From coming of age under poverty and the looming threat of racial violence to preaching from the Ebenezer pulpit for forty years, King, Sr., candidly reveals his life inside the civil rights movement, illustrating the profound influence he had on his son.
Born in 1899 to a family of sharecroppers in Stockbridge, Georgia, Martin Luther King, Sr., came of age under the looming threat of violence at the hands of white landowners. Growing up, he watched as his family was crushed by the weight of poverty and racism, and he resolved to escape to Atlanta to answer the calling to become a preacher. Before he engaged in acts of political dissent and stepped to the pulpit of Ebenezer Baptist Church, where he would preach for more than forty years, King Sr. strove to earn high school and college diplomas while working double shifts as a truck driver, and fought to win the heart of his future wife, Alberta “Bunch” Williams.
Originally published in 1980, this poignant memoir chronicles the life of Rev. Martin Luther King, Sr. Here, King Sr. recalls the joys and struggles of his journey: the pain of leaving his mother, father, and siblings on the farm; the triumph of winning voting rights for blacks in Atlanta; and the feelings of fatherly pride and anxiety as he watched his son put himself in danger at the forefront of the movement.
“There are two men I am supposed to hate. One is a white man, the other is black, and both are serving time for having committed murder. James Earl Ray is a prisoner in Tennessee, charged with killing my son. Marcus Chenault was institutionalized as deranged after shooting my wife to death. I don’t hate either one. There is no time for that, and no reason, either. Nothing that a man does takes him lower than when he allows himself to fall so far as to hate anyone.”
—The Reverend Martin Luther King, Sr., in Daddy King
Dedication
Granddaddy: Foreword to the 2017 Edition
Foreword to the 1980 Edition
INTRODUCTION
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
Acknowledgments
Index
- Atlanta Journal-Constitution, review, 2/4/2017
- Literary Hub, excerpt, 1/16/2017
- The Daily Beast, article, 1/16/2017
- Time.com, excerpt, 1/13/2017
- Time.com, photo slideshow, 1/13/2017