A review by briandice
Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr by Clayborne Carson, Martin Luther King Jr.

5.0

I am not certain, fifty years later, that White America can really appreciate what Martin Luther King, Jr. did for this country. Beyond the necessary needed to be done for the African-American population, it is difficult - impossible, really - to imagine how much our nation would have further suffered had MLK not been the one to lead the charge for change. As a middle-class white man in 2014 would I have been able to relate to a militant, angry, disenfranchised black man/woman willing to kill or die for an improvement in his/her world had MLK not preached - and lived by example - a course of non-violent yet aggressive resistance to the unjust status quo? What would life be like in a 2014 America rife with two races at war - a land that might not look too different from a country today brutalized by sectarian strife? If a 50 year course of escalating violence, bombings, retaliations and continual reprisals had happened, what else could occur other than Perpetual Other Hatred? Reading this book made me realize how very close we were to this reality. MLK didn't save a race, he saved a nation, and perhaps the world.

A social movement that only moves people is merely a revolt. A movement that changes both people and institutions is a revolution. MLK's goals may have been lofty, but he understood that to eat the elephant you must do so a teaspoon at a time. Mistakes and mis-steps yielded fast learnings, and as a Christian philosopher of the soul he always was certain to allow his sensitive filters to absorb the fundamentals of what makes us human, black or white, and then to assimilate that understanding into becoming a better person. And leading others to understand the same.

This wonderful book was carefully created by Clayborne Carson, a Stanford University academian that focused specifically on compiling the narrative history of MLK in King's own words, taken from countless documents and primary source material. I am not certain that had MLK lived to be 100 that he would have (re)written this portion of his life any better. His original words, presented in historicaly chronological context, show his maturity as a leader, an author and an agent of change.

I wish that this book was required reading in every American school. William Vollmann first pointed me to this text, and then friend Rowena, but honestly - I should have read more of MLK long ago. I am proud to count him as a hero - and I want to understand (and learn from his example) how to be a non-violent positive agent of change.