Richie's Picks: M.L.K.: JOURNEY OF A KING, Abrams Books for Young Readers,
2007, ISBN: 0-8109-5476-1
"Someday, we'll get it together and we'll get it undone
Someday, when the world is much brighter
Someday, we'll walk in the rays of a beautiful sun
Someday, when the world is much lighter." -- Stan Vincent
"One mid-April 1944 day he and a teacher, Mrs. Bradley, stood for most of
the ninety-mile journey from Dublin, Georgia, to Atlanta because the bus driver
had ordered them to surrender their seats to whites, then cursed at them for
not moving quickly. M.L. had wanted to sit tight, but his teacher convinced
him that nothing good would come of defying the segregation law behind the
bus driver's demand. M.L. seethed all the way home, stripped of his joy. For
in Dublin, he had done well in an oratorical contest with his speech,' The
Negro and the Constitution,' a plea for racial justice."
Does the average school library really need another biography of the
Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.? Do you really need to read another one? If
there is anyone beyond John, Paul, George, and Ben who I can count on finding
on the library shelf of every single school in which I booktalk, it is MLK.
"That night, M.L. was at a mass meeting when told that his home had been
bombed. Coretta and Yoki weren't physically hurt, but he didn't know that until
he reached his house, where several hundred blacks had gathered in response
to the bombing, more than a few of them armed with guns, knives, and broken
bottles.
"M.L. did a masterful job of calming the crowd, but later that night, he was
'on the verge of corroding hate.' He dug deep for the strength to love. By
then, he understood well what the love Jesus preached really meant. He knew
that it was neither the kind of love that he felt for Yoki, his parents, or
his friends, nor the kind of love he had for Coretta, but agape, (pronounced
ah-gah-pay), a Greek word for a higher, harder love: a love that has nothing
to do with liking a person, a love worthy of people who do you no good and
even do you wrong. Agape says to see past a person's sins to the soul God
loves."
This concept of agape, and his belief in it, would so well serve Reverend
King, permitting him to repeatedly maintain his determination to focus on the
cause, to be positive and nonviolent in the face of repeated physical attacks
and jailings month after month. Agape is just one of so many important
concepts explored by Tonya Bolden about which I have never seen mention in other
MLK bios that I have read over the years.
"In talks with riot-ready youth in Chicago and elsewhere, M.L. had been
brought up short by the question 'What about Vietnam?' Hadn't the U.S.
government resorted to violence to express its will? young blacks asked. What's
more,
M.L. had been literally sickened by photographs of horrors wrought by
America's napalm bombs that accompanied the article 'The Children of Vietnam,' in
the January 1967 issue of Ramparts magazine. Added to these promptings was his
conscience calling him to recognize that if he didn't boldly denounce the
war, he was no better than whites who knew in their bones that racial
injustice was reprobate but said and did nothing about it."
Bolden shows how the media of that era sought to keep Reverend King "in his
place," editorializing that he was making a mistake to divert his attention
from the cause -- Civil Rights -- with which he was identified. But to the me
of forty years ago and to the me whom I am today, MLK's stance against The
War is what separated him from mere politicians and mere activists and really
made him a lasting inspiration in my own world, making him a wise and holy
man in the very best sense of the word.
"Early morning, April four
A shot rings out in the Memphis sky.
Free at last, they took your life
They could not take your pride." -- U2
Tonya Bolden, as one of us who grew up an impressionable child during the
Civil Rights Movement, as one of us who seeks to come to an understanding of
how Reverend King was and remains part of our lives, as one of us who seeks to
comprehend how someone who makes such a difference in the world can be taken
away in the blink of an eye, has done an exceptional job of writing about
this holy man, this man of color and conscience whose life and good works are
celebrated across our country with an annual commemoration. M.L.K.: JOURNEY
OF A KING is a must-have and must-read biography for the twenty-first century.
Richie Partington, MLIS
Richie's Picks _http://richiespicks.com_ (http://richiespicks.com/)
Moderator, _http://groups.yahoo.com/group/middle_school_lit/_
(http://groups.yahoo.com/group/middle_school_lit/)
BudNotBuddy@aol.com
_http://www.myspace.com/richiespicks_ (http://www.myspace.com/richiespicks)
Caldecott '09
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