"A Lipper/Viking book."

Includes bibliographical references (pages 215-216)

"As a young journalist in the South in the 1960s, Marshall Frady walked the hot sidewalks, sat in crowded churches and courtrooms, and interviewed prominent civil rights leaders. Now the critically acclaimed biographer profiles a man whose spiritual and political leadership gained him an indelible place in twentieth-century history. In his masterly and riveting Martin Luther King, Jr., Frady draws on his twenty-five years of award-winning commentary on American race relations to give an inspiring portrait of this amazing leader and the turbulent era in which he lived." "Martin Luther King, Jr., deftly interweaves the history of the civil rights movement with King's rise to fame and influence and offers fascinating insight into factions within the movement itself. Frady explores the complexities of King's relationship with the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, J. Edgar Hoover's relentless hounding of the civil rights leader, and King's anticipation of his own death. Above all, Frady's spellbinding voice brings to new life the ambitious, pious son of an Atlanta Baptist minister thrust onto a national platform of moral grandeur, and it shows, in vividly recalled scenes, how both King and his country reacted to those cataclysmic years."--Jacket