cover image The Heavens Might Crack: The Death and Legacy of Martin Luther King Jr.

The Heavens Might Crack: The Death and Legacy of Martin Luther King Jr.

Jason Sokol. Basic, $30 (352p) ISBN 978-0-465-05591-3

For the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., civil rights historian Sokol focuses on the murder’s aftershocks. He begins with stories of the African-Americans who venerated King, but who largely felt that his murder proved that “nonviolence is a dead philosophy,” as Floyd McKissick of the Congress of Racial Equality explained in 1968. Sokol then turns his attention to white people, now champions of King but who once largely disapproved of his actions, and reminds readers of the virulence of that hatred, and the battles over even the smallest tributes to King’s memory. Sokol is an assured writer, deploying revealing, striking anecdotes, such as that of James Baldwin, who was quoted in a New York Post article saying he could never again wear the black suit he wore to King’s funeral. After reading the article, one of Baldwin’s high school friends called Baldwin up, asking about the now-extraneous suit. Baldwin gave it to him. “‘For that bloody suit was their suit.... They had created Martin, he had not created them, and the blood in which the fabric of that suit was stiffening was theirs.’” This book offers valuable yet painful insight into the paradox of King’s stature throughout history. Agent: Brettne Bloom, Kneerim & Williams. (Mar.)