Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., And The Southern Christian Leadership Conference - Softcover

Garrow, David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0688166326 ISBN 13: 9780688166328

Publisher: Harper Perennial, 1999

Synopsis

Winner of the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for Biography and the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award, this is the most comprehensive book ever written about the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Based on more than 700 interviews with all of King's surviving associates, as well as with those who opposed him, and enhanced by the author's access to King's personal papers and tens of thousands of pages of FBI documents, this is a towering portrait of a man's metamorphosis into a legend. Garrow traces King's transformation from a young, earnest pastor of a modest church into the foremost spokesperson of the black freedom struggle. The book's central unifying theme is King's growing awareness of the symbolic meaning of the cross as his sense of mission deepened, matured, and was transmuted by sometimes-reluctant degrees into acceptance of a life and a role that would end by demanding the ultimate in self-sacrifice. This is a powerful portrait of a man at the epicenter of one of the most dramatic periods in our history.

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Review:

In this 1987 Pulitzer Prize winner, David J. Garrow, through extensive interviews, and access to F.B.I. transcripts, delves deeply into both Dr. Martin Luther King’s leadership role and his private life. He attributes King's moral and physical courage to his religious faith: King believed that he had literally been called to do the Lord's work. But from 1965, when the F.B.I. taped King in sexual encounters and sent the tape to S.C.L.L. headquarters, his associates noted a "spiritual depression", even a "death wish." Fear that exposure would ruin his public work dogged him until his assassination in 1968. While documenting the F.B.I.'s dirty tricks, Garrow never loses sight of King's achievement and vision, nor of the poignancy of King's belief that "the cross is something that you bear and ultimately that you die on."

From the Inside Flap:

e Pulitzer Prize. Based on more than 700 recorded conversations, including interviews with all of King's closest surviving associates, this is a powerful portrait of King and the movement for which he dedicated himself.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0688166326
• ISBN 13: 9780688166328
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 800