Brina's Reviews > King: A Life

May 6, 2024: Awarded Pulitzer Prize in Biography. A long overdue honor for the author.

In a nutshell wow. Let me get to wow. A few years ago I read Jonathan Eig’s Opening Day as my annual Jackie Robinson read. I read about Jackie Robinson every year and know his story well, but this book read like a story, a compelling story at that. I crossed checked with other nonfiction readers who I respect and they all noted that the books of Eig’s that they have read have all been top of the line. Even though at that point I had only read the one book, I could tell. As a primarily nonfiction reader I am always on the lookout as to what my preferred authors are writing or pursuing next. For the last few years, Eig’s news centered around his 2018 exploration of Muhammad Ali, which earned him National Book Award consideration. For his next book, however, Eig desired to tackle a topic greater than Ali. That subject, no small task, was Dr Martin Luther King, Jr. The history buffs among us would be waiting impatiently for that book, sure to be Eig’s signature work, to be published.

As a person who grew up reading biographies, I want the book to tell the person’s life story from a myriad of angles. Dr Martin Luther King, Jr has been a part of America’s ethos for over sixty years. Anyone fifteen years or more years older than me would have recollections about the man, either positive or negative, great or small. This biography, the first full length volume about King in thirty five years, was not written for people old enough to remember a living and breathing man. It was written for those born in the seventies and later, my generation and those that come after it, so we would know who this man was from beyond the I Have a Dream speech. Most school age children know the speech rather than the man. This birthday has become a federal holiday, a lead up to African American heritage month. Schools might teach the speech and explain to children to follow their dreams. Or they might have a brief lesson on Dr King. Libraries used to have programs about King on his birthday but now those are closed as well, so school children do not have as much of a chance to learn about who he was or what his movement was about. His birthday becoming yet another three day weekend on the academic calendar. Jonathan Eig set about to rectify this. Generations would learn who Dr King was beyond the I Have a Dream Speech. Since knowing about this book, I had been salivating at my chance to read it, and it lived up to its hype.

It is not necessary to regurgitate King’s life. That is the purpose of a biography, and Eig is among the elite when it comes to that. After a chance meeting with one of King’s childhood friends, he was encouraged to interview those who remembered him well, friends and family and acquaintances, before it was too late. He also is the first biographer to utilize works on the internet, his father’s unpublished memoir, and King’s extensive FBI files. From these primary source documents, Eig was able to piece together the life of Dr King from a uniquely new perspective. The background about segregation and Jim Crow and the key events in the civil rights movement all receive their due, but this book is about the whole person behind the movement and how he got to that point. Not all aspects of King’s life were positive or pretty. Even though I have read extensively on Jackie Robinson and the civil rights movement including one of Coretta Scott King’s memoirs, at times this book was still hard to take in, and I had to read it in small doses rather than as one long story, despite Eig’s extraordinary writing. His purpose has been to introduce the whole person and if that meant including the not so savory parts of both King’s life and the civil rights movement, then that’s what it would take to piece together this life for those too young to remember.

As a teacher I want to teach about Dr King to my students. Granted I am a substitute and I never know what class I am going to end up with on the days closest to King’s birthday. Somehow the discussion ends up back with I Have a Dream. Little did I know prior to reading that while this speech is considered a cornerstone moment in American history, it is hardly who King was. Although his father was a prominent minister in Atlanta, the schools King attended were segregated, and despite having dedicated teachers, not as advanced as the white schools. King skipped two grades during school and entered Morehouse College at age fifteen. This made him younger and put him at an academic disadvantage to his classmates, leading King to the lifelong tendency to plagiarize. From Morehouse, King attended Crozer Theological Seminary, his first time in the north, and finally to Boston University where he would eventually receive his doctorate in religion. It was in Boston that he wrote a letter of encouragement to Jackie Robinson, noting how his integrating a major sport would open up new opportunities to the race. It was also in Boston that King met his future wife Coretta and realized that he was called to preach in the south. Somehow before the civil rights movement took off, King had a calling that he would be the one to lead it. Still in his twenties, this was a tremendous burden to be placed on anyone, and, yet, King and Coretta answered this call to lead.

I am not sure where I would start teaching about King after reading this. Many blacks in the south were thrilled with the gains of the early parts of the civil rights movement. Yet a younger generation lead in part by Malcolm X and then Stokeley Carmichael were not satisfied with King’s adherence to passive resistance and non-violence. They called for black power and a more militant means to achieving societal gains. The more extremist sectors of the civil rights movement called King’s speech a sellout to whites and the federal government. On the other hand, the FBI, an old boys network resistant to change, believed King to be too extremist and wiretapped his phones for years. With access to most of these FBI tapes, we now know that King might not have been a perfect husband or person. He kept mistresses, gambled, drank, and shot pool. He slept four hours a night and was rarely home as he canvassed the country giving speeches and fundraising. When at home, he practiced his sermons and speeches so they would have the desired affect upon delivery, in King’s signature deep booming voice, that at times sounded like singing and prayer. This placed a heavy burden on Coretta as the mother of his four children even though she desired to travel and give speeches of her own. Was King the perfect person and minister that society made him out to be? Probably not but, not to condone his behavior, he would not have been the first prominent person in society to keep a mistress. Was he as left wing as the FBI made him out to be? Again, probably not; initially he just wanted to be treated like a full person under the constitution, an inalienable right that had been granted to white Americans two hundred years prior. Using passive resistance, sermons, peaceful marches, sit-ins, and boycotts does not paint the picture of an extremist person. Rather the release of these FBI tapes paints the bureau as ruthless, extremist, not to be trusted, all in the name of denouncing the person in the movement who was probably the least extreme. By utilizing the FBI tapes, Eig does give readers a more complex person, while stating his unfavorable opinion of the FBI.

Jonathan Eig gives his due to Coretta Scott King’s involvement in the movement as well as many key figures including King’s closest friends Ralph Abernathy and Andrew Young. They both play a prominent role in the duration of the book. After reading this biography that was well worth its wait I have come away learning a more complete picture of a man who even I knew most by his speech, birthday, and date of assassination. With the recent death and all but retirement of some of the nation’s prominent historians, the torch has been passed to a younger generation of history writers who write history like the story that it is in a way that makes it accessible to younger generations. Jonathan Eig should have his name at the forefront of discussion when it comes to who is America’s top historian today. His work on King should be considered his opus, one I am privileged to have read, and one that vaults him to the top when discussing a who’s who of America’s history writers

5 stars
Book of the year