The Sorrow of Martin Luther King, Jr., Pt. II

I cannot say I am entirely satisfied by Garrow's Bearing the Cross, which I have just finished. He seemed to sacrifice depth for the sake of breadth, coherence and analysis for the sake of detail. I am quite sure I now have an accurate record of every meeting Dr. King ever attended, but I am still left with big gaps in my understanding of King's life. In particular, Garrow offers almost no discussion of how King was viewed by the black masses that he sought to inspire. Garrow's approach focuses heavily on the institutional actors and their leaders that one can easily forget that, as Ella Baker says in Garrow's epilogue, the movement made King and not the other way around. I suspect Halberstam's The Children or the first couple books in Taylor Branch's civil rights trilogy might offer more in this direction.

This is not to say Garrow's book does not succeed in many areas. The tenor of the epilogue suggests that Garrow was largely concerned with lifting the veil of mystery and getting away from the whitewashed hagiography that had surrounded King from almost the moment of his premature death. To an extent then, Garrow is a victim of his own success. As I noted in my post, I had already come to see King as a much more complicated, less saintly person than the one depicted in grade school texts and holiday celebrations. I suspect Garrow's book was much more groundbreaking when written, and I give him credit for breaking that ground.