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David J. Garrow

Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., And The Southern Christian Leadership Conference Paperback – Bargain Price, January 6, 1999

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800 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Harper Perennial
Publication date

January 6, 1999
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Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0002NPFWS
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Harper Perennial (January 6, 1999)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 800 pages
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.45 pounds

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David J. Garrow

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David J. Garrow is a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian who is presently professor of law and history and Distinguished Faculty Scholar at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. Garrow, who earned his PhD from Duke University, is an acclaimed scholar of the United States' black freedom struggle and reproductive rights movement, as well as of the US Supreme Court. His definitive biography of Martin Luther King Jr., Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, was honored with the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for biography and the seventh-annual Robert F. Kennedy Book Award.

Garrow's other books are Protest at Selma: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, The FBI and Martin Luther King, Jr.: From ""Solo"" to Memphis, and Liberty and Sexuality: The Right to Privacy and the Making of Roe v. Wade. He also served as a senior adviser to Eyes on the Prize, the award-winning PBS documentary series on the civil rights movement.

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Glen Chern

Historical Literary Saga

Reviewed in the United States on July 12, 2016

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Never before in my life have I read such an outstanding recount of the civil rights movement in America as I have in the pages of David Garrow's "Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference ". Garrow doesn't attempt to make Dr. King into a civil rights "super hero". Instead, he paints the portrait of a leader who was so committed to championing the causes of the Afro-American.

Garrow brilliantly relates the strengths and weaknesses of MLK. I was left with a much stronger, positive image of Dr. King, while understanding that he was far from being a saintly man, despite his being an ordained preacher. Based on Garrow's writing, I am left with several deep impressions of Dr. King:

1. He sincerely was dedicated to the concept of nonviolent protest against racial discrimination, segregation, voting rights, civil rights, poverty, and the Vietnam War.
2. King worked himself to the point of illness and total exhaustion to support the causes he believed in.
3. He was a man with a huge heart, willing to listen to those who opposed and attacked him, and giving of his time and energy to those in need of his spiritual support.
4. King understood that the SCLC needed his leadership, but was an ineffective administrator whose unwillingness to sever ties with certain people weakened the organization financially and other non-spiritual matters.

Garrow devotes considerable attention to FBI Directot J.Edgar Hoover. He discusses the wiretaps of Dr. King's personal and professional phone lines. He writes about his obsession with MLK's extra-marital affairs. Garrow states that the FBI seemed more interested in Dr. King's travels than in the constant threat of physical violence directed at Dr. King and the SCLC marchers and demonstrators.

I heartily recommend "Bearing the Cross" to anyone interested in learning more about the civil rights movement in America between 1955-68.

48 people found this helpful

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Kindle Customer

Very Detailed Account of MLK

Reviewed in the United States on January 11, 2021

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The book was very detailed on alot of MLK's life and particularly about the movement that shaped who we know as Martin Luther King. As a big Kennedy fan, I have read alot of King but only when King and the Kennedys crossed paths. I wanted to learn more about MLK and this was one of the top rated books. I am happy I read it as it helped flesh out the person he was, and why he was. I do wish I read a slightly less detailed book on MLK as a first step and then this book to fill in higher levels that I was already familiar with, but this book was very good. I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in 1960s, the Kennedys, and MLK.

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Carol C. Myers

Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference

Reviewed in the United States on March 11, 2016

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Even though I lived during the amazing struggles of the sixties and followed the news plus lived some time in Virginia where as a northerner I was repulsed by the blatant segregation, this book proved how little I really knew about the terrible racism in our country both in the south and also in the north. This book made no effort to make MLK a super hero or without human flaws but still left me awed by his driving force that seemed catching and driven by something greater than understanding. And the SCLC history was remarkable as well making this a book I plan to re-read.

13 people found this helpful

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Stephen Matlock

A pre-review -- this is a great book

Reviewed in the United States on May 23, 2015

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I am writing a "pre-review" of a book I am only still reading, but I want to make a bold, clear statement that this is a great book about a man who was only a man, but who used his talents at gifts at such a high level that he accomplished astonishing things in a (public) life that comprised only 13 years.

He moved a nation, several times, and had he not been assassinated, he may have accomplished even more than we can imagine.

I'll revise this when I'm done. It's very, very good.

A few things I would note - I think the author missed a chance to explain how his dad, Michael Luther King, Sr., came to have a son who became well-known as Martin Luther King, Jr., and whose nickname as a child and young man was "Mike."

11 people found this helpful

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Valorie T.

Must Read for Civil Rights history

Reviewed in the United States on July 16, 2017

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David J. Garrow has provided an extensive study of Martin Luther King Jr. and his work within the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in his book Bearing the Cross. With a title that portrays the religious and spiritual aspect of King’s personal civil rights vision, as well as the exhaustive extent of the undertaking that would take its toll on King both physically and mentally, Garrow too has undertaken quite a task in writing his in depth and fact filled study. Using hundreds of sources, in fact over 600 interviews alone, Garrow has compiled a complete record of King’s civil rights journey from the moment he entered the Montgomery Improvement Association’s (MIA) bus boycott all the way to his death. However, the book is about more than just King, and that is one of the greatest strengths of Bearing the Cross. The story is really the story of a wider Civil Rights Movement, one in which King would become a leading figure and icon of.

