“Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr.
and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference”
April 6, 2005
David Garrow is currently on a leave of absence from his position as Presidential Visiting Distinguished Professor, at Emory University School of Law. Garrow, a noted historian of politics, teaches courses on civil rights litigation and reproductive rights to law and graduate history and political science students.
Garrow has written many books and received the 1987 Pulitzer Prize in biography for Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. He was a consultant to PBS for "Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil War Years," and is a regular contributor to The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Philadelphia Inquirer and Newsday. Source: Emory
Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference won not only the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for Biography but also the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. It is the most comprehensive book ever written about the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Based on more than 700 interviews with all of King's surviving associates, as well as with those who opposed him, and enhanced by the author's access to King's personal papers and tens of thousands of pages of FBI documents, this is a towering portrait of a man's metamorphosis into a legend. Garrow traces King's transformation from a young, earnest pastor of a modest church into the foremost spokesperson of the black freedom struggle. The book's central unifying theme is King's growing awareness of the symbolic meaning of the cross as his sense of mission deepened, matured, and was transmuted by sometimes-reluctant degrees into acceptance of a life and a role that would end by demanding the ultimate in self-sacrifice. This is a powerful portrait of a man at the epicenter of one of the most dramatic periods in our history.
Recommended Reading
Associate Professor Peter Baldwin
University of Connecticut, History Department
Garrow - Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, ch. 1: The Montgomery Bus Boycott 1955-1956
Primary Source Excerpts:
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“I See the Promised Land” Speech by Martin Luther King, Jr. April 3, 1968
Full text available online at:
http://seto.org/king3.html
“The Southern Manifesto” and “The Conscience of a Conservative”
Full texts available online at:
http://members.aol.com/tiaokc/manifesto.htm
http://condor.depaul.edu/~history/webresources/usprimary/BGoldwater.htm
“Desegregation at Last: Integrated Bus Suggestions” by Martin Luther King, Jr.
Full text available online at:
http://www.stanford.edu/group/King/publications/papers/vol3/561219.001-Integrated_Bus_Suggestions.htm
Speech by Martin Luther King, Jr. at Holt Street Baptist Church December 5, 1955
Full text available online at:
http://www.stanford.edu/group/King/publications/speeches/MIA_mass_meeting_at_holt_street.html
“Letter from a Birmingham City Jail”
Full text available online at:
http://condor.depaul.edu/~history/webresources/usprimary/MLKing2.htm
Recommended Resources -
A list of books, DVDs, and websites providing additional sources of information on Martin Luther King and related subjects prepared by:
Stephen Armstrong, TAH Master Teacher
Social Studies Chair, Manchester High School
Steve McGrath, TAH Master Teacher
Social Studies Chair, Conard High School
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