8The Daily Tar Heel Thursday, Janaury 15, 1987
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hagiography, that laudatory analysis
too easily becomes beatifying praise.
In Garrow's case, his deep involve
ment with King on the level of
invested research (much, if not all,'
of his previous work deals with King)
must have made a hagiography all
the more appealing. King's religious
background and his absolute rejec
tion of violence undoubtedly did the
same.
Given that, Garrow has not fashi
oned a simplistic or uncritical bio
graphy, and one would suppose that
the sheer weight of his magnificent
research, clearly the book's greatest
asset, precluded such an approach.
More than seven hundred interviews
were conducted for the book, and the
bibliography is similarly stunning.
But the awesome research does not
save the book from its faults. Cer
tainly it is comprehensive, and
certainly Garrow knows his subject.
But his narrative is excessively
chronological, and the lack of anal
ysis is troublesome. Garrow tells us
what happened, and then what
happened next. But too often he does
not attempt to explain why it hap
pened, or. more disturbingly, to knit
together the consequences. The result
is a portrait of King which is less
compelling than it could be and a
history of SCLC which is less
insightful than it might have been;
Still, Garrow has fashioned an
intriguing life of King, and he is
clearly not afraid to shatter any
illusions of King's moral purity. For
if Garrow avoids wallowing in the
dirt of King's life, neither does he shy
away from the dominant contradic
tion of that life: what he calls King's
"compulsive sexual athleticism."
Garrow's recounting of King's
extramarital affairs, which were
many and varied, is at first jarring.
But the story is valuable as a means
of humanizing King, of putting
muscle on the bare bones of the
portrait. King termed sex a form of
"anxiety reduction", but Garrow
suggests his attitude toward sex was
not unique in the movement. As
University Square Chap Hilt 967-8935
Informational Meeting
mO YEAR IN MONTPSLUER
Wednesday, January 21
3:30-5:30 in Toy Lounge
3:30 Video Presentation
4:00 Student Panel '
Michael Harrington said, "Everyone
was out getting laid." The invigorat
ing spirit of youth and passionate
rebellion enabled inhibitions to be
discarded along with traditional roles
of subservience.
Garrow, though, also relates
King's sexual exploits to his chauv
inistic vision of women. Apparently
unencumbered by traditional notions
of fidelity, King was dominated by
the traditional conception of a
woman's place as the home. Thus he
excluded his wife from involvement
with the movement and was wary of
women active in SCLC.
That wariness was extended to
others in the movement. Indeed, the
most compelling aspect of Garrow's
book involves the infighting between
the various civil rights groups. This
is not the story of leaders able to put
away their personal differences and
hide their egos in the pursuit of
justice. It is rather the tale of
enormously proud men, convinced of
their own ability, invigorated with a
spirit of defying authority, who spent
nearly as much time arguing with
each other as they did battling the
Bull Connors of the world.
In these intramural skirmishes.
King sought to serve as a mediator.
At first, he was able to bridge the
chasm between SNCC and the
NAACP, but gradually he split with
the older organization on questions
of hierarchical authority and his
support of the Johnson administra
tion. At the same time, the young
turks of SNCC became more vocif
erous in their demands for "black
power" which Garrow contrasts with
SCLC's call for "freedom now", and
their toleration of violence against
the white establishment.
It was the last point which King
could not concede, and which even
tually left him out in the cold as far
as many black militants were con
cerned. The roots of the SCLC
SNCC conflict lay in the fundamen
tally different approaches the two
organizations took toward local
action. The SNCC wanted to limit
from page 7
external interference and to give the
local movements full authority in
deciding what course of action to
take. The SCLC, in part because of
King's national prominence, favored
more hands-on involvement. It was
this approach which brought King
to Albany, St. Augustine and Selma.
Of course, SCLC's influence
waned as King was forced to fight
on less familiar turf and face more
accomplished foes. Indeed, as he
shifted his focus toward the broader
concerns of poverty and economic
injustice, causes without obvious
malefactors, King was diminished in
stature. There were no police dogs
on the side of the rich, no firehoses
operated by the slumlords. The evil
was systemic. It could not be faced
down.
Through it all, though, King
remained faithful to his code of non
violence, and it was this stand which
ultimately ruptured the SCLC
SNCC coalition. During the Missis
sippi Meredith March, King battled
with Stokely Carmichael of the
SNCC over support of black self
defense groups. More significantly,
after a meeting with Rap Brown in
early 1 968 on the Poor People's
Campaign, King exploded at SCLC's
executive director after he expressed
sympathy with the black nationalists.
Brown had amplified Carmichael's
violent rhetoric, and King was
disgusted. "Violence begets violence,
that's what it's all about, and they're
wrong and you're wrong," he said.
At the heart of Garrow's portrait,
then, is a King who loved peace, who
loved nonviolence, with the same
passion he loved justice and hated
racism. Change at the cost of violence
was not change worth achieving, in
King's view. This is not to suggest
that King was a quiet Uncle Tom,
begging whites for their help. He was
in some ways a true radical, militant
about his values and about justice.
But his was not the militancy of black
power. It was, instead, the militancy
of freedom.
Protest
from page 7
was a chicken. But an alternative
answer is that 1 felt a tremedous
respect, loyalty for the University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I
didn't think it would help the Uni
versity of North Carolina for
members of the teaching faculty to
be arrested for protesting some law
that is on the books.
"I guess my conservative advice
was a little like the conservative
advice of gradualism toward civil
rights." Straley said that attitude
sprang from "a tendency to intellec
tualize things rather than participate.
"I really didn't fit in with the
revolutionary crowd, but I endorsed
their right to object."
People
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birth
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(4th Floor. Dey Hall, UNC)
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