Bearing the Cross is undoubtedly a personal story, and everything within is connected to King in some form be it through his participation, association, support, or opposition. King had so many connections in the Civil Rights Movement that to tell his story is to tell each individual story, which Garrow attempts to do when he delves into subjects such as the Freedom Rides, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Selma, the Voting Rights Act, Northern ghettos, and Vietnam, just to name a few. Not only does this portray just how much momentum the movement had, which grew in fervor and activity as the years progressed, and how large it grew, but also what King himself took on when he shouldered the responsibility of becoming one of the major leaders. As reviewers David Herbert Donald and William C. Stinchcombe have noted, Garrow misses occasional opportunities to analyze King, and we are therefore sometimes made to take King at face value with just a selection of his decisions or quotes to flesh out his intentions and feelings. ((David Herbert Donald, “Review: [untitled],” The Journal of Southern History 54, no 1 (February 1988): 135-137; William C. Stinchcombe, “Review: [untitled],” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 19, no. 2 (Autumn 1988): 367-369.)) While there are moments when we can see the personality and intentions of King come through his words as he speaks for himself to explain his motivations, especially when he talks about his passion for the Civil Rights Movement and his willingness to die for it, other times are a bit more obscure and we are left to wonder why King did some of what he did. For example, Garrow writes that King had expressed some hesitation to be included on a petition to help activist Carl Braden out of a charge of contempt of court. The wife of Carl, Anne, was disappointed that she would likely not get King's support. However, King changed his mind and phoned her to ask that she place his name on the petition because he had prayed over it and decided it was right (155). This would have been a perfect time for Garrow to attempt an analysis of the whys of King's action, yet he does not take advantage of the opportunity to use his vast knowledge of King to explain this change of heart, or why King would put himself in such a politically precarious position by association. Perhaps in the cases where Garrow did not analyze, he hoped that his facts would speak for themselves and he was wary of trying to get into the head of King for fear of making too many assumptions that he could not support. Yet Garrow attempts to create a narrative out of the intense amount of facts he includes, and this leads him in some cases to make a few assumptions of King that he cannot, or rather does not, substantiate. For instance, in one of the many discussions of the SCLC's financial mismanagement, Garrow writes that King brushed off the accusations made at the SCLC’s leaders, but felt they were accurate when he truly thought about it (469). Garrow leaves the statement at that and does not attempt to follow up with any evidence to support it. It seems that Garrow is trying to create a more enjoyable story by including elements of intimate understanding, yet they are not always satisfactory and the text is still dense with dates and an intense volume of fact. That is not to say that a reader will come off not knowing who King was.

In fact, Garrow is very adept at including aspects of King's personality and life that many people do not know or consider. There is a definite evolution of character from King's kitchen revelation (58), to his trip to India where he refined his own method of resistance as he learned more about Gandhi (114), all the way to his ultimate loss of faith in white men and democracy (604). It is also surprising to learn that King, known as such a great rhetorician, often had others write his speeches and chapters in his books. This aspect almost makes it seem as if King was a popular figure speaking out the ideas of groups, and more pessimistically, a pawn of other thinkers since so many of his ideas were molded by others who could influence or persuade him (139). This does not, of course, tarnish his reputation or his much deserved respect, it merely opens up a new facet to King's overall focus on collectivity. King did, after all, assert many times that he acted for his people and that the movement did not depend on him and would continue on without him, which means there were other thinkers in the background. Also surprising were the revelations Garrow made about King's misogyny and views on sex (141 & 374-376). King is an icon, certainly, but now also a man who had his own faults, and at times very fatalistic (232). One other objection to be taken with this novel is its treatment of the NAACP. Garrow is in no way objective when he discusses the animosity that began to grow around the NAACP and King/SCLC. As described by Garrow, the NAACP on various occasions attempted to smear the SCLC or hinder them in their progress in voting rights. The NAACP would naturally take a special exception to King's assertion that attempting to change the country in front of a judge and appealing for change was not the proper approach, but rather that resistance such as they had been done in Montgomery was vital (87). The two groups had a natural ideological difference. Garrow is unfair in his language, and even goes so far as to include the statement, "With allies like the NAACP, SCLC's effort had little chance of success" (103). Granted, the NAACP was in conflict with King, Garrow should have exercised a little more neutrality and fairness when discussing these occasions.

A final thing must be said about Garrows endnotes. Though he provides a glossary of his abbreviations in the back of the text, his endnotes are still confusing and hard to sift through. Maybe it is his sheer volume of sources that complicates the system, but it does not help that much of his citations are made up of letter and number combinations. When perusing through to find a source, one must flip back and forth to try to make sense of what is being identified and where to finally find it. Though the short form of the citations clears up space, it leads to too much confusion for students and scholars who may want to follow up on his research. It may seem as if there is nothing good about this book since most of what has been written about it so far has been critical, but the sheer extent of Garrow's research should be praised. When writing on a figure as big and as important as Martin Luther King, Jr., a man who has had much already written about him, one naturally has an understanding of him that they approach studies of him with. Even lacking in the occasional analysis, Garrow provides a vast array of information that pieces together King's life into one continuous and chronological story. Even if we do not come off understanding the finer details of King's mentality, we still see how events flowed along a never ebbing, but wavering line, and how ideas melded and split. It is this dynamic that is important to understanding the larger picture of the Civil Rights Movement. So much is encompassed in Garrow's story that it is almost too much to read and remember in one reading. Despite some of its faults, it is without a doubt a vital book to the history of African Americans, Civil Rights, and Martin Luther King, Jr.

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