King: A Life

by Jonathan Eig

“I’ve never seen anything like it in my life,” he said. “I think the people of Mississippi ought to come to Chicago to learn how to hate.”

“Every racist in the country has killed Dr. King,” the activist James Farmer told a reporter. “Evil societies always destroy their consciences.”

But in hallowing King we have hollowed him.

Today, his words might help us make our way through these troubled times, but only if we actually read them; only if we embrace the complicated King, the flawed King, the human King, the radical King; only if we see and hear him clearly again, as America saw and heard him once before.

“Our very survival,” he wrote, “depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change.” Amen.