Living the Dream
The Contested History of Martin Luther King Jr. Day
By Daniel T. Fleming
336 pp., 6.125 x 9.25, 11 halftones
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Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4696-6781-2
Published: June 2022 -
E-book EPUB ISBN: 978-1-4696-6782-9
Published: March 2022 -
E-book PDF ISBN: 979-8-8908-5926-6
Published: March 2022
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Congressional efforts to commemorate King began shortly after his assassination. The ensuing political battles slowed the progress of granting him a namesake holiday and crucially defined how his legacy would be received. Though Coretta Scott King's mission to honor her husband's commitment to nonviolence was upheld, conservative politicians sought to use the holiday to advance a whitewashed, nationalistic, and even reactionary vision of King's life and thought. This book reveals the lengths that activists had to go to elevate an African American man to the pantheon of national heroes, how conservatives took advantage of the commemoration to bend the arc of King's legacy toward something he never would have expected, and how grassroots causes, unions, and antiwar demonstrators continued to try to claim this sanctified day as their own.
About the Author
Daniel T. Fleming is lecturer at the University of New South Wales.
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Reviews
"Fleming uses the King holiday to show that desires for racial reconciliation collapsed under the weight of good intentions set out by whites and Blacks alike. This is the book’s most important message. . . . a much-needed addition to the growing literature on civil rights memory."—Marvin T. Chiles, Journal of Southern History
"A riveting book that provides many insights for further reflection for historians, activists, and those committed to furthering and interpreting King's legacy. The study is expertly sourced and accessibly written.”—Anglican and Episcopal History
“In the first book-length study of its kind, Daniel Fleming has added significantly to our understanding of the King holiday and debates around it. Through extensive archival research, Living the Dream offers an intriguing vantage point for exploring the racial views and policies of the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton administrations.”—Renee Romano, author of Racial Reckoning: Prosecuting America’s Civil Rights Murders
“As a King scholar, I found Fleming’s work to be first rate. This book will not only make a significant contribution to the growing body of King scholarship, but it will be welcomed by people interested in American history generally, as well as African American history, the civil rights movement, American political development, and public policy specifically.”—Justin Rose, author of The Drum Major Instinct: Martin Luther King Jr.’s Theory of Political Service
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