He applied the "Page 99 Test" to his new book King: Pilgrimage to the Mountaintop, and reported the following:
My page 99 is the end of a four-page description and analysis of Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” which I consider one of the most cogent and eloquent American political writings. It is King at his best: violating a court injunction (an unjust law is no law at all); going to jail (by accepting imprisonment in order to arouse the community over its injustice, you were expressing the highest respect for law); refuting charges of being an “outside agitator” (Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere); defending his “extremism” and tactics of nonviolent direct-action civil disobedience (We have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure.... We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed); explaining why African Americans should not be patient with injustice (Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation); and scorching the moderates or gradualists (I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s greatest stumbling block is not the White Citizen Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to “order” than to justice).Learn more about King: Pilgrimage to the Mountaintop at the publisher's website.
The King of my book is no mere dreamer and apostle of love. He is a fighter for change. And the Movement he helped lead did, indeed, change the legal status of African Americans, usher in significant political change, and undermine a way of life built on ingrained racial discrimination and segregation.
--Marshal Zeringue
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