California Historical Society 678 Mission St San Francisco, CA 94105 USA
Thu
Apr 19, 2018
4:00 am
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6:00 am
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About

Join us and author Joseph Rosenbloom for a presentation and discussion about his book from Beacon Press, Redemption: Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Last 31 Hours. Rosenbloom will discuss the book and then be in discussion with University of San Francisco Professor James Lance Taylor.

PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS EVENT WILL BE HELD AT CALIFORNIA HISTORICAL SOCIETY (CHS) ACROSS THE STREET FROM MoAD AT 678 MISSION STREET

About the Book:

Chronicles the last thirty-one hours of Martin Luther King Jr.’s life as he seeks to revive the non-violent civil rights movement and push to end poverty in America.

At 10:33 a.m. on April 3, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., landed in Memphis on a flight from Atlanta. A march that he had led in Memphis six days earlier to support striking garbage workers had turned into a riot, and King was returning to prove that he could lead a violent-free protest.

King’s reputation as a credible, non-violent leader of the civil rights movement was in jeopardy just as he was launching the Poor People’s Campaign. He was calling for massive civil disobedience in the nation’s capital to pressure lawmakers to enact sweeping anti-poverty legislation.

But King didn’t live long enough to lead the protest. He was fatally shot at 6:01 p.m. on April 4th in Memphis.

Redemption is an intimate look at the last thirty-one hours and twenty-eight minutes of King’s life.

King was exhausted from a brutal speaking schedule. He was being denounced in the press and by political leaders as an agent of violence. He was facing dissent even within the civil rights movement and among his own staff at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

In Memphis, a federal court injunction was barring him from marching. As threats against King mounted, he feared an imminent, violent death. The risks were enormous, the pressure intense.

On the stormy night of April 3rd, King gathered the strength to speak at a rally on behalf of sanitation workers. The “Mountaintop Speech,” an eloquent and passionate appeal for workers’ rights and economic justice, exhibited his oratorical mastery at its finest.

Redemption draws on dozens of interviews by the author with people who were immersed in the Memphis events, features recently released documents from Atlanta archives, and includes compelling photos. The fresh material reveals untold facets of the story including a never-before-reported lapse by the Memphis Police Department to provide security for King. It unveils financial and logistical dilemmas and recounts the emotional and marital pressures that were bedeviling King.

Also revealed is what his assassin, James Earl Ray, was doing in Memphis during the same time and how a series of extraordinary breaks enabled Ray to construct a sniper’s nest and shoot King.

About the Author: Joseph Rosenbloom

Joseph Rosenbloom is an award-winning journalist who has been a staff reporter for the Boston Globe, an investigative reporter for Frontline, and a senior editor for Inc. magazine. He has written for the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, American Prospect, among other publication, and lives in Newton, Massachusetts.   

About Professor James Lance Taylor

Professor James Lance Taylor is from Glen Cove, Long Island. He is author of the book Black Nationalism in the United States: From Malcolm X to Barack Obama, which earned 2012 "Outstanding Academic Title" - Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries. (Ranked top 2 percent of 25,000 books submitted and top 8 percent of 7,300 actually accepted for review by the American Library Association).

Rated “Best of the Best.” The hardback version sold out in the U.S. and the paperback version was published in 2014.

He is currently writing and researching a book with the working title, Peoples Temple, Jim Jones, and California Black Politics. He expects the book to be completed with a 2018-2019 publication range. The book is a study of the Peoples Temple movement and African American political history in the state of California.

His most recent published article is “King the Sellout or Sellin’ Out King?”: Hip Hop’s Martin Luther King,” in Dream and Legacy: Martin Luther King, Jr. in the Post-Civil Rights era (2017).

His teaching and research scholarly interests are in religion and politics in the United States, race and ethnic politics, African American political history, social movements, political ideology, law and public policy, Black political leadership, and the U.S. Presidency. He lives with his family in Oakland, California.

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