"A rich... retelling of King's life... a compelling account." — The Wall Street Journal"An engaging, detailed examination... that goes a long way in humanizing the American hero’s public image." — The Atlanta Journal ConstitutionFrom a preeminent King scholar, the origin story of the man, minister, and civil rights hero who would lead the nation and change the world.We know who Martin Luther King, ...

From a preeminent King scholar, the origin story of the man, minister, and civil rights hero who would lead the nation and change the world.We know who Martin Luther King, Jr. became, but who was he at the beginning of his life? How did his youth inform his outlook and activism?Before Martin Luther King, Jr. was a civil rights leader, a Nobel Laureate, and a global hero, he was an emotional boy, a middling high school student devoted to fashion, dancing, an...

The shocking untold story of how the FBI partnered with white evangelicals to champion a vision of America as a white Christian nationOn a Sunday morning in 1966, a group of white evangelicals dedicated a stained glass window to J. Edgar Hoover. The FBI director was not an evangelical, but his Christian admirers anointed him as their political champion, believing he would lead America back to God. The Gospel of J. Edgar Hoover reveals how Hoover and his FB...

A multi-award-winning volume—the overlooked African American religious history of the phonograph industry.From 1925 to 1941, approximately one hundred African American clergymen teamed up with leading record labels such as Columbia, Paramount, and Victor-RCA to record and sell their sermons on wax. While white clerics of the era, such as Aimee Semple McPherson and Charles Fuller, became religious entrepreneurs and celebrities through their pioneering use of radio, ...

Winner of an Abraham Lincoln Institute Book AwardThough not blind to Abraham Lincoln's imperfections, Black Americans long ago laid a heartfelt claim to his legacy. At the same time, they have consciously reshaped the sixteenth president's image for their own social and political ends. Frederick Hord and Matthew D. Norman's anthology explores the complex nature of views on Lincoln through the writings and thought of Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Mary Mc...

The shocking untold story of how the FBI partnered with white evangelicals to champion a vision of America as a white Christian nation.Lerone Martin draws on thousands of newly declassified FBI documents and memos to describe how, under J. Edgar Hoover's leadership, FBI agents attended spiritual retreats and worship services, creating an FBI religious culture that fashioned G-men into soldiers and ministers of Christian America. Martin shows how prominent figures s...