Here are 60 books that The Preacher King fans have personally recommended if you like
The Preacher King.
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I have spent my entire academic career researching and teaching about American religious history, particularly focusing on issues of race and religion. I am the author of numerous works on this topic, including The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in American History (co-authored with Edward J. Blum), and Howard Thurman and the Disinherited: A Religious Biography. Finally, after thirty years of work, I challenged myself to write a short reader-friendly biography of King that would capture him as fully as possible, but in a brief book that would communicate to general readers the full measure of the man.
Garrow’s Pulitzer-prize winning biography is the first complete, almost minute-by-minute, account of King’s life based on extensive research in the King documents, interviews with dozens of his associates, and a deep understanding of American history in that period. Garrow picks up the story just as King comes to Montgomery, and there are other books to read about the young King before 1954, but from there forward, Garrow’s is the indispensable account, and was the first book to really delve into the FBI’s surveillance of King.
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the 7th annual Robert Kennedy Book Award, this biography of Martin Luther King, first published in 1986, portrays the struggles and conflicts within the man who became the incarnation of the civil rights movement in America. It is based on more than 700 interviews with King's associates and with the Southern law men who worked against him, and on the author's access to King's personal papers and thousands of pages of newly-released FBI documents relating to the most radical uprising in American history.
Lost audio reels, archived poetry drafts, personal interviews, and undeveloped photograph negatives spark my compulsive curiosity to tell stories about language that people have never heard. Uncovering what is hidden has led to a digital project dedicated to Martin Luther King’s first “I Have a Dream” speech, a museum exhibit based on never-before-seen images of an 1,800 person KKK march staged in opposition to a King appearance in 1966, and an intimate interview with Dorothy Cotton about her memories of Dr. King. Of my three books, I have written a recent biography, Langston Hughes: Critical Lives. Part of my current research details the poet’s collaborative relationship with jazz singer Nina Simone.
This groundbreaking study is an insider’s guide to how a whole era of black southern preachers spoke to their congregations. Ever-curious about the artistry it takes to riff, remix, and sample earlier sources, this book illuminates the added depth that comes with language once the various trajectories of its previous uses are named, contextualized, and dated. Every new voice has an older one behind it. Seeing where they merge is a fascinating journey when someone this informed is driving.
Martin Luther King Jr's words defined, mobilized and embodied much of the American civil rights movement, crystallizing the hope and demand for racial justice in America. His powerful sermons and speeches were unique in their ability to unite blacks and whites in the quest for reform. Yet, disclosures about King's unattributed appropriations in his PhD dissertation have raised the broader question of whether King's persuasive voice was truly his own. In this study of the language of King, Keith D. Miller explores his words to find the intellectual roots, spiritual resonances and actual sources of those speeches and essays that…
Lost audio reels, archived poetry drafts, personal interviews, and undeveloped photograph negatives spark my compulsive curiosity to tell stories about language that people have never heard. Uncovering what is hidden has led to a digital project dedicated to Martin Luther King’s first “I Have a Dream” speech, a museum exhibit based on never-before-seen images of an 1,800 person KKK march staged in opposition to a King appearance in 1966, and an intimate interview with Dorothy Cotton about her memories of Dr. King. Of my three books, I have written a recent biography, Langston Hughes: Critical Lives. Part of my current research details the poet’s collaborative relationship with jazz singer Nina Simone.
Not scandalous like I Shared the Dream by Georgia Davis Powers, Cotton nonetheless enjoyed much greater access to King from 1963-68. While others may want to hear from the men who best knew King (such as Ralph Abernathy, Andrew Young, Wyatt T. Walker, or Clarence Jones) the woman closest to him offers an immediate account of both the tensions inside the Southern Leadership Conference and throughout the nation during the struggle for civil rights in the 1960s. Cotton’s life models the fortitude it took for a woman to rise to the role of leadership within King’s inner circle, as she became the Director of the Citizenship Education Program run by King’s organization.
An unsung hero of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s inner circle reveals the true story behind the Citizenship Education Program—a little-known training program for disenfranchised citizens—reflecting on its huge importance to the civil rights movement of the 1960s and explaining its indisputable relevance to our nation today.
“Nobody can ride your back if your back’s not bent,” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. famously proclaimed at the end of a Citizenship Education Program (CEP), an adult grassroots training program born of the work of the Tennessee Highlander Folk School, expanded by King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and directed by activist Dorothy…
Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.
Lost audio reels, archived poetry drafts, personal interviews, and undeveloped photograph negatives spark my compulsive curiosity to tell stories about language that people have never heard. Uncovering what is hidden has led to a digital project dedicated to Martin Luther King’s first “I Have a Dream” speech, a museum exhibit based on never-before-seen images of an 1,800 person KKK march staged in opposition to a King appearance in 1966, and an intimate interview with Dorothy Cotton about her memories of Dr. King. Of my three books, I have written a recent biography, Langston Hughes: Critical Lives. Part of my current research details the poet’s collaborative relationship with jazz singer Nina Simone.
