PERHAPS A GIFT VOUCHER FOR MUM?: MOTHER'S DAY
"Jason Sokol is the Arthur K. Withcomb Associate Professor of History at the University of New Hampshire since 2016, and was previously a Fellow at Harvard College's Department of African and African American Studies. He holds a PhD in U.S. history from the University of California, Berkeley, and was previously a Visiting Assistant Professor of History and Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at Cornell University and a Mellow Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. Sokol's first book, There Goes My Everything: White Southerners in the Age of Civil Rights, received rave reviews and was named one of the best books of 2006 by the Washington Post Book World. He was also named one of America's ""Top Young Historians"" by the History News Network, and his writing has appeared in the Nation, the New York Times, Slate, and the Boston Globe. Sokol lives in Newburyport, Massachusetts."
Jason Sokol details with aching clarity how King's assassination and the urban uprisings of April 1968 sent shock waves across the landscapes of America's racial crisis and the world's revolts. Whites, taught to fear the headline-hunting high priest of nonviolent violence, celebrated King's death and armed themselves for race war. Militant Blacks, having warmed to King's crusade against poverty and the Vietnam War, bitterly rejected his nonviolence. Politicians who spurned King in life immediately began to smooth an unthreatening icon for a post-racial America, a portrait at sharp odds with King's jagged opposition to inequality and militarism. With astonishing sweep, Sokol also recovers thousands of others who redeemed the suffering by re-dedicating themselves to peace and social justice: counter-rioters who prevented even more deadly violence in America's cities; university students who sat-in to protect the rights of maids and janitors; congressmen who pushed through landmark gun-control legislation; antiwar protesters in Berlin, Paris, and London; and Africans who proclaimed King a Son of Black Africa as they denounced American racism and South African apartheid. The heavens might have cracked, but Sokol's not-too-distant mirror shimmers with intensity and the recognition of King's continued relevance to our own travails. -Thomas F. Jackson, Associate Professor of History, University of North Carolina In this powerful, moving account of King's death and its aftermath, historian Jason Sokol plumbs the depths of white racism to reveal a dark chapter in the nation's history that many of those who today celebrate King would like us to forget: the vicious attacks and intense loathing directed at King during his life; the callous, celebratory reactions to his assassination among a shockingly large segment of white America; the contentious battles over his legacy and public memory in the years that followed; and the cynical and self-serving appropriation and distortion of his message by the Right today. Coming at a moment when an open racist occupies the highest office in the land and white terrorists proudly march in our streets, Sokol's book helps us understand how we got here, and how the forces of hatred and bigotry that ended King's life were never fully extinguished but remain very much with us today. A must read. --Andrew W. Kahrl, author of Free the Beaches: The Story of Ned Coll and the Battle for America's Most Exclusive Shoreline Jason Sokol's book is not a biography of MLK, it is something more: a weaving of King's life both in the hostile contemporary reactions he evoked and, 50 years later, in the mythic adoration of a dream--all the while revealing the deep racial antipathy that persists in American life. A most powerful book: well written, deeply researched, thoughtful, and honest. --Nick Salvatore, Cornell University Jason Sokol has done it again! Following his insightful studies of white southerners in the civil rights era and of racial politics in the North, Sokol skillfully weaves the myriad reactions to Martin Luther King's assassination to provide a major perspective on the past half-century of race in the United States. Beginning with the day of King's murder, when most historical accounts of Martin Luther King end, Sokol underlines how King's death shaped our future and reveals why his assassination was far more than the death of one man. In vivid prose rooted in deep, wide-ranging research, The Heavens Might Crack is an indispensable read for all who would comprehend the past and care for our future. --Harvard Sitkoff, Emeritus Professor of History, University of New Hampshire
