9 Days: The Race to Save Martin Luther King Jr.’s Life and Win the 1960 Election

“[An] inspiring ebook in regards to the occasions main as much as the 1960 election, from Dr. King’s imprisonment to scholar activism in Atlanta to JFK’s marketing campaign. It is a story we are able to all be taught from―a narrative of ignored heroes and the ability every of us has to create change.” ―Barack Obama

A New York Instances E book Evaluate Editors’ Selection | One among O journal’s greatest books of February 2021

The authors of Douglass and Lincoln current totally for the primary time the story of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s imprisonment within the days main as much as the 1960 presidential election and the efforts of three of John F. Kennedy’s civil rights staffers who went rogue to free him―a transfer that modified the face of the Democratic Celebration and propelled Kennedy to the White Home.

Lower than three weeks earlier than the 1960 presidential election, thirty-one-year-old Martin Luther King, Jr. was arrested at a sit-in at Wealthy’s Division Retailer in Atlanta. That day would result in the primary evening King had ever spent in jail―and the time that King’s household most feared for his life.

An earlier, minor site visitors ticket served as a pretext for holding King locked up, and later for a harrowing nighttime switch to Reidsville, the infamous Georgia state jail the place Black inmates labored on chain gangs overseen by violent white guards. Whereas King’s imprisonment was decried as an ethical scandal in some quarters and celebrated in others, for the 2 presidential candidates―John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon―it was the final word October shock: an rising and controversial civil rights chief was languishing behind bars, and the 2 campaigns raced to determine whether or not, and the way, to reply.

Stephen and Paul Kendrick’s 9 Days tells the unbelievable story of what occurred subsequent. In 1960, the Civil Rights Motion was rising more and more ingenious and energized whereas white politicians favored the corrosive ways of silence and stalling―however an audacious staff within the Kennedy marketing campaign’s Civil Rights Part (CRS) determined to behave. In an election when Black voters appeared poised to separate their votes between the candidates, the CRS satisfied Kennedy to agitate for King’s launch, generally even going behind his again of their quest to safe his freedom. Over the course of 9 extraordinary October days, the leaders of the CRS―pioneering Black journalist Louis Martin, future Pennsylvania senator Harris Wofford, and Sargent Shriver, the founding father of the Peace Corps―labored to tilt a decent election in Kennedy’s favor and convey a couple of revolution in occasion affiliation whose penalties are nonetheless integral to the observe of politics immediately.

Based mostly on contemporary interviews, newspaper accounts, and intensive archival analysis, 9 Days is the primary full recounting of an occasion that modified the course of one of many closest elections in American historical past. Way more than a political thriller, it is usually the story of the primary time King refused bail and got here to phrases with the damaging course of his mission to alter a nation. Without delay a narrative of electoral machinations, ethical braveness, and, finally, the triumph of a future president’s higher angels, 9 Days is a gripping story with vital classes for our personal time.