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Martin Luther King Jr.'s Life of Struggle Outside the South
by Jeanne Theoharis
From the New York Times bestselling author, a radical reframing of the life and work of Martin Luther King Jr.
The Martin Luther King Jr. of popular memory vanquished Jim Crow in the South. But in this myth-shattering book, award-winning and New York Times bestselling historian Jeanne Theoharis argues that King's time in Boston, New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago—outside Dixie—was at the heart of his campaign for racial justice. King of the North follows King as he crisscrosses the country from the Northeast to the West Coast, challenging school segregation, police brutality, housing segregation, and job discrimination. For these efforts, he was relentlessly attacked by white liberals, the media, and the federal government.
In this bold retelling, King emerges as a someone who not only led a movement but who showed up for other people's struggles; a charismatic speaker who also listened and learned; a Black man who experienced police brutality; a minister who lived with and organized alongside the poor; and a husband who—despite his flaws—depended on Coretta Scott King as an intellectual and political guide in the national fight against racism, poverty, and war.
King of the North speaks directly to our struggles over racial inequality today. Just as she restored Rosa Parks's central place in modern American history, so Theoharis radically expands our understanding of King's life and work—a vision of justice unfulfilled in the present.
"Theoharis depicts a complex, radical King whose fight against Northern racism alternately inspires and infuriates... . A powerful must-read that sheds new light on King and the Civil Rights Movement." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"An exemplary history that forces readers to reassess their assumptions about America's racial reckoning." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"King of the North is a revelation—a much-needed book that shifts and enhances our appreciation of MLK's radical vision." —Jonathan Eig, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of King: A Life
"With insightful precision and narrative power, Theoharis shows that the struggle to end Jim Crow was by every measure a national movement. For the first time in a King biography, Coretta Scott King's active partnership in the struggle is made clear. King of the North is a revelation." —Barbara Smith, co-founder, the Combahee River Collective
"Fresh, electric, grounded in its research and yet radical in its scope, King of the North is a modern masterpiece." —Steven W. Thrasher, author of The Viral Underclass
This information about King of the North was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Jeanne Theoharis is Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Brooklyn College of City University of New York. She is the author of the New York Times bestselling The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks and winner of the 2014 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work Biography/Autobiography and the Letitia Woods Brown Award from the Association of Black Women Historians. Her book has been adapted into a documentary of the same name, executive produced by Soledad O'Brien for Peacock where Theoharis served as a consulting producer. Her young adult adaptation with Brandy Colbert, The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks for Young People, was included in the Best Books of 2021 by the Chicago Public Library and Kirkus Reviews. Her book A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History won the 2018 Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize in Nonfiction and was named one of the best Black history books of 2018 by Black Perspectives. Theoharis's writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, MSNBC, The Nation, Slate, The Atlantic, and many more. She is also the author of King of the North (The New Press) and lives in Brooklyn.
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