The pain, the deep spiritual faith and the radicalness of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: noted author Jonathan Eig laid it all out for the more than 100 people who came to Kenilworth Union Church on Oct. 1 to hear him discuss “King: A Life,” which earned him a Pulitzer Prize, with Rev. William A. Evertsberg, senior minister of the church.
In an interview before the event began, Eig explained how he came to focus on the life and achievements of the pastor, scholar and American civil rights leader and visionary.
“It started out with a book I was writing about Muhammad Ali,” Eig revealed. “I was interviewing people who knew Ali who also knew Martin Luther King. I began to realize that there were hundreds of people alive who knew Martin Luther King and what a gift it would be to interview some of them.”
The author of six books, four of which are New York Times best-sellers, discovered that the last biography of King had been written in 1982.
“It felt like we needed a new King biography,” he said. “In part because we’d lost a little bit of a picture of what he was really like. When we created a national holiday, we watered down his
message, how religious he was, how radical he was.”
The biggest challenge of this project for Eig was having to leave out things he wanted to include about King’s 39 short years of life.
“I could have written a whole book just onmMontgomery or on Birmingham,” Eig said of two of King’s protest initiatives. “But I wanted people to feel the pain of losing him. I wanted people to cry when they got to the end.”
It took Eig about six years to write the book, focusing completely on this writing project.
During the process of exploring King’s life, the author was surprised to discover “how much pain (King) felt and how sad he was in the last years of his life. He felt like no one was
listening to him anymore.”
Eig was also surprised to learn how extensive the FBI’s campaign was against King. They actually recorded his telephone conversations. The author listened to the transcripts of those phone calls. He also discovered that President Lyndon B. Johnson encouraged the FBI to leak King’s personal affairs to the press.
“I was able to get the government to declassify some documents that were in LBJ’s private safe in his office in the White House,” Eig reported. “I was the first person to look at some of those.”
“King: A Life” is packed with information, yet reads like a novel. That was one of the attributes that earned it the Pulitzer in the biography category for 2024.
Eig said that winning a Pulitzer Prize is, “What every journalist dreams of their whole career. But also I think that it’s a recognition of King and how much his message resonates and how much readers wanted to have somebody they can look up to as a moral figure.”
Evertsberg, the senior minister at the church, led an hourlong discussion with Eig in which the audience listened so intently barely a sound was heard.
Eig told Evertsberg that writing this book was “the most emotional experience I’ve had.”
The audience learned how unpopular King was at the end of his life, with polls showing two-thirds of Americans disapproved of him. The author reported that the FBI used King’s personal life “to try to tear him down.” At one time the FBI considered King “the most dangerous man in America,” Eig revealed.
Eig described how intensive his research was into his subject, declaring “I don’t make anything up. I spent thousands of hours going through archives.”
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That included Eig listening to tapes that King’s wife, Coretta Scott King, made when she worked on her book about her life.
Prompted by the interviewer, Eig spoke briefly about King’s protests and rent strikes in Chicago.
“He wanted to show the world that the North had problems, too,” Eig explained, noting that included segregation.
“King was great at making us uncomfortable,” he said.
Eig observed that King opposed the money that was spent on the Vietnam war because there were so many other needs in our own country.
King’s death caused a huge reaction across the country.
“When King was assassinated, the country went up in flames,” Eig said.
The author concluded that writing “King: A Life” has been “the most rewarding experience of my life.” He also praised the opportunity to “connect with King again. If we listen to his words,
he still has the power to inspire.”
Following a very brief chance for audience members to ask questions, the audience was invited to meet with Eig for coffee and cookies and purchase an autographed copy of his books brought to the church from The Book Stall in Winnetka. The books quickly sold out but orders were taken for audience members who couldn’t get a copy at the event.
The book discussion was co-sponsored by St. Paul AME in Glencoe.
Myrna Petlicki is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.