Nancy’s Reviews > King: A Life > Status Update

Ch 43-44 - December 1967 MKL preaches at his church that he felt a victim of dreams deferred and blasted hopes. Since 1963 ...his "Dream" had turned into a nightmare: Bombing in Birmingham church, racial riots in Los Angles and Detroit, LBJ sent 500.000 young men to fight in Vietnam. But MLK is not giving up and dreams when men will be judged based on the content of his character rather than the color of his skin.

Ch 38-39-40-41-42 - MLK pivoted his work from a civil to a political movement. August 1966 King: " If people from Mississippi wanted to feel hate, go to Chicago." Under the pressure of marches in white suburbs... the mayor Daley agreed to changes in Chicago's housing. The marches helped galvanize support for the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1968 against discrimination to private housing.

Ch 35-36-37 - A vivid description of the marches in March 1965 to Selma and Montgomry Alabama. King was so torn between the warnings of violence and his determiation to stand by his people and make sure th movement went forward. The marchers showed such courage...even when threatend by state troopers on the Selma "bridge".

Ch 32-33-34 - February 1965 - King knew what it meant to be maladjusted, psychologically, because he was not normal, psychiatrically. He had multiple periods of severe depression. Near the end of his life, some of his staff tried to get him into psychiatric treatment, but he refused.

Ch 29-30: Kennedy was shot in November 1963. Harry Belafonte noticed in the summer of 1964 that King developed a "twitch"...but it disappeared a few months later. Belafonte asked why King stopped "twitching". King said: "I've come to peace." His friend pressed him...peace with what? King said:
"...with death". This was one of the most moving parts of the book so far!

Ch 26-27-28: What was King's greatest strength? He could speak with great eloquence and move people's hearts and minds with
POETRY-PRAYER-PATRIOTISM!

Audio book "King:A Life" - ch 21-22 - Strange to listen to the civil rights struggles on the 1960s while we are at the moment in time when a woman of color could become president!  The words are true: "...we shall overcome...someday!"