The Word of the Lord Is Upon Me: The Righteous Performance of Martin Luther King, Jr.

by Rieder, Jonathan

• ISBN13: 9780674028227
• ISBN10: 0674028228
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-04-04
• Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr

Summary

"You donrs"t know me," Martin Luther King, Jr., once declared to those who criticized his denunciation of the Vietnam War, who wanted to confine him to the ghetto of "black" issues. Now, forty years after being felled by an assassinrs"s bullet, it is still difficult to take the measure of the man: apostle of peace or angry prophet; sublime exponent of a beloved community or fiery Moses leading his people up from bondage; black preacher or translator of blackness to the white world? This book explores the extraordinary performances through which King played with all of these possibilities, and others too, blending and gliding in and out of idioms and identities. Taking us deep into Kingrs"s backstage discussions with colleagues, his preaching to black congregations, his exhortations in mass meetings, and his crossover addresses to whites, Jonathan Rieder tells a powerful story about the tangle of race, talk, and identity in the life of one of Americars"s greatest moral and political leaders. A brilliant interpretive endeavor grounded in the sociology of culture, The Word of the Lord Is Upon Me delves into the intricacies of Kingrs"s sermons, speeches, storytelling, exhortations, jokes, jeremiads, taunts, repartee, eulogies, confessions, lamentation, and gallows humor, as well as the authorrs"s interviews with members of Kingrs"s inner circle. The King who emerges is a distinctively modern figure who, in straddling the boundaries of diverse traditions, ultimately transcended them all.

Table of Contents

The Artistry of Argument	p. 1
Inside the Circle of the Tribe
The Geometry of Belonging	p. 21
Brotherhood and Brotherhood	p. 32
Backstage and Blackstage	p. 50
Race Men and Real Men	p. 64
The Prophetic Backstage	p. 75
Son of a (Black) Preacher Man
Flight from the Folk?	p. 91
Homilies of Black Liberation	p. 110
Raw and Refined	p. 131
King in the Mass Meetings
Beloved Black Community	p. 158
The Physics of Deliverance	p. 179
The Rationality of Defiance	p. 199
The Courage to Be	p. 219
Free Riders and Freedom Riders	p. 237
Crossing Over into Beloved Community
Artifice and Authenticity	p. 254
Practicing What You Preach	p. 267
Validating the Movement	p. 286
The Allure of Rudeness	p. 302
Black Interludes in the Crossover Moment	p. 318
Notes	p. 339
Index	p. 383
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