The Heavens Might Crack
The Death and Legacy of Martin Luther King Jr.
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- $19.99
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
A vivid portrait of how Americans grappled with King's death and legacy in the days, weeks, and months after his assassination
On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was fatally shot as he stood on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. At the time of his murder, King was a polarizing figure -- scorned by many white Americans, worshipped by some African Americans and liberal whites, and deemed irrelevant by many black youth. In The Heavens Might Crack, historian Jason Sokol traces the diverse responses, both in America and throughout the world, to King's death. Whether celebrating or mourning, most agreed that the final flicker of hope for a multiracial America had been extinguished.
A deeply moving account of a country coming to terms with an act of shocking violence, The Heavens Might Crack is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand America's fraught racial past and present.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
For the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., civil rights historian Sokol focuses on the murder's aftershocks. He begins with stories of the African-Americans who venerated King, but who largely felt that his murder proved that "nonviolence is a dead philosophy," as Floyd McKissick of the Congress of Racial Equality explained in 1968. Sokol then turns his attention to white people, now champions of King but who once largely disapproved of his actions, and reminds readers of the virulence of that hatred, and the battles over even the smallest tributes to King's memory. Sokol is an assured writer, deploying revealing, striking anecdotes, such as that of James Baldwin, who was quoted in a New York Post article saying he could never again wear the black suit he wore to King's funeral. After reading the article, one of Baldwin's high school friends called Baldwin up, asking about the now-extraneous suit. Baldwin gave it to him. " For that bloody suit was their suit.... They had created Martin, he had not created them, and the blood in which the fabric of that suit was stiffening was theirs.'" This book offers valuable yet painful insight into the paradox of King's stature throughout history.
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