Why read From Civil Rights to Human Rights?

Book cover of From Civil Rights to Human Rights: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Struggle for Economic Justice

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Martin Luther King, Jr., is widely celebrated as an American civil rights hero. Yet King's nonviolent opposition to racism, militarism, and economic injustice had deeper roots and more radical implications than is commonly appreciated, Thomas F. Jackson argues in this searching reinterpretation of King's public ministry. Between the 1940s and…

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Why read it?

1 author picked From Civil Rights to Human Rights as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Paul Harvey

Author

Every year now on King’s holiday, politicians and public figures reproduce the same one or two quotations from King’s most famous speech, and almost always completely distort and bowdlerize him in doing so. Jackson’s classic book shows how King was an economic radical from his youngest years, an advocate of a European-style social democracy, and a critic of the systemic racism in American society that we now identify as “critical race theory.” King’s words now are often taken out of context to show how he was a peaceful moderate who would have been in opposition to Black Lives Matter and…

From Paul's list on The best books to get the full measure of Martin Luther King, Jr..