Clip Job

By Jack E. White

Among the tragic consequences of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination was that he was cut down before he could write his own assessment of his life. Now, 30 years after the murder, his family is attempting to fill the gap with the assistance of Clayborne Carson Jr., a Stanford University professor who edited King's papers. Sadly, The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. (Warner Books, 400 pages, $25) does not deliver the sort of revealing self-examination that characterizes such powerful memoirs as the Life and Times of Frederick Douglass or The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Instead it reads exactly like what it is: a cut-and-paste job, assembled by Carson mainly from King's previously published books and speeches, that glosses over some of the most important episodes in the civil rights leader's remarkable career.

Nowhere, for example, is there any significant discussion of King's tense relationships with John and Robert Kennedy. Nor is there a real discussion of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover's sustained campaign against King, which ranged from wiretapping and character assassination to an attempt to induce him to commit suicide. The book does provide an easily digested compendium of King's eloquent speeches that may entice readers to learn more about his legacy. But as an autobiography, it is a mere imitation of life.

--By Jack E. White