Redemption; Martin Luther King Jr.'s Last 31 Hours

Boston: Beacon Press, 2018. First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. x, 204 pages. Illustrations. Notes. Index. During his four decades as a journalist, Joseph Rosenbloom has worked as a staff reporter and editorial writer for The Boston Globe; an investigative reporter at Frontline, the PBS documentary series; and a senior editor at Inc. magazine. He has contributed freelance articles to a variety of magazines and newspapers, including The Boston Globe, International Herald-Tribune, The Wall Street Journal, The American Prospect and The American Lawyer. For his work as an investigative reporter he has received the George Foster Peabody Broadcasting, Emmy and Sevellon Brown Memorial awards. He has a B.A. in history from Stanford University and a J.D. from Columbia University Law School. At 10:33 a.m. on April 3, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., landed in Memphis on a flight from Atlanta. King's reputation as a credible, non-violent leader of the civil rights movement was in jeopardy just as he was launching the Poor Peoples Campaign. He was calling for massive civil disobedience in the nation's capital to pressure lawmakers to enact sweeping anti-poverty legislation. Redemption is an intimate look at the last 31 hours and 28 minutes of King's life. King was being denounced in the press and by political leaders. He was facing dissent within the civil rights movement and among his own staff at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Redemption draws on dozens of interviews by the author with people who were immersed in the Memphis events, features recently released documents from Atlanta archives, and includes compelling photos. The fresh material reveals a never-before- reported lapse by the Memphis Police Department to provide security for King. Also revealed is what his assassin, James Earl Ray, was doing in Memphis during the same time and how a series of extraordinary breaks enabled Ray to construct a sniper's nest and shoot King. Original and riveting.