ETHOS

Editors Note: This is a review I did over the summer that was withheld due to a conflict of interests relating to the employment situation of one of our bloggers. I am publishing it now because it has been several months, and I doubt Dyson would give a shit about a scathing review of one of his books on a blog as irrelevant as this one. But, if you are reading this Dr. Rev. Mr. MC Dyson PhD (or whatever it is you call your bespectacled self), if you don’t like the harsh reviews, start writing better books. Translation: If you can’t stand the heat, get out the kitchen.

April 4, 1968: Martin Luther King Jr’s Death and How it Changed America

Michael Eric Dyson

Basic Civitas Books, 2008

270 pages, $25

Review by Eric Augenbraun

I intended to write this review sooner, but my principles interfered; in a word, I refuse to pay for books that I expect to be worth far less than the cover price. So, given the fact that professor, ordained minister, and self-proclaimed activist/public intellectual Michael Eric Dyson’s latest waste of paper book, April 4, 1968: Martin Luther King Jr’s Death and How it Changed America, was checked out of the University of Pennsylvania’s library until about a week ago, I couldn’t get around to reading and commenting on it until now. Despite not paying a cent for this cute little mess—aside from Penn’s $50,000 tuition which includes library privileges (imagine that!)—after reading it, I still felt compelled to go back to the library and demand a refund of the time I had just wasted. But alas, the library has yet to invest in a time travel device—I can only urge them to look into it.

Many will recognize the date April 4th, 1968 as the day Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated while standing on the balcony outside of his room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. The year 2008 thus marks the 40th year since King’s tragic death. On this somber anniversary, Dyson’s deceptively short 270-page volume is an “effort to grapple with King’s death—in [Dyson’s] own mind, and in the life of the nation.” With ten chapters sandwiched between a short prologue and a lengthy afterword, this book is divided into three parts, each with a somewhat distinct area of inquiry. Part one explores how King understood his own mortality and dealt with the looming threat of his death as he rose to prominence in lockstep with the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement. Part two is an examination of the state of black America in the post-King, post-Civil Rights, post-Voting Rights Amendment years. Finally, part three is a look at black leadership since King’s death—namely, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and Barack Obama. Unfortunately, Dyson’s book delivers very little that could be considered new or particularly insightful, and where it strays from the beaten path it arrives at several conceptual and methodological cul-de-sacs.

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