In a recent Chicago Tribune review of Thomas F. Jackson’s From Civil Rights to Human Rights, Eric Arnesen writes:
Jackson . . . goes farther than many historians in arguing that King’s radicalism–which scholars, if not the general public, have recognized–predated the mid-1960s. . . .
Jackson makes a persuasive case that King was exposed to various radical
critiques at an early stage, that he laced his speeches with moral indictments
of inequality and praise for Scandinavian social democracies, and that he
sympathized-in private though not in public (at least before the
mid-1960s)-with more-left-wing critiques of American society. He also
establishes that economic demands were more central to King’s evolving agenda
than we have previously thought. (Journalists, he shows, largely ignored
King’s more-radical pronouncements on economic injustice.)
Read the complete review at www.chicagotribune.com.
