Jackson, Becoming King - Martin Luther King Jr. And The Making Of A National Leader

Abstract

Much has been written about the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955-56 and of the life and times of Martin Luther King, Jr. Yet Troy Jackson's fine book offers some fresh perspectives on both Montgomery and the impact it had on King's subsequent leadership in the civil rights struggles of the 1960s. Jackson brings to his story of King and Montgomery credentials both as a professional historian and a clergyman. At the present, he is senior pastor at University Christian Church in Cincinnati. The basic theme of Becoming King is that racial and social conditions existing in Montgomery at the time of Rosa Parks's famous arrest in December 1955 played a crucial role in shaping King's social and religious philosophy of racial justice after 1960, thus helping define his leadership of the national civil rights movement until his death in 1968.