Tracing the development of African American political though since the 1960s, The Making of Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement offers a new look at the contemporary legacy of the civil rights movement.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was more than the civil rights movement's most visible figure, he was its voice. This book describes what went into the creation of that voice. It explores how King used words to define a movement. From a place situated between two cultures of American society, King shaped the language that gave the movement its identity and meaning. Fredrik Sunnemark shows how materialistic, idealistic, and religious ways of explaining the world coexisted in King's speeches and writings. He points out the roles of God, Jesus, the church, and "the Beloved Community" in King's rhetoric. Sunnemark examines King's use of allusions, his strategy of employing different meanings of key ideas to speak to different members of his audience, and the way he put into play international ideas and events to achieve certain rhetorical goals. The book concludes with an analysis of King's development after 1965, examining the roots, content, and consequences of his so-called radicalization.

Praised by The New York Times; O, The Oprah Magazine; Bitch Magazine; Slate; Publishers Weekly; and more, this is “a bracing corrective to a national mythology” (New York Times) around the civil rights movement. The civil rights movement has become national legend, lauded by presidents from Reagan to Obama to Trump, as proof of the power of American democracy. This fable, featuring dreamy heroes and accidental heroines, has shuttered the movement firmly in the past, whitewashed the forces that stood in its way, and diminished its scope. And it is used perniciously in our own times to chastise present-day movements and obscure contemporary injustice. In A More Beautiful and Terrible History award-winning historian Jeanne Theoharis dissects this national myth-making, teasing apart the accepted stories to show them in a strikingly different light. We see Rosa Parks not simply as a bus lady but a lifelong criminal justice activist and radical; Martin Luther King, Jr. as not only challenging Southern sheriffs but Northern liberals, too; and Coretta Scott King not only as a “helpmate” but a lifelong economic justice and peace activist who pushed her husband’s activism in these directions. Moving from “the histories we get” to “the histories we need,” Theoharis challenges nine key aspects of the fable to reveal the diversity of people, especially women and young people, who led the movement; the work and disruption it took; the role of the media and “polite racism” in maintaining injustice; and the immense barriers and repression activists faced. Theoharis makes us reckon with the fact that far from being acceptable, passive or unified, the civil rights movement was unpopular, disruptive, and courageously persevering. Activists embraced an expansive vision of justice—which a majority of Americans opposed and which the federal government feared. By showing us the complex reality of the movement, the power of its organizing, and the beauty and scope of the vision, Theoharis proves that there was nothing natural or inevitable about the progress that occurred. A More Beautiful and Terrible History will change our historical frame, revealing the richness of our civil rights legacy, the uncomfortable mirror it holds to the nation, and the crucial work that remains to be done. Winner of the 2018 Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize in Nonfiction

Ralph argues that the new push for equality, exemplified by the Chicago Freedom Movement, actually undermined popular support for the civil rights movement and let to its ultimate decline.

Dr. King’s best-selling account of the civil rights movement in Birmingham during the spring and summer of 1963 On April 16, 1963, as the violent events of the Birmingham campaign unfolded in the city’s streets, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., composed a letter from his prison cell in response to local religious leaders’ criticism of the campaign. The resulting piece of extraordinary protest writing, “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” was widely circulated and published in numerous periodicals. After the conclusion of the campaign and the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963, King further developed the ideas introduced in the letter in Why We Can’t Wait, which tells the story of African American activism in the spring and summer of 1963. During this time, Birmingham, Alabama, was perhaps the most racially segregated city in the United States, but the campaign launched by King, Fred Shuttlesworth, and others demonstrated to the world the power of nonviolent direct action. Often applauded as King’s most incisive and eloquent book, Why We Can’t Wait recounts the Birmingham campaign in vivid detail, while underscoring why 1963 was such a crucial year for the civil rights movement. Disappointed by the slow pace of school desegregation and civil rights legislation, King observed that by 1963—during which the country celebrated the one-hundredth anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation—Asia and Africa were “moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence but we still creep at a horse-and-buggy pace.” King examines the history of the civil rights struggle, noting tasks that future generations must accomplish to bring about full equality, and asserts that African Americans have already waited over three centuries for civil rights and that it is time to be proactive: “For years now, I have heard the word ‘Wait!’ It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This ‘Wait’ has almost always meant ‘Never.’ We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that ‘justice too long delayed is justice denied.’”

Martin Luther King, Jr is one of the iconic figures of 20th century history, and one of the most influential and important in the American Civil Rights Movement; John Kirk here presents the life of Martin Luther King in the context of that movement, placing him at the center of the Afro-American fight for equality and recognition. This book combines the insights from two fields of study, seeking to combine the top down; national federal policy-oriented approach to the movement with the bottom up, local grassroots activism approach to demonstrate how these different levels of activism intersect and interact with each other.

Ralph David Abernathy and Martin Luther King Jr. were inseparable and together helped to establish what would become the modern American Civil Rights Movement. They preached, marched, and were frequently jailed together. Donzaleigh Abernathy, Ralph’s youngest daughter, has writtenPartners to Historyas a testament to the courage, strength, and endurance of these men who stirred a nation with their moral fortitude. She also pays tribute to the thousands of unsung heroes—the other partners to this history—who were foot soldiers in the endless struggle for freedom, justice, and equality. This document captures in words and pictures how the dream of two visionaries changed the course of American history and inspired the world. Partners to Historyis a unique look at a troubling time, and its usage of dramatic—and personal—photographs, combined with the voices of King and Abernathy, seamlessly conveys the fears, frustrations, and pain of the long days and nights spent planning the many crusades. Donzaleigh Abernathy’s recollections provide personal insight from someone who lived through the tumult and witnessed firsthand the relationship of these lifelong friends. “People didn’t know Daddy and Uncle Martin,” she writes. “They know the legends. They don’t know the fathers, the husbands, the men, the human beings. I feel obliged to tell the beautiful stories of these beautiful men I lived with and loved.” Chronicling the crucial events of the movement, from the early strategy sessions in the homes of integrationists and the Montgomery Bus Boycott to Birmingham, the Freedom Riders, and the March on Washington, the author provides a unique insider’s perspective. With heart-wrenching precision, she lays bare the horrifying deaths of four little girls in the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church and follows the search for three murdered civil rights workers in Philadelphia, Mississippi. She goes behind the scenes to the intimate moments and reveals the determination of two families caught up in the fight for equal rights. King and Abernathy believed in a cause and laid their lives on the line time and time again, knowing deep in their hearts that they were working not only for their people, but for the good of all humankind. When, on April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, Ralph David Abernathy vowed to persevere and continue their dream, knowing that people could not be free until the walls came tumbling down. Inspirational and beautifully illustrated,Partners to Historyreveals the remarkable relationship between two great leaders and serves as a reminder and tribute to this tumultuous era.