Becoming King

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Becoming King

Title:

Becoming King

Martin Luther King Jr. and the Making of a National Leader

Author:

Jackson, Troy

Carson, Clayborne

Subject:

Biography & Autobiography

African American Nonfiction

Nonfiction

History

Description:

This biography sheds new light on King’s development as a civil rights leader in Montgomery among activists such as Rosa Parks, E.D. Nixon, and others. In Becoming King, Troy Jackson demonstrates how Martin Luther King's early years as a pastor and activist in Montgomery, Alabama, helped shape his identity as a civil rights leader. Using the sharp lens of Montgomery's struggle for racial equality to investigate King's burgeoning leadership, Jackson explores King's ability to connect with people across racial and class divides. In particular, Jackson highlights King's alliances with Jo Ann Robinson, a young English professor at Alabama State University; E. D. Nixon, a middle-aged Pullman porter and head of the local NAACP chapter; and Virginia Durr, a courageous white woman who bailed Rosa Parks out of jail. Drawing on countless interviews and archival sources, Jackson offers a comprehensive analysis of King’s speeches before, during, and after the Montgomery bus boycott. He demonstrates how King's voice and message evolved to reflect the shared struggles, challenges, experiences, and hopes of the people with whom he worked. Jackson also reveals the internal discord that threatened the movement's hard-won momentum and compelled King to position himself as a national figure, rising above the quarrels to focus on greater goals.

Publisher:

The University Press of Kentucky

Date:

2008/11/01

Digital Format:

ePub

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Language:

English

Summary

This biography sheds new light on King's development as a civil rights leader in Montgomery among activists such as Rosa Parks, E.D. Nixon, and others.

In Becoming King , Troy Jackson demonstrates how Martin Luther King's early years as a pastor and activist in Montgomery, Alabama, helped shape his identity as a civil rights leader. Using the sharp lens of Montgomery's struggle for racial equality to investigate King's burgeoning leadership, Jackson explores King's ability to connect with people across racial and class divides. In particular, Jackson highlights King's alliances with Jo Ann Robinson, a young English professor at Alabama State University; E. D. Nixon, a middle-aged Pullman porter and head of the local NAACP chapter; and Virginia Durr, a courageous white woman who bailed Rosa Parks out of jail.

Drawing on countless interviews and archival sources, Jackson offers a comprehensive analysis of King's speeches before, during, and after the Montgomery bus boycott. He demonstrates how King's voice and message evolved to reflect the shared struggles, challenges, experiences, and hopes of the people with whom he worked. Jackson also reveals the internal discord that threatened the movement's hard-won momentum and compelled King to position himself as a national figure, rising above the quarrels to focus on greater goals.

Author Notes

Troy Jackson is an editor of The Papers of Martin Luther King Jr., Volume VI: Advocate of the Social Gospel, September 1948-March 1963. After receiving his Ph.D. at the University of Kentucky, he became Senior Pastor at University Christian Church in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Reviews (4)

Publisher's Weekly Review

An oft-told story, this account of the Montgomery desegregation struggle benefits from a subtle shift in focus to the ordinary men and women who served as the foot soldiers in the 1955 bus boycott. Besides a dutiful overview of King's formative years, pastor and editor Jackson (The Papers of Martin Luther King Jr., Volume VI) shines a spotlight on Montgomery community leaders like E.D. Nixon, a member of the influential Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, and Jo Ann Robinson, of the local Women's Political Council, who fought for civil rights (and clashed over tactics) long before King arrived on the scene. The decisive battle began as a modest attempt to gain concessions such as hiring African American bus drivers and restraining white drivers from verbally abusing black passengers; though King and Rosa Parks brought the boycott unprecedented attention, the movement's greatest resource was its historic alliance of working and professional classes-men and women who rarely mingled but suffered alike at the hands at the whites. Success was bittersweet: King outgrew the Montgomery crisis; Rosa Parks, destitute, left the city for Detroit; remaining leaders squabbled or succumbed to the white backlash. Jackson's storytelling skill and broad perspective make this a worthy addition to the literature of the U.S. civil rights movement. (Nov.) Copyright 2008 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Review

Unique portrait of the civil-rights struggle in Montgomery, Ala., and how it shaped one of the country's foremost revolutionaries. Martin Luther King Jr.'s transformation into the voice of America's moral conscience would not have been possible without the influence of the grassroots warriors he met in Montgomery, where he won an appointment as pastor of the renowned Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. Arriving in the Alabama capital in mid-1954, King was a doe-eyed 25-year-old doctoral student from Boston University, armed with little more than untested ideology and a theory about "social gospel." His resolve to tackle inequality manifested itself with more clarity during the first year of his pastorate as seething racial tensions began to boil over across the country. He ordered the formation of a social and political task force at Dexter, which brought him into contact with members of the city's activist community, including E.D. Nixon, Rosa Parks and Jo Ann Robinson. Preferring to work behind the scenes, King encouraged their efforts to increase voter registration, lobby for economic development in African-American communities and integrate Montgomery's bus service. Following Parks's historic act of civil disobedience, King was reluctantly thrust into the spotlight after being drafted as the leader of what would become a yearlong bus boycott that set the stage for pitched civil-rights battles throughout the South. Weaving newspaper clippings, city archives and interviews with King's colleagues and congregants, Jackson richly renders a city on the brink and the residents that pushed it over the edge. The author's comprehensive analysis of King's sermons before, during and after the boycott artfully depicts a man in transition, from nave do-gooder to world-changer. Jackson's treatment of Montgomery in the post-boycott era offers new insight into the void in leadership and the fractious infighting among the movement's luminaries after King departed the scene. An informed investigation of the struggles that defined a time and placeand the man who gave them a voice. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Choice Review

What happened to Martin Luther King Jr. in Montgomery? Historic heroes do not emerge as full-blown icons. History idolizes them for their actions in their mature years, but readers rarely get to know them in their developmental stage of life. For the sake of historical accuracy and for the encouragement of future leaders who are still in their developmental years, this is an exceptionally valuable book. Using archives, interviews, and varied autobiographies, Jackson, a pastor at the United Christian Church in Cincinnati, identifies the upbringing, collegiate experience, and theological education that the novice minister brought to Montgomery. Jackson then shows how the already begun Montgomery protest and the prompting of local leaders drew King in the role of spokesman, which made him choose between working through the Montgomery situation and moving onto the path of national leadership. Jackson writes well of the transformation that took place, valuing the input of the Montgomery leaders and community to the minister's "becoming King." A scholarly bibliography enhances this volume for students of King's life and for young leaders who may benefit from King's experience. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries. J. H. Smith Wake Forest University

Library Journal Review

Jackson (senior pastor, University Christian Church, Cincinnati; editor, The Papers of Martin Luther King Jr. Vol. 6: Advocate of the Social Gospel, September 1948-March 1963) has written a convincing reinterpretation of the role of King in the Montgomery, AL, bus boycott of 1955-56. Jackson grants that King's inspirational oratory and ability to communicate to African Americans across class lines made him a powerful symbol and chief spokesman of the movement there. However, the black community in Montgomery had laid the groundwork through its organizing activities in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Local activists, white and black, including NAACP leader E.D. Nixon and Women's Political Council president Jo Ann Robinson, as well as civil rights lawyers Virginia and Clifford Durr and librarian Juliette Morgan, planted the seeds that flowered in the boycott. Jackson concludes that in many ways, King did not make the boycott movement; the blacks of Montgomery made him. Highly recommended for all major libraries.--Anthony Edmonds, Ball State Univ., Muncie, IN (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Author Notes

Reviews (4)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Kirkus Review

Choice Review

Library Journal Review

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