Living the Dream cover art

Living the Dream

The Contested History of Martin Luther King Jr. Day

Preview
LIMITED TIME OFFER

3 months free
Try for £0.00
£8.99/mo thereafter. Renews automatically. Terms apply. Offer ends 31 July 2025 at 23:59 GMT.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.

Living the Dream

By: Daniel T. Fleming
Narrated by: L. Malaika Cooper
Try for £0.00

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Offer ends 31 July 2025 23:59 GMT. Cancel monthly.

Buy Now for £15.99

Buy Now for £15.99

Confirm Purchase
Pay using card ending in
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.
Cancel

About this listen

Living the Dream tells the history behind the establishment of Martin Luther King Jr. Day and the battle over King's legacy that continued through the decades that followed. Creating the first national holiday to honor an African American was a formidable achievement and an act of resistance against conservative and segregationist opposition.

Congressional efforts to commemorate King began shortly after his assassination. The ensuing political battles slowed the progress of granting him a namesake holiday and crucially defined how his legacy would be received. Though Coretta Scott King's mission to honor her husband's commitment to nonviolence was upheld, conservative politicians sought to use the holiday to advance a whitewashed, nationalistic, and even reactionary vision of King's life and thought. This book reveals the lengths that activists had to go to elevate an African American man to the pantheon of national heroes, how conservatives took advantage of the commemoration to bend the arc of King's legacy toward something he never would have expected, and how grassroots causes, unions, and antiwar demonstrators continued to try to claim this sanctified day as their own.

©2022 The University of North Carolina Press (P)2022 Tantor
Americas Black & African American Freedom & Security Politics & Government Social Sciences United States Civil rights Martin Luther King Socialism Capitalism

Listeners also enjoyed...

The Black President cover art
BLM cover art
The Long Southern Strategy cover art
White Fear cover art
God and Race in American Politics cover art
Almost President cover art
The End of White Politics cover art
The Democrat Party Hates America cover art
The Black History of the White House cover art
The Color of Success cover art
Big Agenda cover art
The Man Who Sold America cover art
Birchers cover art
The Biden Deception cover art
The Enemy Within cover art
The Right cover art
No reviews yet