Adam Shields
Summary: The first definitive style biography of King in nearly 40 years.
At the end of the audiobook is an interview with Jonathan Eig and Lerone A. Martin, author of The Gospel of J Edgar Hoover. Their discussion about the lack of full biographies and the new sources is compelling. I had not realized that it has been over 40 years since Stephen Oates biography and nearly 40 years since Garrow's biography. Because I have read more recent books like The Seminarian and the The Sword and the Shield (joint biography of King and Malcolm X) as well as a number of histories were King played a major role in just didn't realize until I heard that interview how long it had been since a full biography.
Also detailed in that interview is new sources have been found or released. Eig is a journalist by training and history. You can tell that in his writing, but we are at that transition period when the Civil Rights generation is passing away. Eig says he was able to interview over 200 people who knew King. Some like Juanita Abernathy knew King well and were known figures. But Eig also interviewed minor figures, like his barber in Montgomery.
I am letting that interview at the end frame some of my thinking about the book, but it was clear from the start of the biography that Eig was trying to portray King as a flawed man. Similar to Alter's framing of Jimmy Carter, Eig has significant respect for King as a subject, but to write well about the whole man we do need to understand his weaknesses. I am going to talk more below about how he handles those weaknesses, but in that interview he said he wanted to keep King from being reduced and simplified.
One last point from the interview is that one of the significant sources that is fairly new are FBI files. Not all files have been declassified yet, but some have. Another set was declassified after the book was released. And another large set it scheduled to be released in 2027. Eig has no doubt about King's involvement in extramarital affairs. But he balances that with a more clear understanding of how J Edgar Hoover and the FBI as a whole were not just observers of affairs, but significant opponents of not just the civil rights movement in general but King in particular. The antagonism of the FBI and Hoover in particular was a significant part of how the shift in attitude toward both King and the civil rights movement. It was not just the point when King voiced opposition to the Vietnam war, but throughout the whole movement the FBI was acting as a propaganda machine against the civil rights movement, not just with the public but especially in harming the relationship that King had with the President and the Department of Justice. The affairs were one excuse, but not the first excuse or the main excuse for why the civil rights movement and King in particular were dangerous. The very next day after the 1963 March on Washington, the FBI puts out a memo labeling King as the greatest threat to American democracy. Hoover, as detailed in Lerone Martin's book was a Christian Nationalist with strong views of white racial superiority. He both viewed the civil rights movement as a communist plant or distraction, but also a violation of the natural order.
After King's assassination, COINTELPRO became better known for its work at undermining the civil rights movement with informants and plants and work to internally weaken civil rights organization including threats against funders, but the formal work of COINTELPRO was in existence by 1956. The "anonymous" letter encouraging King to commit suicide is well known, but less well know is how much effort the FBI put into seeding false or misleading stories into he press about Civil Rights leaders (including King) and working to undermine financial support of the movement. I suspect that as much as we know and is detailed here in Eig's book, more will be revealed in upcoming document releases.
Part of what I think is handled well by Eig is King's limitations. Everyone has a limited capacity (no one can do it all or be all things). King was empathetic, a great orator and deeply interested in his faith and justice. But he wasn't a grass roots organizer like Ella Baker or a theoretical philosopher of race and justice. His orientation to avoid interpersonal conflict meant that personal negotiation with political or business opponents to integration had a different private and public mode. But more importantly, his lack of balancing factors in his life meant that he was always traveling and following the action, not focused on proactive work. (Again, this was influenced by the FBI's work to interrupt funding.) The effort of keeping SCLC funded and running was left him unable to be with people in more grassroots ways that kept him energized. King was pushed into a role of icon at a very young age, which asked him to be all things in a way that no human could have.
There is a very good discussion about the 1965-1968 era and the ways that the Civil Rights movements began to break apart. That has of course been discussed widely in many different ways. Part of the traditional discussion is the slowness of change. Brown v Board and Montgomery happened in 1954, but laws around housing segregation, the biggest factor in school segregation in metro urban areas was not passed until 1968. The Cold War, one of the background factors in propelling civil rights forward crashed into Vietnam protests, which lowered the pressure on federal officials to respond to global interests. The slowing of US economic growth in the mid 1960s which moved to rapid inflation and recession in the 1970s and 80s allowed politicians and business leaders to scapegoat civil rights, affirmative action and welfare programs instead of globalization and aging business infrastructure. Many discussion about the breakup of the civil rights movement is about the movement stripped of the larger context of history. I think Eig could have included more about the broader context, but he included more about the context than what I have seen in other presentations.