Ever wonder how a kid from Atlanta became the leader of the 1960s civil rights movement? This book shows you through its rare photographs and compressed prose. Focusing on the crucial (and overlooked) years in King’s life (when he was training to be the preacher we now know), this book shows him shooting pool as much as studying. Remarkable interviews with his classmates, as well as a stunner with a white woman King seriously considered marrying, make this a real page-turner.
2019 Washington State Book Award Finalist (Biography/Memoir) * Excerpted in The Atlantic and Politico *TIME Magazine - One of 6 Books to Read in Honor of the 50th Anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s Death
Martin Luther King Jr. was a cautious nineteen-year-old rookie preacher when he left Atlanta, Georgia, to attend divinity school up north. At Crozer Theological Seminary, King, or "ML" back then, immediately found himself surrounded by a white staff and white professors. Even his dorm room had once been used by wounded Confederate soldiers during the Civil War. In addition, his fellow seminarians were almost all…
I’ve spent my entire life in pursuit of peace and nonviolence, and tried to be a peacemaker to our poor world of permanent warfare, extreme poverty, systemic violence, nuclear weapons, and environmental destruction. I’ve organized hundreds of demonstrations, spoken to a million people, written some forty books on peace and nonviolence, been arrested 85 times, traveled the warzones of the world—all the while trying to practice peace and nonviolence, and not doing a good job of it. That’s why I look to the examples of legendary peacemakers who lived the life of peace and changed the world with their disarming presence, people like Gandhi, Dr. King, Dorothy Day, Daniel Berrigan and Thomas Merton.
I consider this the best, most comprehensive biography of Dr. King, and essential reading for all who want to understand him, the Civil Rights movement, his struggles, and his methodology of nonviolence. There are other good books, but this tells the whole story in clear prose and leaves the reader overwhelmed by his staggering, faithful, visionary life, and challenged to do something for justice, disarmament, and nonviolence. Still one of my all-time favorite books! I read it every year, and find myself re-energized all over again to carry on Dr. King’s work for social, economic, and racial justice as well as disarmament and nonviolence.
“The most comprehensive, the most thoroughly researched and documented, the most scholarly of the biographies of Martin Luther King, Jr.” —Henry Steele Commanger, Philadelphia Inquirer
Winner of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Book Award * A New York Times Notable Book of the Year
By the acclaimed biographer of Abraham Lincoln, Nat Turner, and John Brown, Stephen B. Oates's prizewinning Let the Trumpet Sound is the definitive one-volume life of Martin Luther King, Jr. This brilliant examination of the great civil rights icon and the movement he led provides a lasting portrait of a man whose dream shaped American history.…
I have spent my entire academic career researching and teaching about American religious history, particularly focusing on issues of race and religion. I am the author of numerous works on this topic, including The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in American History (co-authored with Edward J. Blum), and Howard Thurman and the Disinherited: A Religious Biography. Finally, after thirty years of work, I challenged myself to write a short reader-friendly biography of King that would capture him as fully as possible, but in a brief book that would communicate to general readers the full measure of the man.
Rieder’s work is perhaps the single most interesting interpretation of King’s ability to thrive in very different rhetorical audiences, and explains his ability to communicate to so many different audiences at the same time. From King’s street talk in private to his SCLC colleagues, to his magnificent sermons to black church crowds, to his soaring oratory to more general public audiences, King code-shifted with ease and skill. No one captures this quality better than Rieder in this book.
"You don't know me," Martin Luther King, Jr., once declared to those who criticized his denunciation of the Vietnam War, who wanted to confine him to the ghetto of "black" issues. Now, forty years after being felled by an assassin's bullet, it is still difficult to take the measure of the man: apostle of peace or angry prophet; sublime exponent of a beloved community or fiery Moses leading his people up from bondage; black preacher or translator of blackness to the white world?
This book explores the extraordinary performances through which King played with all of these possibilities, and others…
I’ve worked and taught in the field of human services for over 40 years. Helping people and creating nurturing communities isn’t always what it appears. It is mired in hypocrisy, inefficiency, and neglect and the people looking for help are often their own worst enemies. Still, there is something inherently good just in trying to reach out to the vulnerable and fight the injustice that surrounds us. Sometimes that fight is figurative and sometimes it is literal. I am also a black belt-trained martial artist, a boxer, and a world championship professional boxing official. I love the dichotomy of helping people and knowing how to fight.
This is a fun series. It starts off in the 50s in small-town Iowa with most of the small-time innocence that you’d imagine but Gorman likes to take a different look. He leads us through the era’s less-than-shining moments while we get to relive the 50s and early sixties.
In this one, a young Black civil rights worker turns up dead. Along the way, we learn about racism and the subtle forms it can take and how it can poison a whole community.
In the end, things are not what they seemed but it doesn’t change the facts about America during this era.
Message—People are people and fighting ignorance and hate is all our responsibility.
