King: A Life

by Jonathan Eig

On February 18, 1957, Time magazine put King’s image on its cover and declared that the young preacher from Montgomery had “risen from nowhere to become one of the nation’s remarkable leaders of men.” The magazine portrayed King as the perfect activist for a country turned conservative and caught up in a Cold War. He was nonpolitical, nonpartisan, and “no radical,” Time assured its predominantly white readership. Here was a man building a reform movement on the most American of pillars: the Bible, the Declaration of Independence, the American dream. King not only inspired Black southerners to imagine new possibilities but also inspired southern white Christians to open their minds, the magazine said. “I know of very few white southern ministers who aren’t troubled [about segregation] and don’t have admiration for King,” one white Baptist minister told the magazine. “They’ve become tortured souls.”