As I was reading Eig's book I started reading an advance copy of Malcolm Foley's Anti-Greed Gospel. Foley is presenting a model of discussion of race centered on racial capitalism. Broadly, this can be thought of an a different mode of discussion based on racism as an economic reality similar to the way that Critical Race Theory is centered on racism as a legal reality. CRT I think has value in talking about how slow structural changes to US law and practice were. The fact that my kids today go to a school that is 90% racial minorities and 70% low income, when another school just a half mile away in the same district is 11% Black or Hispanic and 7% low income is a structural issues. But racial capitalism as an idea I think also speaks to that structural issue (resistance to changing school zoning because of its impact on housing prices) as well as the way that funding for the Civil Rights movement drying up exactly when it started to expand its target beyond voting rights. King always had a vision for the role of economics in racism, but many of the white participants in those movement did not fully embrace that. And the pragmatic supporters of desegregation who were more interested its impact on anti-communism efforts than on the way that the civil rights movement was connected to a global anti colonialism movement fell away when King started speaking about Vietnam.
No book is perfect, and it is difficult to present a figure like King well when so much of his story is fixed in the minds of most readers. But I think there is value in King: A Life not just because there is new data and that Eig spends a lot of time on Coretta in ways that some others do not (including being the first to write about personal letters between Coretta and Martin). Eig is a punchy writer and the story moves along with force that is not always the case with long biographies. Obviously, this is a book that won a Pulitzer Prize, so it does not need my stamp of approval. About halfway through the book I was not sure there was much different form Oates biography and other shorter versions of King that I had read, but I think the second half of the book showed why this biography has been so well received.
This was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/king/
Originally posted at bookwi.se.
Summary: The first definitive style biography of King in nearly 40 years.
At the end of the audiobook is an interview with Jonathan Eig and Lerone A. Martin, author of The Gospel of J Edgar Hoover. Their discussion about the lack of full biographies and the new sources is compelling. I had not realized that it has been over 40 years since Stephen Oates biography and nearly 40 years since Garrow's biography. Because I have read more recent books like The Seminarian and the The Sword and the Shield (joint biography of King and Malcolm X) as well as a number of histories were King played a major role in just didn't realize until I heard that interview how long it had been since a full biography.
Also detailed in that interview is new sources have been found or released. Eig is a journalist by training and history. You can tell that in his writing, but we are at that transition period when the Civil Rights generation is passing away. Eig says he was able to interview over 200 people who knew King. Some like Juanita Abernathy knew King well and were known figures. But Eig also interviewed minor figures, like his barber in Montgomery.
I am letting that interview at the end frame some of my thinking about the book, but it was clear from the start of the biography that Eig was trying to portray King as a flawed man. Similar to Alter's framing of Jimmy Carter, Eig has significant respect for King as a subject, but to write well about the whole man we do need to understand his weaknesses. I am going to talk more below about how he handles those weaknesses, but in that interview he said he wanted to keep King from being reduced and simplified.
One last point from the interview is that one of the significant sources that is fairly new are FBI files. Not all files have been declassified yet, but some have. Another set was declassified after the book was released. And another large set it scheduled to be released in 2027. Eig has no doubt about King's involvement in extramarital affairs. But he balances that with a more clear understanding of how J Edgar Hoover and the FBI as a whole were not just observers of affairs, but significant opponents of not just the civil rights movement in general but King in particular. The antagonism of the FBI and Hoover in particular was a significant part of how the shift in attitude toward both King and the civil rights movement. It was not just the point when King voiced opposition to the Vietnam war, but throughout the whole movement the FBI was acting as a propaganda machine against the civil rights movement, not just with the public but especially in harming the relationship that King had with the President and the Department of Justice. The affairs were one excuse, but not the first excuse or the main excuse for why the civil rights movement and King in particular were dangerous. The very next day after the 1963 March on Washington, the FBI puts out a memo labeling King as the greatest threat to American democracy. Hoover, as detailed in Lerone Martin's book was a Christian Nationalist with strong views of white racial superiority. He both viewed the civil rights movement as a communist plant or distraction, but also a violation of the natural order.
