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kevin_shepherd's review against another edition
4.0
“Any religion that professes to be concerned with the souls of men and is not concerned with the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them, and the social conditions that cripple them, is a spiritually moribund religion.”
A philosopher as well as a minister, Martin Luther King Jr. questioned whether or not man was intrinsically good and whether or not divine grace could lift him from the contradictions of history. In such queries King showed himself to be a present tense realist and a future tense optimist. He took on Jim Crow on the buses of Montgomery, in the streets of Selma, and in the jail cells of Birmingham. He didn’t always win but the reverberations of his achievements are still being felt half a century after his passing.
"If a man has not found something that is worth giving his life for he is not fit to live”
I admire that rare biographer that can be both objective and enthusiastic; Stephen Oates is about 95% there. Aside from his tangent apologetics (we get it, Dr. King wasn’t a beacon of fidelity, let’s move on) and his referral to the U.S. as a “christian nation” (it’s not—don’t get me started), Oates has penned a doozy. Highly recommended. 4 stars.
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On the morning of April 4, 1968 when an assassin’s bullet found the good Dr. on that Memphis motel balcony, I was five years old and 335 miles away. I have no specific memories of the event but I can say, without any doubt or reservation, there were no tears shed in my father’s house. Years later, whenever the name Martin Luther King Jr. would surface in passing conversation, both my mom and dad would refer to him as a “troublemaker.” Trust me on this one, if you ever find yourself on the wrong side of racist bigots (i.e. my parents) you can bet your ass you are on the right side of history.
adamrshields's review against another edition
5.0
Summary: A dated but well-written biography of Martin Luther King Jr.
I don't remember who suggested it, but someone, about four years ago, recommended Let the Trumpet Sounds as the best biography of Martin Luther King Jr. I picked up the Kindle edition back in early 2018 and just got around to listening to the audiobook, in part because it is free if you are an Audible member. Oates initially published this in 1982, roughly 15 years after MLK's death. Three years ago was the 50th anniversary of King's death.
Let the Trumpet Sound is my first full-length biography of King. It is not that I have not read about King. I have read two joint biographies of King and Malcolm X, including this one. I have read the autobiography of Coretta Scott King. I have read a narrow biography of just his seminary years. I have read his book Where do We Go From Here and collections of his writing and speeches. I have read a book about his social thought compared to Bonhoeffer and a book about Letter From a Birmingham Jail. And I read a book about the social impact his death had on the United States. And none of that includes books about general civil rights history or autobiographies, memoirs, or biographies of other civil rights figures.
But a single-volume biography of King still helps to orient the reader to the timeline and broad impact that his short 39 years had on the world. Oates is not writing a hagiography. King, while a great man, is not a perfect man here. He was able to inspire many, not the least of whom, his loyal staff. But he was not a perfect leader. There is a good discussion on several strategic missteps and areas where King pushed against the wishes of his staff and advisors. Some of those disagreements were likely good decisions, some bad. But no cultural-wide protest is going to be tactically or strategically perfect. Mistakes will be made.
I do wonder what aspects of this book have been called into question. Because as much as Oates spends a lot of time on how the FBI blatantly and illegally wiretapped and surveilled and tried to discredit King, it feels like some of the aspects of the reporting from the FBI were still given more credit than I am comfortable with. Hoover pledged to destroy King. And more than 50 years later, there are still documents that have not been released to the public yet.
I do wonder at how King could have had a more healthy life. Not just physically and emotionally, but with his kids and work. King was pushed to be all things, and he wanted to help everyone. There were few limits, so that he spent nearly 90 percent of his time on the road once the Montgomery campaign was completed. So much happened in the 13 years from the start of the Montgomery campaign until his death. Even at nearly 600 pages, I know many events were glossed over or skipped.
One other aspect of the book being dated, virtually all racialized language describing Black or African American people uses the term Negro. That is historically accurate to King's own quotations. But even in 1982, that was a choice that seems to be questionable. I can understand the justification of not wanting to highlight King and other people's quotations by using Black or African American to refer to the quotes, but Negro within the quotes. When I did a word search, more than 500 instances of Negro appear, which means that there is likely more than that because that is the maximum number of words shown. More troubling is the 87 occurrences of the N-word. I was not intentionally searching, but as I just glanced now, every instance was inside a quotation. But the audiobook does read out loud both Negro and the N-word. It is a consideration if you choose to listen to the audiobook (which again, is free for Audible members currently.)
There is far more to the civil rights era than just Martin Luther King Jr. Books about unknown people, or characters that only get mentioned, are essential. And there are many more characters that were important, like Stokley Carmicheal and John Lewis or Rosa Parks. But we do still need to give attention to Martin Luther King Jr.
If someone has a suggestion of another full-length biography of King, I would like to hear it, especially if it is a more recent one.
ian_'s review against another edition
5.0
cmbohn's review against another edition
3.0
Setting: Southern US, mostly about 1960s
This is my second attempt to read a biography of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and this one was much more accessible, although it's still a substantial book. Even though I didn't finish the first one, Parting the Waters, it's clear that the two writers had a different focus. Oates skimmed over King's family history to focus on his intellectual and spiritual development. He spent a lot of time tracing King's reading during college and how his philosophy of non-violent resistance emerged. It went on a little too long, I thought, but once he became Reverend King, things sure picked up speed and stayed pretty busy to the end.
I really felt that Oates had done some great research into his subject. I found myself moved to tears more than once as I read some of King's own moving words. It seemed to me though, that Rev. King got a little distracted towards the end of his life and spread himself too thin. He certainly felt tired much of the time. He began to have premonitions of his own death and I think part of the reason he worked so hard is that he knew he didn't have much time to accomplish everything he wanted to.
I would recommend this book, but I admit that I got bogged down with some of the politics and the competing organizations. I also would have liked a bit of perspective at the end, maybe a chapter about King's impact on later activists, on his legacy, and then something about the other figures in the book, including his family. Sometimes too much info, sometimes not enough, but plenty to think about. 3.5 stars.