The making of a King
St. Louis readers will have a chance to hear directly from one of the country’s foremost Martin Luther King Jr. scholars when Dr. Lerone Martin visits the Clark Family Branch on Saturday, May 9. The historian will discuss and sign his new book, “Young King: The Making of Martin Luther King, Jr.,” as part of […] The post The making of a King appeared first on St. Louis American.
Black News 
St. Louis readers will have a chance to hear directly from one of the country’s foremost Martin Luther King Jr. scholars when Dr. Lerone Martin visits the Clark Family Branch on Saturday, May 9. The historian will discuss and sign his new book, “Young King: The Making of Martin Luther King, Jr.,” as part of a collaboration between the St. Louis County Library Foundation and the Missouri Historical Society.
Martin will be in conversation with Cicely Hunter, Public Historian for the Missouri Historical Society’s African American History Initiative.
Young King examines the early life of Martin Luther King Jr. — not the global figure etched into American memory, but the young man still finding his way. The book asks the central questions: Who was he at the beginning of his life? How did his youth inform his outlook and activism?
Martin traces King’s development from “an emotional boy, a middling high school student devoted to fashion, dancing, and dating” into the minister and movement leader who would help change the nation. As Faculty Director of the Martin Luther King Institute at Stanford University, he uses King’s early experiences to build a fuller picture of the preacher’s emotional life, his uncertainty about his future, and the influences that shaped his commitment to justice.
The work has drawn praise from leading scholars. “Lerone Martin’s masterful Young King puts to rest the persistent myth that Martin Luther King, Jr.’s life was a predestined, divinely ordained climb toward civil rights leadership and martyrdom,” said Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr. “Young Martin instead gives us a far more enriching, powerful, and real story, one that shows how King the person developed his conscience and convictions in the context of family, community, education, love, and struggle.”
Martin’s scholarship has long emphasized the importance of understanding King beyond the familiar mythology. Upon his appointment at Stanford in 2022, he noted, “Martin Luther King is still very relevant today. MLK is the only individual who is honored on the National Mall who is not a president. We know so much about the words of Jefferson, Lincoln, Washington, and Roosevelt, but we don’t know a whole lot about the words of King other than ‘I Have a Dream.’”
He also pushes back against the tendency to soften King’s legacy. “It’s easy for King to be narrated or mythologized as someone who was passive. Yet King was radical, at least the federal government felt that way. We’ve got to make sure that we tell that story,” Martin said.
Martin is the Martin Luther King Jr. Centennial Professor in Religious Studies and director of the King Research and Education Institute at Stanford. He previously taught at Washington University in St. Louis and is an internationally recognized author and speaker whose work has appeared on the Today Show, the History Channel, PBS, NPR, C-SPAN, and in publications including the New York Times and the Boston Globe. He also serves as senior editor of the Martin Luther King Jr. Papers Project and was an adviser on the PBS documentary series Gospel.
The book signing and discussion will take place on Saturday, May 9, 7:00 p.m. at the Clark Family Branch, 1640 S. Lindbergh Blvd., St. Louis, MO 63131. Books will be available for purchase and signing from Left Bank Books. For more information, visit www.slcl.org.
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