King: A Life

An excellent biography of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., freshly written, using the latest sources from the F.B.I. and King's associates. It tells the story of King's thought and his life and his movement in great detail. It is, as of now, the best biography of King you can get. And King is one of the

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most important Americans in its history.

Still, Eig has his faults. Eig does not shy away from King's sexual infidelities and peccadillos, but—leftist modern he is—does not seem to condemn him in any moral way or moral tone. In fact, Eig—leftist modern he is—focuses more of his ire on the fact that King and his buddies, Bible-believing Baptist ministers from the early twentieth century South, discount the opinions of women and didn't place them in more prominent roles in their churches and organizations. The tonal tut-tutting is there for that, but not the infidelity. Eig does the same thing too with King's rampant plagiarism: he mentions it, but explains it away, as many commentators have done, by ascribing it to the Black culture of borrowing you see in music (jazz, blues) and sermons, etc. In fact, Eig again has more tut-tutting not for King's theft of intellectual work, but the fact that his professors and advisors—white professors and advisors mostly—didn't catch it.

Eig too—leftist modern he is—wants to make King far more "revolutionary" than he probably was (and more "revolutionary" than most Americans may imagine). Sure he had some democratic socialist leanings and wanted more egalitarianism when it came to property, money, etc. But he was no Che or Bernie, as his thought on such manners was rather amorphous and not yet thought out. As to what really mattered, his stance on civil rights and civil equality, his timing and method and fight against the status quo may be revolutionary, by any definition, but it was what conservatives term a "conservative revolution" because he wanted only the rights that Black Americans (and others) should have by the right of their natural rights as endowed by their Creator.

I will say that Eig is good on pointing out King's religious feelings were a prime mover in his life and work. The voice of God in the kitchen before the Montgomery Bus Boycott was no mere literary flourish, but the testimony of man who believed in God.

I will say that Eig—leftist modern he is—takes an unfounded and unnecessary swipe at Ronald Reagan. For no reason. From page 555: "...Reagan, whose policies were disastrous for many Black Americans...." Huh? Of course, there is no footnote for this leftist, false drivel. Because it is leftist, false drivel. Eig—leftist modern he is—uses the clunky euphemism treadmill neologism "enslaved person" for "slave." So deep does this leftist, Orwellian Newspeak run that Eig has to butcher parts of King's "I Have a Dream Speech" so as not to say the verboten Oldspeak. Instead of the eloquent, soaring, and euphonious "I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood" Eig concocts the clunky, dull, and cacophonous "He has a dream, he said, that the children of slave owners and the children of those they'd enslaved would sit together 'at the table of brotherhood'" (p. 337). Shameful. I am actually surprised he kept "brotherhood" and didn't amend it to "personhood" or "humanhood" or somesuch progressive malapropism.

So, a good biography, though not perfect. It could have used more pictures. Maybe even a map or two. It had notes, but in the modern, clunky system. Index too.

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