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 naive 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 place - and the man who gave them a voice.
(Kirkus Reviews)
"The history books may write it Reverend King was born in
Atlanta, and then came to Montgomery, but we feel that he was born
in Montgomery in the struggle here, and now he is moving to Atlanta
for bigger responsibilities." -- Member of Dexter Avenue Baptist
Church, November 1959 Preacher -- this simple term describes the
twenty-five-year-old Ph.D. in theology who arrived in Montgomery,
Alabama, to become the pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in
1954. His name was Martin Luther King Jr., but where did this young
minister come from? What did he believe, and what role would he
play in the growing activism of the civil rights movement of the
1950s? In Becoming King: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Making of a
National Leader, author Troy Jackson chronicles King's emergence
and effectiveness as a civil rights leader by examining his
relationship with the people of Montgomery, Alabama. 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 the educated and the unlettered,
professionals and the working class. 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
after Parks refused to give up her bus seat to a white person.
Jackson offers nuanced portrayals of King's relationships with
these and other civil rights leaders in the community to illustrate
King's development within the community. Drawing on countless
interviews and archival sources, Jackson compares King's sermons
and religious writings before, during, and after the Montgomery bus
boycott. Jackson demonstrates how King's voice and message evolved
during his time in Montgomery, reflecting the shared struggles,
challenges, experiences, and hopes of the people with whom he
worked. Many studies of the civil rights movement end analyses of
Montgomery's struggle with the conclusion of the bus boycott and
the establishment of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
Jackson surveys King's uneasy post-boycott relations with E. D.
Nixon and Rosa Parks, shedding new light on Parks's plight in
Montgomery after the boycott and revealing the internal discord
that threatened the movement's hard-won momentum. The controversies
within the Montgomery Improvement Association compelled King to
position himself as a national figure who could rise above the
quarrels within the movement and focus on attaining its greater
goals. Though the Montgomery struggle thrust King into the national
spotlight, the local impact on the lives of blacks from all
socioeconomic classes was minimal at the time. As the citizens of
Montgomery awaited permanent change, King left the city, taking the
lessons he learned there onto the national stage. In the crucible
of Montgomery, Martin Luther King Jr. was transformed from an
inexperienced Baptist preacher into a civil rights leader of
profound national importance.
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