Beyond “I have a dream”—King biographer visits National Writers Series
From staff reports
The National Writers Series will host Martin Luther King, Jr., biographer Jonathan Eig at the City Opera House in Traverse City on Thursday, March 13 at 7 pm.
King: A Life is the first major biography written in decades about the civil rights icon. Vividly written and deeply researched, this revealing portrait by a master storyteller is an intimate view of the courageous and often emotionally troubled human being who demanded peaceful protest for his movement but was rarely at peace with himself.
Eig casts fresh light on King’s family’s origins as well as his complex relationships with his wife, father, and fellow activists. In this landmark biography and relying on recently unclassified FBI documents, Eig gives us an MLK whose demands for racial and economic justice remain as urgent today as they were in his lifetime.
The Glen Arbor Sun spoke with Jonathan Eig about his portrayal of King, about our collective tendency to oversimplify the icon and forget that in his time he was radical and disruptive, and why we need to hear King’s message in today’s America.
Glen Arbor Sun: Why did you write this book?
Jonathan Eig: I wrote this book in part because—while writing Ali: A Life, a book about Muhammad Ali—I had the opportunity to meet people who knew King. I realized from talking to them that they had an understanding of King that was different from my own understanding. They had a more intimate sense of how he suffered, and what he went through. All the celebration of King had turned him into an uncontroversial figure. This is a more intimate portrait of him. I also had a ton of new archival material to work with.
Sun: Help me understand this story’s importance at this moment of upheaval in the United States.
Eig: One of the problems with reducing King to a simplified version of himself, with all the focus on his “I have a Dream” speech (during the March on Washington on Aug. 28, 1963), is we forget how much he challenged us, and how unpopular he was. We need to be challenged today. He was a radical in his activism, his patriotism, and in his religious faith. We need to hear that message today.
Sun: What are some unexpected reactions you’ve heard while on tour?
Eig: It’s been really moving. I was not expecting the book to generate such an emotional reaction. I’ve had people coming up to me in tears. People didn’t know that King suffered from mental health issues, that he was depressed at times. That at end of his life he felt that no one was listening to him anymore. It’s been inspiring to me to hear people learn that his decisions were motivated so much by his religious faith. Audiences have been touched by that.
Sun: What reactions have you heard from younger Americans and high school students?
Eig: Students, in particular, are being taught very little beyond his “I have a Dream” speech. I talk about the first half of “I have a Dream,” he focuses on police brutality, on economic inequality. Students have been spoon-fed a version of MLK. It gets their attention to learn that he was more disruptive than Malcom X, even though we’re taught in popular culture that Malcom was more radical, the more dangerous.
Sun: What’s the message you’ll bring to Traverse City?
Eig: The message is the same everywhere I go. I think the message is that it feels like right now we can’t do anything about the conditions we’re living in. The politics, global warming, the danger in speaking out. That’s not acceptable to remain silent, King reminds us. He was arrested two times. He was shot at. He had his home under surveillance and bombed. But he never gave up. He never stopped pushing for change.
