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I
M a r t in L u t h e r K in g J r .
January 12, 2011
') 2011 s p e c ia l ea ilio n
"Free At Last" Book Review
A sign of progress as a
Jim Crow sign is removed
from a Greensboro,
Martin Luther King Jr.
North Carolina, bus in
(left) confers with his
1956.
supporters.
This book recounts how Af
rican-A m erican slaves and
their descendants struggled to
w in— both in law and in prac
tice— the civil rights enjoyed
by other A m ericans. It is a
story o f dignified persistence
and struggle, a story that pro
duced great heroes and hero
ines, and one that ultim ately
succeeded by forcing A m eri
cans to confront squarely the
Saluting Martin Luther King Jr.
zJMid-IÇJBeautygyupply
»
THE U.S. CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT
rresiaem uwignt u. Lisenhower would use federa
troops to ensure the enrollment of the first black
students in the previously segregated Little Rock
[Arkansas] Central High School.
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sham eful gap betw een their ity, injustice, and oppression
universal principles o f equal- faced by m illions o f their fel-
ity and justice and the inequal- low citizens
Book Review; The True
Martin Luther King, Jr.
In M artin L uther K in g ’s fam ous
“I-have-a-dream ,” speech (1963), he
poignantly expressed the hope that
som eday his four children w ould be
able to “ live in a nation w here they
will not be ju d g ed by the co lo r o f
their skin but by the content o f their
ch aracter.”
However, if the fam ous civil rights
leader had been ju d g e d m ore by the
content o f his ch aracter than by his
civil rights activities, he w ould have
carved a far different niche in his
tory. A t least that is the conclusion
one m ig h t d ra w a f te r re a d in g
M ichael Eric D y so n 's new book, I
M ay N ot G et T here W ith You: Th
T rue M artin L uther K ing, Jr. (Fre
Press, 2000).
The black m inister and professc
(DePaul University; C olum bia Uni
versity - A frican A m erican Studies
contends that M artin Luther King, Ji
was “arguably, the greatest Ameri
can ever produced on our nati ve soi 1.
The thrust o f P rofessor D y so n ’
book is this: M artin L uther King
J r.’s im age has been so glam orizei
over the years by the p opular pres:
that the current black generation is
inclined to distance itself from its
prom inent leader.