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The First Biography of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Crusader Without Violence, Is Reissued 60 Years Later

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Editor’s Note: January 15th is Martin Luther King’s actual birthday, and in celebration, SeniorWomen.com is posting this review.

By Jo Freeman

Crusader Without  Violence, 60th-anniversary edition

L. D. Reddick, Introduction by Derryn E. Moton

Published by Montgomery: New South Books, 2018

 

  
Lawrence D. Reddick was a history professor at Alabama State College — the state school for blacks  — when the Montgomery Bus Boycott brought Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to national prominence in 1955-56. They had known each other casually in Atlanta; both had moved to Montgomery to accept jobs only recently.

On Dec. 5, 1955, Reddick went to the rally that changed the one-day bus boycott into a mass movement that lasted over a year.  Intending to write a book about that movement, Reddick spoke with the main movement players and observed events closely.  It was while interviewing King in depth in 1957 that he shifted to writing a biography of this new national leader.  Only 25 when he assumed the pastorate of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church and not yet a Ph.D., King had quickly attracted worldwide attention during the Montgomery Movement. The book became a collective effort, in which friends and family members helped Reddick find material.   Dr. and Mrs. King read the manuscript.

This is a very personal story, written by someone who got to know Dr. King very well.  Reddick begins by describing the scars on his body, his favorite sports, food and clothes.  He tells us many personal details, such as his enjoyment of doing imitations of other preachers and public figures, that he couldn’t “spell a lick,” and got a little nervous before speeches. 

These details don’t obscure the main themes.  Reddick says that King’s “main thesis is the power of brotherly love to redeem a world that will otherwise destroy itself.”   There is no surprise in learning that Dr. King’s heroes were Jesus, Gandhi and Thoreau, but a little that “Socrates is his hero above all men of ancient times” and that he had mixed feelings about his namesake, Martin Luther. 

In a long chapter on Family, we learn why the name on his birth certificate is Michael Luther, and why he was called ‘Little Mike’ in his early years.  In fact, Martin Luther King wasn’t named for Martin Luther, but you’ll have to read the book to find out why.

Nonviolence came to him easily.  Even as a boy he didn’t want to fight, or hit those who hit him.  In 1950, while studying at Crozer Theological Seminary, he went to a lecture on Gandhi by a well-known black preacher.  He was so intrigued that he read everything that he could find on the Mahatma and his philosophy. 
 
The future leader didn’t leave home until he graduated from Morehouse College.  However, he was ordained at 18 and made associate pastor of his father’s church when he was 21.   His theological training was not necessary for a career as a Baptist minister; he was going into the family business.
 
But the future Dr. King liked going to school, and wanted more.  His Bachelor of Divinity from Crozer came with a fellowship for graduate education so he enrolled at Boston University.  He met Coretta Scott in Boston, where she was studying voice in anticipation of a career as a singer, and married her in 1953 at her parents’ home in Alabama.

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