EDITORS AND REPORTERS: Harvard Sitkoff can be reached for interviews at 603-862-3024 (office), 603-659-6359 (home) or his@christa.unh.edu. Requests for copies of the book should be made to Stephen Weil with Hill and Wang at stephen.weil@fsgbooks.com or 212-206-5338.
DURHAM, N.H. — Noted civil rights scholar Harvard Sitkoff, a professor
of history at the University of New Hampshire, has authored a new biography
on Martin Luther King Jr. that has been called the finest brief biography of
the civil rights leader.
"King: Pilgrimage to the Mountaintop" was published Jan. 3, 2008,
by Hill
and Wang. Columbia University's Eric Foner says, "Drawing on his expertise in
the history of the Civil Rights Movement, Harvard Sitkoff has produced the finest
brief biography of Martin Luther King Jr."
It is a book, according to Sitkoff, that he was destined to write.
"Martin Luther King Jr. certainly had a far greater impact on my life than
any other public figure, and there is no one I more admired than King. I well
remember the excitement I felt as a boy reading accounts of the Montgomery Bus
Boycott. Because of that, I got involved in the movement as a college student,
and then went South briefly to march and picket and take part in the movement,"
Sitkoff
says.
"As a young adult, nothing exhilarated me more than King saying hello to me and
shaking my hand at a civil rights demonstration in Virginia in 1962. And I'll
never forget the extraordinary jumble of emotions and thoughts that went through
me as I stood in the rain on an Atlanta street as his casket went by," he says.
Unlike many notable, yet lengthy books about King, the 234-page "King: Pilgrimage
to the Mountaintop" is written for readers looking for a relatively short book
about the civil rights leader.
"
I wanted to bring King alive for today's reading public, especially for those
who never knew him. I wanted to breathe life back into the real, the true, King
-- not the distorted King of myth, still amiably dreaming of a colorblind society
and of little else -- but, rather, the King that the FBI accused of being "the
most dangerous Negro in the country," the King who had become a pariah to
most of those in power, the King no longer admired by the great majority of his
countrymen
at the time of his assassination," Sitkoff says.
In "King: Pilgrimage to the Mountaintop," readers will learn about
King's
criticism of American capitalism and his demands to end economic injustice. They
will discover
how King identified with nonwhite struggles worldwide against colonialism and
imperialism, and why he opposed the Vietnam War before it was acceptable to do
so. And they will understand why King supported striking Memphis sanitation workers
and why he wanted to lead the nation's poorest citizens, regardless of race,
in a nonviolent assault on Washington until the nation and its government paid
heed to their plight.
One of the biography's major themes is the centrality of King's religion to his
political and social activism. At heart, he identified himself as a Baptist preacher,
according to Sitkoff, and the keys to his greatness -- his courage, his oratorical
skill, his moral vision -- were rooted in the African American Christian folk
religion.
The book, however, does not gloss over King's flaws and weaknesses. "King
was a very fallible human being, not a saint. As a leader, he failed as often
as
he succeeded," Sitkoff says.
The biography also emphasizes that King and the Civil Rights Movement were not
synonymous -- much of what happened in the movement was neither initiated nor
led by King.
"And yet, it is necessary to understand King's critical role in the movement.
He was its preeminent spokesperson, leader, and symbol. Accordingly, although
on the stage of public affairs for barely a decade and never holding public office,
King shaped more sweeping changes in habits of thought and action than any other
figure of his century," Sitkoff says.
