
- 352 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
About this book
Living the Dream tells the history behind the establishment of Martin Luther King Jr. Day and the battle over King’s legacy that continued through the decades that followed. Creating the first national holiday to honor an African American was a formidable achievement and an act of resistance against conservative and segregationist opposition.
Congressional efforts to commemorate King began shortly after his assassination. The ensuing political battles slowed the progress of granting him a namesake holiday and crucially defined how his legacy would be received. Though Coretta Scott King’s mission to honor her husband’s commitment to nonviolence was upheld, conservative politicians sought to use the holiday to advance a whitewashed, nationalistic, and even reactionary vision of King’s life and thought. This book reveals the lengths that activists had to go to elevate an African American man to the pantheon of national heroes, how conservatives took advantage of the commemoration to bend the arc of King’s legacy toward something he never would have expected, and how grassroots causes, unions, and antiwar demonstrators continued to try to claim this sanctified day as their own.
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Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Introduction
- 1. Fighting to Desegregate the American Calendar (1968β1983)
- 2. Living the Dream: A Color-Blind Holiday (1984β1986)
- 3. Let Freedom Ring: Celebrating in the Reagan Era (1986β1989)
- 4. The World House: King Day in the Age of Democratic Revolutions (1989β1992)
- 5. A Day On, Not a Day Off: Transforming the King Holiday (1993β1995)
- 6. The Coca-Cola Scenario: Privatizing King Day (1995β1996)
- 7. To Sleep, Shop, or Serve?: The Holiday in Transition (1997β2000)
- 8. In the Streets: Reclaiming the King Holiday (2001 to the Present)
- Conclusion
- Acknowledgments
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index