Jonathan Chism. Saints in the Struggle: Church of God in Christ Activists in the Memphis Civil Rights Movement, 1954–1968.

Abstract

In Saints in the Struggle, Chism’s meticulous, exhaustive research and extensive interviews, as well as his careful, straightforward, honest “warts-and-all” prose style make this work a significant contribution to the story of Memphis and to the history of religion and the civil rights movement more broadly. On April 3, 1968, the night before the shot rang out in the Memphis sky, Martin Luther King had to be coaxed (against his own desire to rest after a death threat had upset his plane ride to Memphis to support the sanitation workers’ strike) into appearing at the Mason Temple Church of God in Christ auditorium. He had not planned to attend, but the crowd assembled there wanted to hear him. And he gave, of course, one of the most memorable addresses in American history, one that seemed to presage his fate the next day. His theme of having been to the mountaintop and seen the promised land, was a common one in his addresses, one he had reprised repeatedly in years past, each time varying it a little to fit the occasion and the audience. It had been, for years, one of his greatest hits. But its appearance that night proved especially memorable—for all the wrong reasons.