The King God Didn't Save: Reflections on the Life and Death of Martin Luther King, Jr.

by John A. Williams

New York:: Coward-McCann,, (1970). Good only in a good dustjacket (some highlighting to text, a tear on the front cover of the dj with associated creasing, price clipped.). First printing. A book intended to be controversial, one that reevaluates the role of King and, among other points, argues that MLK was a product of the media and society and offered no real threat to the Establishment. 221 pp.

Genres: Politics

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1970

About the author

John Alfred Williams was an African-American author, journalist, and academic. His novel The Man Who Cried I Am was a bestseller in 1967.

His novels are mainly about the black experience in white America. The Man Who Cried I Am, a fictionalized account of the life and death of Richard Wright, introduced the King Alfred Plan, a fictional CIA-led scheme supporting an international effort to eliminate people of African descent. This "plan" has since been cited as fact by some members of the Black community and conspiracy theorists.

In the early 1980s, Williams, and the composer and flautist Leslie Burrs, with the agreement of Mercer Ellington, began collaborating on the completion of Queenie Pie, an opera by Duke Ellington that had been left unfinished at Ellington's death. The project fell through, and the opera was eventually completed by other hands.

In 2003, Williams performed a spoken-word piece on Transform, an album by rock band Powerman 5000. At the time, his son Adam Williams was the band's guitarist.

Librarian note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

John A.^^^Williams

Reviews

[Alan Gerstle · Rating 4 out of 5]

John A. Williams is not nearly as well known as many Black American writers. That's too bad because he challenged many assumptions that many Americans have concerning the effectiveness of civil rights leaders. In addition, his novels were often radical in their premises. Concerning the evaluation of MLKA, he focuses quite a bit on his shortcomings. For example, he proposes that King did not relate to the large percentage of Black Americans who were destitute, rural, and uneducated, and did not consider that to be something he needed to address. Complementary wise, he believes that King's message was not greeted with such positive responses by the same sociocultural group. Williams was a journalist as well as a novelist, which provided him with a breadth of knowledge based on his observations, so his critique is based on experience, not simply conjecture. Whether one agrees with Williams or not, his views deserve more of an audience.

[Brock · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books about America I have ever read. It succinctly and powerfully expresses our white supremacist attitudes that have not changed since 1970. He wonderfully describes low white racists as "stomp down crackers," and his description of the absolute control that white power exerts in this country explains Obama's struggles and the rise and continued power of Donald Trump. Some quotes: ...white liberalism is bigotry in slow motion;" white people know how vicious other white people can be;" "Martin King did not comprehend the capriciousness of white power;" "every colonial nation carries the seed of fascist temptation in its bosom." I can certainly see how this has all come to a terrifying conclusion 55 years later with the election of Donald Trump. We are who we are...