His grandparents lived as free African Americans, but were still dependent on a white farmer for housing, work, and income. His father, Martin King Sr. (born Michael), left his parental home in Stockbridge, Georgia, at the age of 13. He married Alberta Christine Williams in 1926 and became the pastor of a Baptist congregation in Atlanta. Son Martin Luther King Jr. (also born Michael or Mike) was born on January 15 1929 in Atlanta. Although he was reluctant during his teenage years, he followed in his father’s footsteps. The middle name Luther was adopted by King Sr. after a trip to Germany where he learned about the German Protestant reformer Martin Luther. King Sr. must have been deeply impressed by him.
Activist Pastor
In 1954, King Jr. began leading his first independent Baptist congregation in Montgomery, Alabama. His aspiration was to teach after a few years. By then, he was married to Coretta Scott. She was not his first love and certainly not the last woman he would have an affair with. However, they remained a couple and had four children. Instead of a quiet life as a pastor with a Sunday sermon and other church duties, King emerged in Montgomery as an advocate for equal rights for African Americans, thanks to Rosa Parks.
Her story is well-known. In the heavily segregated Montgomery, African Americans were not allowed to sit just anywhere on the bus. The front was assigned to whites. The back was assigned to African Americans. In case all the seats in the front were occupied, a white person could claim a seat in the back. On December 1 1955, Parks refused to give up her seat for a white man. The police were called. She received a fine, which she challenged in court. Several prominent figures in the African American community of Montgomery decided to support her and asked their new pastor, Martin Luther King, to help. He agreed.
The resistance to Parks’ treatment eventually led to a bus boycott by the African American community in Montgomery that lasted a year. The battle was fierce, but in the end they won. African Americans no longer had to sit in designated seats on the bus or give up their seats for whites. The battle did not stop there. African Americans in the southern US faced discrimination in many other areas. They couldn’t vote. They were barred from public parks, restaurants, education, etc. After the victory in Montgomery, King continued the fight for equal rights, in Birmingham, in Atlanta, where he returned with his family in 1960. And with the March on Washington in August 1963, where he gave his famous “I have a dream” speech.
King and the Presidents
As King and his movement, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), gained more prominence in the US his political influence grew. This was not the case during the Eisenhower administration in the late 1950s. John F. Kennedy, however, paid more attention to King and his demands. The negotiations about these were largely left to his brother Robert. After Kennedy’s assassination in November 1963, King’s influence only increased with the new president Lyndon B. Johnson.
It was Johnson who passed several laws to improve the situation of African Americans in the US, not only in the South, where there was still a lot of resistance towards King and his movement, but throughout the US. Examples include the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. King had a significant influence on these. In the sense that Johnson himself was in contact with King about them and regularly updated him on the content and progress of the bills. Despite their good relationship and the promised improvements in the situation of African Americans, King continued to take action.
The relentless struggle of MLK
Eig delves deeply into the aforementioned events in King’s life in his biography. He does this not only based on already known documents and books about King’s life, but also draws from newly released (FBI) documents, from what people close to MLK have said about him in interviews over the past decades and from interviews with King and his relatives themselves. This paints a picture of a leader who, often against his will, repeatedly sought confrontation. Especially in the early years with success, though he personally had to pay a high price for it.
The number of times Martin Luther King Jr. briefly or for longer periods ended up in prison cannot be counted on the fingers of four hands. In addition to the fatal assassination attempt in 1968, Eig describes two earlier failed attempts on MLK’s life. He was also frequently targeted in attacks on his home. However, King never abandoned his faith and continued to advocate for non-violent protests for equal rights.
Initially, he consistently fought for equal rights for African Americans in the southern US. Still, in the latter half of the 1960s, his focus shifted north. The North had never officially practiced segregation. That didn’t mean the living conditions for African Americans were much better there. After receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, MLK also became more involved in other political matters, primarily the war in Vietnam and improved economic living conditions for African Americans. His vehement rhetorical opposition to the war in Vietnam led to a rift between King and President Johnson. By the end, the two were no longer on speaking terms.
King’s movement was not the only one advocating for the rights of African Americans. Malcolm X, a former leader of the Nation of Islam, was another well-known advocate. Unlike MLK, Malcolm X did not rule out violence by African Americans, if it served the cause. King and Malcolm X never collaborated. Malcolm X was assassinated on February 21 1965.
Dream definitively shatters in Chicago
Indirectly, after Malcolm X’s assassination Martin Luther King began to more overtly adopt his ideas. In 1963, he dreamt of a country where everyone was equal and interacted respectfully. By 1966, having then shifted his operations to Chicago, he had to admit that little remained of his dream.
MLK wanted to improve the economic position of African Americans in Chicago. They lived in ghettos with abysmal housing conditions. Discrimination was rampant in the job market. He first tried to change the situation the way he always had: by organising peaceful marches. But it had little impact. Meanwhile, anger among African Americans over their poor conditions continued to escalate.
Nights of fighting broke out between the police and youth gangs — gangs that respected him, but mostly did not follow his words — and between the police and white opponents of the African American civil rights movement. MLK was repeatedly threatened in various ways. One day, he followed the example of his namesake from five centuries ago. He pinned a flyer with over 40 demands on the city hall door. A white Chicago resident quickly removed the document. King would fail to make his mission in Chicago a success.
Martin Luther King not infallible
Despite his almost mythical status as a non-violent advocate for equal rights and devout Christian, MLK was certainly not infallible, as Eig’s biography reveals. The author demonstrates this in various ways. For instance, it turns out that King was prone to plagiarism during his studies and in many of his subsequent publications. In his defense, it could be argued that he was simply a better speaker than writer.
His numerous extramarital affairs were useful damaging material for the FBI in the 1960s. The FBI’s initial interest in him arose from suspicions of communist influences within his movement. One of his key advisors had been a member of the American Communist Party. However, the FBI could never prove actual communist influences within the SCLC. Just before the Nobel Prize ceremony, the FBI launched its first smear campaign against MLK regarding his extramarital affairs. To his relief, the damage from this was limited at the time. Even in the final years of his life, the FBI remained active in discrediting King, under the personal supervision of director J. Edgar Hoover.
His relentless fight also took a heavy toll on Martin Luther King’s health. In the 1960s, he was often temporarily incapacitated due to mental issues. His wife Coretta and others attributed this to depression. After all, from the beginning of his activism, MLK had been aware of the risk of an assassination attempt on his life. Coretta also lived in constant fear of this. On April 4, 1968, this fear was realised in Memphis, Tennessee. James Earl Ray shot him in the head from a distance while King stood on the balcony of his hotel room.
In his final weeks, King often referred to death, in conversations with his advisors and in his Sunday sermons in Atlanta. In his last sermon there before his death, he recalled the March on Washington in 1963. The dream he had articulated then had turned into a nightmare, he said. But he continued to believe that the dream was achievable. In the nearly 60 years since his death, many tributes to Martin Luther King Jr. have appeared in the American streetscape. However, the economic position of African Americans is still not entirely on par with that of whites. MLK’s dream has not yet come true.
In the above article, I did not go into too much detail about all of MLK’s and his movement action in the southern US and Chicago. Nor did I touch upon the differences of opinion within the African American community regarding the strategy to obtain equal rights, which certainly existed. Eig does discuss these extensively in his book. Going into such detail would have made this review too long. For variation, I used different ways to refer to Martin Luther King Jr. Lastly: throughout the book, Eig uses terms like Negroes, Afro-Americans, and Blacks to refer to the African American community. In this article, I chose to use only “African Americans”.
Copyright photo: Johan Peters
