Created Equal: MLK Jr. biographies reveal an intimate look into life of the civil rights icon

Martin Luther King Jr. is a towering figure in America’s history of civil rights and social justice. Despite this, there aren’t many comprehensive biographies on the activist. As more research and public records become available, King can be fully rendered as a person.

Two Pulitzer Prize-winning biographers attempted to dig into King as an individual.

In 1986, David Garrow wrote Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. The work is compiled of more than seven hundred interviews, King’s personal papers, and thousands of FBI documents to trace his life from a young pastor to one of the leaders of the Civil Rights movement.

Jonathan Eig wrote King: A Life in 2023. It discusses the dark and complex emotions King faced in his personal and professional life as he grew into a civil rights icon.

Today on Created Equal, both Eig and Garrow joined host Stephen Henderson to discuss how America’s understanding of King has developed since his assassination on April 4, 1968.

Guests

David Garrow won the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for Biography for his book, Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. The author and historian says King was uncomfortable with being placed in a celebrity role when being credited for the Civil Rights movement. 

“King was not someone who sought out a public leadership role, and indeed, as he became more and more famous through the years, he became more and more uncomfortable about this degree of celebrity and praise that was focused on him,” Garrow said. “He quite rightly felt, [it] was excessive, [and] that the credit for the movement should be understood as being shared far, far more broadly.”

Jonathan Eig wrote King: A Life, which won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Biography. The biographer and journalist said being able to read previous biographies of King allowed him to adopt a more intimate lens when creating his work. 

“I felt like it was time for a book that reminded us of his humanity, that he was flawed, that he doesn’t have to be perfect to be a hero and to be as courageous as he was, and that it would be a book that would exist in a different space than than some of those that had come before.”