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In this fast-paced, concise biography, Harvard Sitkoff presents a stunningly relevant and radical Martin Luther King, Jr. whose greatest accomplishments may have been yet to come.
King's murder in April 1968 did far more than cut tragically short the life of one of America's most remarkable civil rights leaders. In commemorating King's achievements at the end of his life and ignoring his defeats, too many Americans quickly relegated the civil rights struggle to the past, halting the progression of the activist's evolving movement.
King: Pilgrimage to the Mountaintop honestly assesses his successes along with his failures-as an organizer in Albany, Georgia and St. Augustine, Florida; as a leader of ever more strident activists; and as a husband. Harvard Sitkoff weaves both high and low points together to capture King's lifelong struggle, through disappointment and epiphany, with his own injunction: "Let us be Christian in all our actions."
By telling King's life as one on the verge of reaching its fullest fulfillment, Sitkoff powerfully shows where King's faith and activism were leading him-to a direct confrontation with a president over an immoral war and with an America blind to its complicity in economic injustice.
King's murder in April 1968 did far more than cut tragically short the life of one of America's most remarkable civil rights leaders. In commemorating King's achievements at the end of his life and ignoring his defeats, too many Americans quickly relegated the civil rights struggle to the past, halting the progression of the activist's evolving movement.
King: Pilgrimage to the Mountaintop honestly assesses his successes along with his failures-as an organizer in Albany, Georgia and St. Augustine, Florida; as a leader of ever more strident activists; and as a husband. Harvard Sitkoff weaves both high and low points together to capture King's lifelong struggle, through disappointment and epiphany, with his own injunction: "Let us be Christian in all our actions."
By telling King's life as one on the verge of reaching its fullest fulfillment, Sitkoff powerfully shows where King's faith and activism were leading him-to a direct confrontation with a president over an immoral war and with an America blind to its complicity in economic injustice.
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Reviews
"Sitkoff provides a vivid portrait that deserves to be widely read, not only as the standard short King biography but also as an incisive essay on his significance today."
The San Francisco Chronicle
"In his admiring new biography of Martin Luther King, Jr., King: Pilgrimage to the Mountaintop, Harvard Sitkoff wants to remind us of his subject's subversive agenda, and to banish the 'airbrushed' portrait of a 'moderate, respectable ally of presidents' . . . Mr. Sitkoff argues that the more militant King is the more relevant King. And he's right."
The New York Observer
"Persuasive… Sitkoff's skillful choice of material, his organization of the text and his fine writing style (especially compared with most academic historians) raise the biography to the top rank of books about King."
The News and Observer