream Speech," the Selma March, and the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize. In one of his last speeches, King reminded his audience that "in the final analysis, God does not judge us by the separate incidents or the separate mistakes that we make, but by the total bent of our lives." Carson's skillful editing has created an original argument in King's favor that draws directly from the source, illuminating the circumstances of King's life without deifying his person. --Eugene Holley Jr.

About the Author:

Dr. Carson was born in Buffalo, New York. His wife, Susan Ann Carson, is managing editor of theKing Papers Project.The Carsons, who live in Palo Alto, have two grown children.

About this edition

• Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0446524123
• ISBN 13: 9780446524124
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 416