King: A Life

by Jonathan Eig

1957 and interviewed King, wrote: “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.” Those who love America and claim to love freedom, Baldwin wrote, need to take a “hard look” at themselves. “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.”