In America's heartland, Sam seeks justice for a black college student who's found dead in a car trunk at the drive-in, while thousands gather in the nation's capital for the March on Washington with civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.
I only ever enjoyed one subject at school, and that was history. I read history books for pleasure, and then studied the subject at university, along with politics. As an adult, I worked in publishing and then began to write history books for myself, books to be read by both children and adults. History has remained my passion all my life, and the five books I have chosen here are just some of the many fine history books that deal with the major events of the recent 20th century. I hope you enjoy my selection.
On August 28, 1963, Martin Luther King, leader of the American Civil Rights movement, addressed the 250,000-strong crowd that had gathered in Washington DC to support the civil and economic rights of African Americans. As ever, his speech was good, but at a crucial point, prompted by the gospel singer Mahalia Jackson, he put aside his written notes and stated: “I have a dream.” And so followed the famous words of perhaps the most famous speech in history, a speech that transformed the civil rights movement and led to major civil rights and voting reforms in the next two years. Gary Younge’s book tells the story of that fine speech.
"[In] this slim but powerful book . . . Younge is adept at both distilling the facts and asking blunt questions."-Boston Globe
"Unequivocal."-Financial Times
"Gary Younge's meditative retrospection on [the speech's] significance reminds us of all the micro-moments of transformation behind the scenes-the thought and preparation, vision and revision-whose currency fed that magnificent lightning bolt in history."-Patricia J. Williams
Gary Younge explains why Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech maintains its powerful social relevance by sharing the dramatic story surrounding it. Fifty years later, "The Speech" endures as a defining moment in the Civil Rights movement and…
I am the author of many acclaimed books for children. Connection, compassion, and family are common themes in my work. My books include Marvel’s Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur: One Girl Can Make a Difference, Flying High: The Story of Gymnastics Champion Simone Biles, and Brave Ballerina: The Story of Janet Collins. I also contributed research and writing to Black Ballerinas: My Journey to Our Legacy by Misty Copeland. I studied journalism and literature at Syracuse University.
Capturing the spirit of Maya Angelou’s work, Renee Watson expertly chronicles Maya’s life with evocative poems. This book is a rhythmic tribute to the first Black person and the first woman to recite a poem at a presidential inauguration. Bryan Collier’s collage art perfectly complements each poem.
I especially love the poem called “Brother Jimmy, Brother Martin,” which highlights Maya’s deep love for James Baldwin and Martin Luther King Jr.
My favorite lines: “Jimmy was light in the darkest of rooms. Martin was water in a parched desert.”
From bestselling, award-winning creators Renee Watson and Bryan Collier comes a stunningly crafted picture book chronicling the life of poet and activist Maya Angelou.
This unforgettable picture book introduces young readers to the life and work of Maya Angelou, whose words have uplifted and inspired generations of readers. The author of the celebrated autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya was the first Black person and first woman to recite a poem at a presidential inauguration, and her influence echoes through culture and history. She was also the first Black woman to appear on the United States quarter.…
I grew up thinking that being adopted didn’t matter. I was wrong. This book is my journey uncovering the significance and true history of adoption practices in America. Now, in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, the renewed debate over women’s reproductive rights places…
Growing up middle-class, white, progressive, and repeatedly exposed to the mediated crises and movements of the Sixties left me with a lifelong challenge of making sense of the American dilemma. My road was long and winding–a year in Barcelona as Spain struggled to emerge from autocracy; years organizing for the nuclear freeze and against apartheid; study under academics puzzling through the possibilities of nonviolent and democratic politics. My efforts culminated in the publication of a volume that won the Organization of American Historians Liberty Legacy Award, for the “best book by a historian on the civil rights struggle from the beginnings of the nation to the present.”
When I read this book, I knew plenty about Martin Luther King’s ties to the labor movement. What I did not know—and what it took Honey twenty years to piece together—was an understanding of the 1,200 workers whose desperate straits and courageous creative nonviolence called King to Memphis in 1968. Honey uncovers the small triumphs hidden from view if we only look at the large tragedy of King’s assassination. Sanitation workers fought for safer working conditions, adequate wages, and trade union recognition from a city administration that literally treated them like garbage. A labor dispute transformed into a nonviolent community revolt. I remain in awe of the book’s richly textured portraits, among them Reverend Ralph Jackson, a peaceful protester brutalized by police, who forged a "campaign to end police brutality and improve housing, jobs, wages, and education across the city."
Memphis in 1968 was ruled by a paternalistic "plantation mentality" embodied in its good-old-boy mayor, Henry Loeb. Wretched conditions, abusive white supervisors, poor education, and low wages locked most black workers into poverty. Then two sanitation workers were chewed up like garbage in the back of a faulty truck, igniting a public employee strike that brought to a boil long-simmering issues of racial injustice.
With novelistic drama and rich scholarly detail, Michael Honey brings to life the magnetic characters who clashed on the Memphis battlefield: stalwart black workers; fiery black ministers; volatile, young, black-power advocates; idealistic organizers and tough-talking unionists;…
