Bearing the Cross [Paperback]

David J. Garrow (Author)

Book Description

Series: Bearing the Cross | Publication Date: December 12, 1987

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize. Based on more than 700 recorded conversations, including interviews with all of King's closest surviving associates, this is a powerful portrait of King and the movement for which he dedicated himself.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In this 1987 Pulitzer Prize winner, David J. Garrow, through extensive interviews, and access to F.B.I. transcripts, delves deeply into both Dr. Martin Luther King’s leadership role and his private life. He attributes King's moral and physical courage to his religious faith: King believed that he had literally been called to do the Lord's work. But from 1965, when the F.B.I. taped King in sexual encounters and sent the tape to S.C.L.L. headquarters, his associates noted a "spiritual depression", even a "death wish." Fear that exposure would ruin his public work dogged him until his assassination in 1968. While documenting the F.B.I.'s dirty tricks, Garrow never loses sight of King's achievement and vision, nor of the poignancy of King's belief that "the cross is something that you bear and ultimately that you die on."

From Publishers Weekly

Garrow (Protest at Selma), who teaches political science at the City College of New York, draws on 700 interviews and King's personal papers to depict the man's strength and vision as well as his failings and fears. PW noted that the book stresses King's "philosophy of nonviolent resistance, coupled with love and tempered by realism."
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 800 pages
• Publisher: Vintage; 1st Vintage Books ed edition (December 12, 1987)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0394756231
• ISBN-13: 978-0394756233
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #595,118 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The most comprehensive biography on King you'll find, March 26, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., And The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (Paperback)

First of all, this isn't a biography for the weak-hearted. It's around 1,000 pages on long. Rather than bouncing from Montgomery to Birmingham to Selma, as if the Southern Civil Rights Movement carried itself entirely on momentum, this book explores the details and compromises that went into King's political maneuverings.

Garrow is also unafraid to discuss King's frailties, implicitly positing (and answering) the question: don't a persons public actions and deeds outweigh their private shortcomings? (yes)

This is not only the best book on King that exists, it may very well be the best book on the Southern Civil Rights Movement of the 60's that exists.

21 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The heavy burden of being a hero, May 11, 2004

By 

The RAWSISTAZ Reviewers (RAWSISTAZ.com and BlackBookReviews.net) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., And The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (Paperback)

BEARING THE CROSS is a very detailed book on the life and times of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., American hero, civil rights activist, preacher and admirer of Ghandi and his nonviolent approach to social change. King came to the forefront of the mid-century civil rights movement when Rosa Parks, a seamstress, refused to move from her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. It wasn't the first time a black woman had been tossed out of her seat in the Black section of the bus when a white customer needed a seat. Along with the removal usually went insults and threats and Ms. Parks just wasn't having it that time. The local activists asked King, a new preacher at Dexter Baptist Church, if he would take on the responsibility. Reluctantly, he agreed to do so and thus began the legend of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Over the years, Dr. King has taken on an almost mythical position in the civil rights movement. Those who were present at the time find themselves wondering if the Dr. King they remember is the same man that is now raised in the American consciousness. He is frequently given a saintly aura that leads children reading about him in history books to believe there was never anyone like him before and that there can never be another like him again. David J. Garrow dispels those myths as he lets us in on the life of the man who led this country to reconsider its segregationist behavior. We see Dr. King when he is depressed and feeling unworthy of his position in the movement, when he is being a chauvinist about his wife, those moments when he smokes and drinks too much and Garrow gives credence to the rampant rumors that he had women in his life other than Coretta.

In addition to the very humanness of King, we also get to witness the foibles of the United States as it dealt with its Black citizens. We get to know the actions of three presidents of the United States, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson, as they vacillated about the civil rights movement. None of them wanted to upset the Southern voting population so they tended to send mixed messages: on one hand they knew that Blacks were being treated unfairly but to offer help through legislation, federal troop protection for besieged nonviolent marchers or verbal support for the movement was beyond where they wanted to go. The levels to which the FBI stooped to discredit King are by themselves, phenomenal. Each of the presidents was definitely aware that King's rights as a citizen of this country were being abused as his home, his phones, his motels, hotels and friends were wiretapped. The agency also used the illegally acquired information to terrorize and blackmail Dr. King. Not one of them objected to this horrendous invasion of privacy.

BEARING THE CROSS is a definite must read for every caring citizen of the United States who has a desire to understand and appreciate the civil rights movement, the life and times of Dr. King and the role that the country has played in keeping some of its citizens in bondage. I would also recommend it as a reference book for the civil rights movement.

Reviewed by alice Holman
of the RAWSISTAZ Reviewers

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Comprehensive look at MLK and the civil rights movement, September 1, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., And The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (Paperback)

A great book which provides an in-depth and well researched look at both the life of Martin Luther King and the movement that he came to represent.

This book presents a fair and objective perspective, and does not attempt to paint an idealistic or glamorized portrait of a truly extrodinary man with very human weaknesses.

This book should be at the top of the list for anyone interested in MLK and the civil rights movement.