After King's assassination, COINTELPRO became better known for its work at undermining the civil rights movement with informants and plants and work to internally weaken civil rights organization including threats against funders, but the formal work of COINTELPRO was in existence by 1956. The "anonymous" letter encouraging King to commit suicide is well known, but less well know is how much effort the FBI put into seeding false or misleading stories into he press about Civil Rights leaders (including King) and working to undermine financial support of the movement. I suspect that as much as we know and is detailed here in Eig's book, more will be revealed in upcoming document releases.
Part of what I think is handled well by Eig is King's limitations. Everyone has a limited capacity (no one can do it all or be all things). King was empathetic, a great orator and deeply interested in his faith and justice. But he wasn't a grass roots organizer like Ella Baker or a theoretical philosopher of race and justice. His orientation to avoid interpersonal conflict meant that personal negotiation with political or business opponents to integration had a different private and public mode. But more importantly, his lack of balancing factors in his life meant that he was always traveling and following the action, not focused on proactive work. (Again, this was influenced by the FBI's work to interrupt funding.) The effort of keeping SCLC funded and running was left him unable to be with people in more grassroots ways that kept him energized. King was pushed into a role of icon at a very young age, which asked him to be all things in a way that no human could have.
There is a very good discussion about the 1965-1968 era and the ways that the Civil Rights movements began to break apart. That has of course been discussed widely in many different ways. Part of the traditional discussion is the slowness of change. Brown v Board and Montgomery happened in 1954, but laws around housing segregation, the biggest factor in school segregation in metro urban areas was not passed until 1968. The Cold War, one of the background factors in propelling civil rights forward crashed into Vietnam protests, which lowered the pressure on federal officials to respond to global interests. The slowing of US economic growth in the mid 1960s which moved to rapid inflation and recession in the 1970s and 80s allowed politicians and business leaders to scapegoat civil rights, affirmative action and welfare programs instead of globalization and aging business infrastructure. Many discussion about the breakup of the civil rights movement is about the movement stripped of the larger context of history. I think Eig could have included more about the broader context, but he included more about the context than what I have seen in other presentations.
As I was reading Eig's book I started reading an advance copy of Malcolm Foley's Anti-Greed Gospel. Foley is presenting a model of discussion of race centered on racial capitalism. Broadly, this can be thought of an a different mode of discussion based on racism as an economic reality similar to the way that Critical Race Theory is centered on racism as a legal reality. CRT I think has value in talking about how slow structural changes to US law and practice were. The fact that my kids today go to a school that is 90% racial minorities and 70% low income, when another school just a half mile away in the same district is 11% Black or Hispanic and 7% low income is a structural issues. But racial capitalism as an idea I think also speaks to that structural issue (resistance to changing school zoning because of its impact on housing prices) as well as the way that funding for the Civil Rights movement drying up exactly when it started to expand its target beyond voting rights. King always had a vision for the role of economics in racism, but many of the white participants in those movement did not fully embrace that. And the pragmatic supporters of desegregation who were more interested its impact on anti-communism efforts than on the way that the civil rights movement was connected to a global anti colonialism movement fell away when King started speaking about Vietnam.
No book is perfect, and it is difficult to present a figure like King well when so much of his story is fixed in the minds of most readers. But I think there is value in King: A Life not just because there is new data and that Eig spends a lot of time on Coretta in ways that some others do not (including being the first to write about personal letters between Coretta and Martin). Eig is a punchy writer and the story moves along with force that is not always the case with long biographies. Obviously, this is a book that won a Pulitzer Prize, so it does not need my stamp of approval. About halfway through the book I was not sure there was much different form Oates biography and other shorter versions of King that I had read, but I think the second half of the book showed why this biography has been so well received.
This was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/king/
Originally posted at bookwi.se.