More than two decades after his death, Martin Luther King, Jr. remains America’s preeminent symbol of the civil rights movement. In the early years of the movement King advocated a policy of nonviolent resistance to the racism ingrained in American society. In later years, however, King adopted a more militant stance toward racial and other forms of injustice. In this innovative book Richard Lentz considers King as a cultural symbol, from the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955–1956 to the Poor People’s Campaign, which King helped organize shortly before his assassination in 1968. In particular, Lentz examines the ways the three major news weeklies—Newsweek, Time, and U.S. News & World Report—presented King to their readers. It is primarily through media institutions that Americans shape and interpret their values. Newsweek, Time, and U.S. News—though representing different shadings of political ideology, ranging from left of center to conservative—were all aimed at the same audience, middle-class Americans. Therefore their influence on the nation’s values during a period of enormous social upheaval was significant. In the mid-1960s, when King shifted from reform to radicalism, the news magazines were thrust into what Lentz calls a “crisis of Symbols” because King no longer fit the symbolic mold the magazines had created for him. Lentz investigates how the magazines responded to this crisis, discussing the ways in which their analyses of King shifted over time and the means they employed to create a new symbolic image that made sense of King’s radicalization for readers. This is an important, perceptive study of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s career and an astute critical analysis of the reporting practices of the news media in the modern era.

Critical studies of the range of King’s public discourse as forms of sermonic rhetoric The nine essays in this volume offer critical studies of the range of King’s public discourse as forms of sermonic rhetoric. They focus on five diverse and relative short examples from King’s body of work: “Death of Evil on the Seashore,” “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” “I Have a Dream,” “A Time to Break Silence,” and “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop.” Taken collectively, these five works span both the duration of King’s career as a public advocate but also represent the broad scope of his efforts to craft and project a persuasive vision a beloved community that persists through time.

Combining the latest insights from KIng biographies and movement histories, this book provides an up-to-date critical analysis of the relationship between King and the wider civil rights movement. Delivering a fresh perspective on the relationship between 'the man and the movement', Kirk argues that it is the interactionbetween national and local movement concerns that is essential to understanding King's leadership and black activism in the 1950s and 1960s. Kirk examines King's strengths and his limitations, and weighs the role that king played in then movement alongside the contributions of other civil rights organizations and leaders, and local civil rights activists. Suitable for undergraduate courses in 20th century US history.

Martin Luther King Jr. said and wrote as much or more about the meaning, nature, and power of truth as any other prominent figure in the 1950s and '60s. King was not only vastly influential as an advocate for and defender of truth; he also did more than anyone in his time to organize truth into a movement for the liberation, uplift, and empowerment of humanity, efforts that ultimately resulted in the loss of his life. Drawing on King's published and unpublished sermons, speeches, and writings, The Arc of Truth explores King's lifelong pilgrimage in pursuit of truth. Lewis Baldwin explores King's quest for truth from his inquisitive childhood to the influence of family and church, to Morehouse College, Crozer Theological Seminary, Boston University, and other academic institutions in the Northeast. Continuing on, the book follows King's sense that he was involved in experiments of truth within the context of the struggle to liberate and empower humanity, to his understanding of the civil rights movement as unfolding truth, to his persistent challenge to America around its need to engage in a serious reckoning with truth regarding its history and heritage. Baldwin investigates King's determination to speak truth to power, and his untiring efforts to actualize what he envisioned as the truthful ends of the beloved community through the truthful means of nonviolent direct action. King believed, taught, and demonstrated by example that truth derives from a revolution in the heart, mind, and soul before it can be translated into institutions and structures that guarantee freedom, justice, human dignity, equality of opportunity, and peace. Ultimately, King's significance for humanity cannot be considered only his contributions as a preacher, pastor, civil rights leader, and world figure--he was and remains equally impactful as a theologian, philosopher, and ethicist whose life and thought evince an enduring search for and commitment to truth.

Peter Ling’s acclaimed biography of Martin Luther King Jr provides a thorough re-examination of both the man and the Civil Rights Movement, showing how King grew into his leadership role and kept his faith as the challenges facing the movement strengthened after 1965. Ling combines a detailed narrative of Martin Luther King’s life with the key historiographical debates surrounding him and places both within the historical context of the Civil Rights Movement. This fully revised and updated second edition includes an extended look at Black Power and a detailed analysis of the memorialization of King since his death, including President Obama’s 50th anniversary address, and how conservative spokesmen have tried to appropriate King as an advocate of colour-blindness. Drawing on the wide-ranging and changing scholarship on the Civil Rights Movement, this volume condenses research previously scattered across a larger literature. Peter Ling's crisp and fluent style captures the drama, irony and pathos of King's life and provides an excellent introduction for students and others interested in King, the Civil Rights movement, and America in the 1960s.

Media & Minorities looks at the media's racial tendencies with an eye to identifying the "system supportive" messages conveyed and offering challenges to them. The book covers all major media--including television, film, newspapers, radio, magazines, and the Internet--and systematically analyzes their representation of the four largest minority groups in the U.S.: African Americans, Native Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans. Entertainment media are compared and contrasted with news media, and special attention is devoted to coverage of social movements for racial justice and politicians of color.