“You don’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 assassin’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 King’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 America’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 King’s sermons, speeches, storytelling, exhortations, jokes, jeremiads, taunts, repartee, eulogies, confessions, lamentation, and gallows humor, as well as the author’s interviews with members of King’s inner circle. The King who emerges is a distinctively modern figure who, in straddling the boundaries of diverse traditions, ultimately transcended them all.
Jonathan Rieder is Professor of Sociology at Barnard College, Columbia University.
Table of Contents
The Artistry of Argument 1 Inside the Circle of the Tribe The Geometry of Belonging 21 Brotherhood and Brotherhood 32 Backstage and Blackstage 50 Race Men and Real Men 64 The Prophetic Backstage 75 Son of a (Black) Preacher Man Flight from the Folk? 91 Homilies of Black Liberation 110 Raw and Refined 131 King in the Mass Meetings Beloved Black Community 158 The Physics of Deliverance 179 The Rationality of Defiance 199 The Courage to Be 219 Free Riders and Freedom Riders 237 Crossing Over into Beloved Community Artifice and Authenticity 254 Practicing What You Preach 267 Validating the Movement 286 The Allure of Rudeness 302 Black Interludes in the Crossover Moment 318 Notes 339 Index 383
Jonathan Rieder has done Dr. King and history a great service by demonstrating the complexity of King's thought and warning us of the dangers of reducing him to any one aspect of his teaching. Few writers have paid such careful attention to what King said or why he said it, and few have worked so hard to overturn the stereotypes that surround King. All who revere the Good News of justice and reconciliation that King brought to our nation will be moved by Rieder's pathbreaking account.--(E.J. Dionne, Jr., author of Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith and Politics After the Religious Right)
Jonathan Rieder has done Dr. King and history a great service by demonstrating the complexity of King's thought and warning us of the dangers of reducing him to any one aspect of his teaching. Few writers have paid such careful attention to what King said or why he said it, and few have worked so hard to overturn the stereotypes that surround King. All who revere the Good News of justice and reconciliation that King brought to our nation will be moved by Rieder's pathbreaking account.
E.J. Dionne
Jonathan Rieder has done Dr. King and history a great service by demonstrating the complexity of King's thought and warning us of the dangers of reducing him to any one aspect of his teaching. Few writers have paid such careful attention to what King said or why he said it, and few have worked so hard to overturn the stereotypes that surround King. All who revere the Good News of justice and reconciliation that King brought to our nation will be moved by Rieder's pathbreaking account. --(E.J. Dionne, Jr., author of Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith and Politics After the Religious Right)
Charles Johnson
Jonathan Rieder saves Martin Luther King, Jr. from the curse of canonization. He replaces the hagiographic, air-brushed images, and the kitschy plastic dolls with a brilliant reading of King's chameleon-like gift for effortlessly gliding--in public and private--between ethnic and universal idioms, between the street and theological seminars. The Word of the Lord is Upon Me is, then, a superb addition to King scholarship that restores our perception of this great man's complexity, flaws, scars and profound humanity. --(Charles Johnson, author of Middle Passage and Dreamer: A Novel)
David Hollinger
A marvelous book, really special, and quite different from even the best of the King books. Jonathan Rieder demonstrates that King exemplified postethnic ideals, refusing to abandon either the distinctive solidarity of black people or the mutual support that human beings could offer one another across the lines of color and faith. --(David Hollinger, author of Postethnic America)
Henry Louis
Martin Luther King, Jr., the voice of the Civil Rights Movement, knew more than most that words matter, that they are fundamental to any truly democratic mass political movement. In this absolutely brilliant new book, Jonathan Rieder shows how King crafted his rhetoric with a total command of the English language in its standard English register and its African American idioms. Rieder movingly represents King as a master performer who was never less than authentic, who always matched action to thought as manifested in the beauty of his words… Fantastic, an amazing book. --(Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor, Harvard University)
Henry Louis Gates Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr., the voice of the Civil Rights Movement, knew more than most that words matter, that they are fundamental to any truly democratic mass political movement. In this absolutely brilliant new book, Jonathan Rieder shows how King crafted his rhetoric with a total command of the English language in its standard English register and its African American idioms. Rieder movingly represents King as a master performer who was never less than authentic, who always matched action to thought as manifested in the beauty of his words... Fantastic, an amazing book.--(Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor, Harvard University)
Henry Louis Gates
Martin Luther King, Jr., the voice of the Civil Rights Movement, knew more than most that words matter, that they are fundamental to any truly democratic mass political movement. In this absolutely brilliant new book, Jonathan Rieder shows how King crafted his rhetoric with a total command of the English language in its standard English register and its African American idioms. Rieder movingly represents King as a master performer who was never less than authentic, who always matched action to thought as manifested in the beauty of his words… Fantastic, an amazing book. — Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor, Harvard University
Randall Kennedy
A stunning book that offers a genuinely fresh take on the most prominent figure of the civil rights movement. Jonathan Rieder's interpretation of King is not just incisive; it is eloquent and original. --(Randall Kennedy, Michael R. Klein Professor of Law, Harvard Law School)
