Part I
In King: A Life, author Jonathan Eig's newest biographical study of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., recounts the story of a visit through the South taken by none other than writer James Baldwin, a son of Harlem, but a longtime resident of Europe, particularly Paris. It's 1957 and Baldwin had an interest in discovering not just about the contrite South, but rather the soul of a nation, which, he surmised, refused to "take a 'hard look'" at itself. He wanted to know more about this America, the one that would rather maintain its obsession with white supremacy.
"'What it comes to, finally, is that the nation has spent a large part of its time and energy looking away from one of the principal facts of its life. This failure to look reality in the face diminishes a nation as it diminishes a person,' Baldwin wrote. America is a nation in fear of looking at itself in the mirror, and, as a result, Baldwin ends his visit with a warning: 'If we are not capable of this examination, we may yet become one of the most distinguished and monumental failures in the history of nations.'"
In that same year, Eig writes of a "similar thought" shared by Dr. Martin L. King Jr. who decided to embark on a six-week trip to Europe and the Middle East, ending up in India. On this visit, King, too, hoped to discover "more about Gandhi and gain a perspective on how nonviolent tactic could help America avoid the monumental failure Baldwin described." Then, just, maybe, he, King, could do something about it!
This is the King who will understand something about America after Reconstruction. It's an America, living in the shadows of slavery, and, for the most part, unrepentant. In fact, it's an America that to this day would prefer to pretend no such contradiction to the idea of a democratic society was ever threatened by the conquest and enslavement, both serving as America's foundation. In violence! Given the persistence of this violence, Eig is prompted to ask: "What made a child born in a deeply, violently racist society group up thinking he could change it?"
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King, as Eig writes, born and raised on Auburn Avenue in Atlanta, a neighborhood that was considered to be "the richest Negro street in the world," he was still a black man in America. Despite originating from a "loving" and "stable" black family, King was still black in America--an America deeply indebted to the ideology of white supremacy.
As a child growing up in "an urban church," one, Eig writes, that believed in blending "prayer with calls to attention," Daddy King considered racism to not merely be "wrong but evil, corrosive to the soul." He, in turn, made sure his son would be made aware that black lives mattered because the God of both father and son was one who "believed that black people mattered no matter what racist white people and government regulations said." As a result of that teaching at Ebenezar Baptist Church, the future civil rights activist recalled in his autobiography, "An Autobiography of Religious Development," what would become "real" and "precious" to him: the lessons on "morals" and "ideas."
The idea that the achievements of blacks such as Marian Anderson, Jesse Owens, as well as a local black man, the owner of a gas station on Auburn Avenue and manager of the city's leading black baseball team mattered challenged the morals of racist policies. As Eig points out, while black Americans made progress, America's racists policies directed at limiting the mobility of black lives was (and still is) a presence in the lived experience of Black Americans. It wasn't long before those lived experiences in general became specific experiences of racism in King's life.
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