Synopses & Reviews
Where is Martin Luther King, Jr. when we need him?
So much has changed since the glory days of the civil rights movement -- and so much has stayed the same. African Americans command their place at every level of society, from the lunch counter to the college campus to the corporate boardroom -- yet the gap between the American middle class and the black poor is as wide as ever. Hollywood casts a black actor as president of the United States without provoking a word of protest, but a black man is savagely dragged to his death because of the color of his skin. The hip-hop culture that springs from the imaginations of urban black youth (who are themselves reviled and feared) sweeps across the malls and high schools of suburbia, yet black students still sit together, apart, in the cafeteria. Where can we turn to find the vision that will guide us through these strange and difficult times? Michael Eric Dyson helps us find the answer in our recent past, by resurrecting the true Martin Luther King, Jr.
A private citizen who transformed the world around him, King was arguably the greatest American who ever lived. Yet, as Dyson so poignantly reveals, Martin Luther King, Jr. has disappeared in plain sight. Despite the federal holiday, the postage stamps, and the required reference in history textbooks, King's vitality and complexity have faded from view. Young people do not learn how radical he was, liberals forget that he despaired of whites even as he loved them, and contemporary black leaders tend to ignore the powerful forces that shaped him -- the black church, language, and sexuality -- thereby obscuring his relevance to black youth and hip-hop culture. Instead, King's legacy has become a battlefield on which various forces wage war -- whether it is conservatives who appropriate his words to combat affirmative action, or the King family themselves, who want to control use of the great man's words for a fee.
Former welfare dad, Princeton Ph.D., and Baptist preacher, Michael Eric Dyson sets out to find the man who was assassinated when Dyson himself was a nine-year-old boy living in downtown Detroit. And in his quest to unravel the meaning of King, Dyson discovers that the very contradictions embodied in the slain leader's life make him a man for our times. He returns to us a man as radical in his view of social injustice as Malcolm X, who still won the support of the white establishment; a man dedicated to the common good, who gave in to his own appetites; a master of language and rhetoric, who "sampled" the words and ideas of others; a man who despised the unjust distribution of wealth and used its fruits to feed his own people. Dyson rescues from history a Martin Luther King, Jr. who matters today: a man who has as much in common with rap artist Tupac Shakur as he does with the Reverend Ralph Abernathy. Unafraid to confront King's personal life, determined to defend King from the sanitizing forces of historical amnesia, Michael Eric Dyson challenges us to embrace the man who said, prophetically, on the eve of his death, "I May Not Get There With You," and to make him our partner in our ongoing struggle to get to the Promised Land.
Synopsis
A rising star among African-American public intellectuals challenges readers to embrace the humanity and radical genius of Martin Luther King, Jr.--who, he argues, is our greatest American. Index.
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. 376-394) and index.
About the Author
Michael Eric Dyson is an ordained Baptist minister and Ida B. Wells Barnett University Professor at DePaul University. He is the author of Making Malcolm: The Myth and Meaning of Malcolm X, Between God and Gangsta Rap, and Race Rules: Navigating the Color Line. He lives with his family in Chicago.
Table of Contents
Contents Preface "We as a People Will Get to the Promised Land": Martin and Us
Introduction "You Don't Need to Go Out Saying Martin Luther King, Jr. Is a Saint": The American Hero
Part I.ÿÿIDEOLOGY Chapter 1 "I Saw That Dream Turn Into a Nightmare": From Color-Blindness to Black Compensation
Chapter 2 "Most Americans Are Unconscious Racists": Beyond Liberalism
Chapter 3 "As I Ponder the Madness of Vietnam": The Outlines of a Militant Pacifism
Chapter 4 "America Must Move Toward a Democratic Socialism": A Progressive Social Blueprint
Chapter 5 "We Did Engage in a Black Power Move": An Integrationist Embraces Enlightened Black Nationalism
Part II.ÿÿIDENTITY Chapter 6 "I Had to Know God for Myself": The Shape of a Radical Faith
Chapter 7 "Somewhere I Read of the Freedom of Speech": Constructing a Unique Voice
Chapter 8 "There Is a Civil War Going on Within All of Us": Sexual Personae in the Revolution
Chapter 9 "I Have Walked Among the Desperate, Rejected, and Angry": Two Generations of the Young, Gifted, and Black
Chapter 10 "The Primary Obligation of the Woman Is That of Motherhood": The Pitfalls of Patriarchy
Part III.ÿÿIMAGE Chapter 11 "Be True to What You Said on Paper": A Critical Patriotism
Chapter 12 "I Won't Have Any Money to Leave Behind": The Ownership of a Great Man
Chapter 13 "If I Have to Go Through This to Give the People a Symbol": The Burden of Representation
Epilogue "Lil' Nigger, Just Where You Been?": Metaphors and Movements
Notes
Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Index