Jonathan Eig.
JONATHAN EIG
KING: THE LIFE OF MARTIN LUTHER KING(2023)
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Biography 2024,
Selected by Barack Obama as one of his favourite books, 2023.
Martin Luther King (born 1929) was a black Baptist minister. He was a key leader of the American civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s. A proponent of non-violent demonstration, he was one of the leaders of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
During the march, King delivered a 17-minute speech, later known as "I Have a Dream". In the speech's most famous passage – in which he departed from his prepared text, possibly at the prompting of Mahalia Jackson, who shouted behind him, "Tell them about the dream!" – King said:
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal."
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today.
In 1968 King was assassinated while on a campaigning visit to Memphis, Tennessee. He was shot while standing on the balcony of his motel.
The Economist wrote of the book: 'Jonathan Eig’s magnificent new biography is an overdue attempt to grapple with King in all his complexity ... Eig makes [King's] courage and moral vision seem all the more exceptional for having come from a man with ordinary flaws.’
MEET THE AUTHOR
CLICK HERE FOR A VIDEO OF THE AUTHOR (51 MINUTES)
Jonathan Eig (born 1964) grew up in New York. After a degree in journalism he worked for newspapers in New Orleans, Dallas, and Chicago. He has written as a freelancer for the New York Times and the New Yorker. In addition to his King biography Eig has written biographies of the boxer Muhammad Ali, the baseball star Lou Gehrig, and the gangster Al Capone.
