Summary: The first definitive style biography of King in nearly 40 years.
At the end of the audiobook is an interview with Jonathan Eig and Lerone A. Martin, author of The Gospel of J Edgar Hoover. Their discussion about the lack of full biographies and the new sources is compelling. I had not realized that it has been over 40 years since Stephen Oates biography and nearly 40 years since Garrow’s biography. Because I have read more recent books like The Seminarian and the The Sword and the Shield (joint biography of King and Malcolm X) as well as a number of histories were King played a major role in just didn’t realize until I heard that interview how long it had been since a full biography.
Also detailed in that interview is new sources have been found or released. Eig is a journalist by training and history. You can tell that in his writing, but we are at that transition period when the Civil Rights generation is passing away. Eig says he was able to interview over 200 people who knew King. Some like Juanita Abernathy knew King well and were known figures. But Eig also interviewed minor figures, like his barber in Montgomery.
I am letting that interview at the end frame some of my thinking about the book, but it was clear from the start of the biography that Eig was trying to portray King as a flawed man. Similar to Alter’s framing of Jimmy Carter, Eig has significant respect for King as a subject, but to write well about the whole man we do need to understand his weaknesses. I am going to talk more below about how he handles those weaknesses, but in that interview he said he wanted to keep King from being reduced and simplified.
One last point from the interview is that one of the significant sources that is fairly new are FBI files. Not all files have been declassified yet, but some have. Another set was declassified after the book was released. And another large set it scheduled to be released in 2027. Eig has no doubt about King’s involvement in extramarital affairs. But he balances that with a more clear understanding of how J Edgar Hoover and the FBI as a whole were not just observers of affairs, but significant opponents of not just the civil rights movement in general but King in particular. The antagonism of the FBI and Hoover in particular was a significant part of how the shift in attitude toward both King and the civil rights movement. It was not just the point when King voiced opposition to the Vietnam war, but throughout the whole movement the FBI was acting as a propaganda machine against the civil rights movement, not just with the public but especially in harming the relationship that King had with the President and the Department of Justice. The affairs were one excuse, but not the first excuse or the main excuse for why the civil rights movement and King in particular were dangerous. The very next day after the 1963 March on Washington, the FBI puts out a memo labeling King as the greatest threat to American democracy. Hoover, as detailed in Lerone Martin’s book was a Christian Nationalist with strong views of white racial superiority. He both viewed the civil rights movement as a communist plant or distraction, but also a violation of the natural order.