Becoming King: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Making of a National Leader

This is a fully readible yet well researched book that gives more information than any other has done on the black activist movement in Montgomery Alabama before Martin Luther King, Jr. came there to his first church pastorship. The black activist leaders who preceded King there laid the groundwork that made the famous bus boycott possible, and which in the beginning, in effect, led King into the civil rights movement. Once in, he began to lead the Montgomery uprising against the obscene bus practices, but in the beginning he was following the lead of others who had been long working for black causes in Montgomery. The author shows how much King learned from this experience, much of it from the working people who never faltered in their perseverence in a boycott that required big sacrifices from them, things leaned by King that went with him as he moved beyond Montgomery onto the national scene. Anyone who wants to understand the early development of Martin Luther King, Jr. as a (in my mind) great revolutionary leader, to be ranked with Washington and Lincoln, should read this book.

The maturing process is a journey full of "seasonings". We crawl before we walk. We babble before we speak. Most of us view Dr. King's life from sound bites and cliff notes bios that give us more of a mythic hero as opposed to a flesh and blood man. Before Martin Luther King made it to the mountaintop, he spent a great deal of time building a base. This base was Montgomery, Alabama, where Dr. King learned to walk and find his voice and his impeccable sense of timing. Troy's exhaustive research has given us the gift of insight into the making of not just a leader but of a movement of which he became King. Troy reminds us of the people, decisions and timing that all came together to give Dr. King and the rest of the world a view from the mountaintop. This is a fascinating and enjoyable read, especially in light of our recent election. I would highly recommend it for any student of history or leadership.

Before Dr. King was a national hero and an international Nobel prize winner he was a 25 year old preacher in Montgomery, Alabama taking care of his church members. Jackson shows King's leadership abilities and the beginning of the modern Civil Rights Movement.