The Radical King

November 10, 2014
This selection of King’s writings and speeches ably introduces historical neophytes to the great civil rights leader’s “radical” side, though readers may feel a disconnect between his empathetic words and the scathing introduction from West (Race Matters). The book does include some of King’s most famous writings, such as “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” and “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” but also lesser-known passages dealing with his opposition to the Vietnam War and concern with American poverty outside as well as within the black community. Throughout, King’s skills as a preacher and rhetorician are amply in evidence, as is his profound empathy with others, even after a bombing at King’s home that almost killed his wife and child. West, perhaps President Obama’s most prominent African-American critic, uses the introduction to assert that “surely” King would not have wanted the first black U.S. president to serve up a “Wall Street presidency, drone presidency, and surveillance presidency with a vanishing black middle class, devastated black working class, and desperate black poor people clinging to fleeting symbols and empty rhetoric.” Not everyone will feel that accurately imagining King’s attitudes towards President Obama is as straightforward as West would have it; his use of academic terminology, meanwhile, might prove an impediment to the lay reader he is targeting. Agent: Gloria Loomis, Watkins Loomis.

November 1, 2014
A reframing of Martin Luther King Jr.'s legacy to celebrate his political radicalism.As the civil rights movement was shifting more toward Black Power militancy, King was occasionally criticized as a moderate whose nonviolent philosophy needed to give way to a more confrontational style, one that seemed more in tune with the tenor of the times and the temper of younger activists. As editor and annotator, the provocative scholar West (Black Prophetic Fire, 2014, etc.) maintains that King and Malcolm X, for example, were becoming allies rather than remaining polarities as black leaders and that King's leadership was not only more radical than frequently recognized, but also more pragmatic and visionary. From sermons and speeches to the "Letter from Birmingham Jail," much of this material is oft-anthologized, with the chronological context showing the intellectual and philosophical progression of a leader who was more radical than many suspected from the start. Tributes to W.E.B. Du Bois and Norman Thomas reinforce King's radical sympathies, as do his reflections on reading Marx (he was ambivalent about both communism and capitalism). "King and [Nelson] Mandela are the two towering figures in the past fifty years in the world," writes West. "Both have been Santa Clausified-tamed, domesticated, sanitized, and sterilized-into nonthreatening and smiling old men....Yet both were radical and revolutionary." Permeating the collection is the theme of "radical love," distinguishing King from those who preached hate toward the white oppressor or saw no place for whites in the fight for equality. "The aftermath of violence is always bitterness," he preached in a sermon on Gandhi. "The aftermath of nonviolence is the creation of...a new love and a new understanding and a new relationship...between the oppressed and the oppressor." Though many of the entries are familiar, this useful collection takes King from the front lines of Southern segregation to a national movement for economic equality to an international condemnation of imperialism and armed intervention.

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Starred review from January 1, 2015

With an introduction and 23 edited sermons, speeches, and writings of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-68), West (philosophy & Christian practice, Union Theological Seminary, NY; Prophesy Deliverance!) seeks to display and perpetuate King's legacy by sharing his views and visions on radical love. This collection marches in contrast to the now-commonplace vision of King; often sanitized in quotes without context and propped to support colorless conciliation. West presents a portrait of King as a democratic socialist committed to human decency and dignity, a challenger of capitalism advocating for a better distribution of wealth, and a dissenting patriot fighting for peace and against colonialism, who beyond denouncing U.S. involvement in Vietnam, confronted America as a "nightmare" of "racism, poverty, militarism, and materialism." The unanswered question throughout West's latest work is whether the United States has the capacity to hear and heed the radical King. VERDICT This volume features a popularly referenced spiritual giant too seldom recognized in his true dimensions. Readers looking to discover the "real" Martin Luther King Jr., revolutionary Christianity, social justice, or the state of contemporary America will enjoy West's provocative and pithy work as it calls on King to speak again about America, the world, and "where we go from here."--Thomas J. Davis, Arizona State Univ., Tempe

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