Becoming King: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Making of a National Leader (Civil Rights and the Struggle for Black Equality in the Twentieth Century)
Jackson (senior pastor, University Christian Church, Cincinnati; editor,The Papers of Martin Luther King Jr.Vol. 6:Advocate of the Social Gospel, September 1948–March 1963) has written a convincing reinterpretation of the role of King in the Montgomery, AL, bus boycott of 1955–56. Jackson grants that King's inspirational oratory and ability to communicate to African Americans across class lines made him a powerful symbol and chief spokesman of the movement there. However, the black community in Montgomery had laid the groundwork through its organizing activities in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Local activists, white and black, including NAACP leader E.D. Nixon and Women's Political Council president Jo Ann Robinson, as well as civil rights lawyers Virginia and Clifford Durr and librarian Juliette Morgan, planted the seeds that flowered in the boycott. Jackson concludes that in many ways, King did not make the boycott movement; the blacks of Montgomery made him. Highly recommended for all major libraries.—Anthony Edmonds, Ball State Univ., Muncie, INCopyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.