by Marshall Frady: Viking Penguin, 2002.
As many people are aware, Martin Luther King, Jr. fame rises from the civil rights movement, his very influential, memorial speeches, and his leadership for protesting for equality. He is a hero to many. As I read and reread the book written by Mr. Frady I ask myself over and over what was his purpose in writing this biography. The only answer I can come up with is that Mr. Frady attempted to tell the entire truth from a non-prejudicial point of view. He had nothing to gain or to lose by doing so. I believe Mr. Frady wanted to depict every aspect of Martin Luther King, Jr's life so people would get a full image from the beginning to the end, not just a partial picture of him in which many of us have. .
Some of the things that Mr. Frady talked about were offensive to me as a reader because I did not know that part of Martin Luther King, Jr's life. I have only heard all of the positive things about him. Others were more detailed than I have ever read or heard. One issue in particular was during his school years. Mr. Frady depicts Martin Luther King, Jr. as being very studious, however, he also gave the image of him being a womanizer and an excessive drinker during his years in the Crozier Theological Seminary. Frady stated that King and several friends were known as "the Wreckers" (pp 17). When King explained what that was he stated, "We wreck girls." King would usually do the scouting for comely prospects for the rest of them, picking the comeliest for himself. (pp 17).
Mr. Frady also stated that while Martin Luther King, Jr. attended Boston University he had fallen in love with a daughter of an immigrant German woman. He dated her for a while, contemplating marriage and eventually stopped dating her because his friends continuously admonished the interracial marriage. Not long after then he met and fell in love with Coretta Scott. The way this was mentioned was as though Coretta the rebound woman replacing the woman he really loved.