Abstract

Book Note

This article focused on the book "I May Not Get There With You: The True Martin Luther King Jr.," by Michael Eric Dyson. As Dyson points out, the dream that King spoke of at the 1963 March on Washington may have hailed the harmony of a color-blind society in the future, but such "a beautiful symphony of brotherhood" would be achieved only after tumultuous transformations. Throughout, Dyson seems to view King as more shaped by his faith than by other people around him. Thus, Dyson's work is aptly titled, and fits into a long lineage of studies of King whose titles project King as messianic. "I May Not Get There With You," continues a tradition, ranging from Stephen Oates' s "Let the Trumpet Sound," to Taylor Branch's "Parting the Waters," David Garrow's "Bearing the cross," and Adam Fairdough's "To Redeem the Soul of America."