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The Heavens Might Crack: The Death and Legacy of Martin Luther King Jr.
A vivid portrait of how Americans grappled with King's death and legacy in the days, weeks, and months after his assassination
On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was fatally shot as he stood on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. At the time of his murder, King was a polarizing figure -- scorned by many white Americans, worshipped by some African Americans and liberal whites, and deemed irrelevant by many black youth. In The Heavens Might Crack , historian Jason Sokol traces the diverse responses, both in America and throughout the world, to King's death. Whether celebrating or mourning, most agreed that the final flicker of hope for a multiracial America had been extinguished.
A deeply moving account of a country coming to terms with an act of shocking violence, The Heavens Might Crack is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand America's fraught racial past and present.
On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was fatally shot as he stood on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. At the time of his murder, King was a polarizing figure -- scorned by many white Americans, worshipped by some African Americans and liberal whites, and deemed irrelevant by many black youth. In The Heavens Might Crack , historian Jason Sokol traces the diverse responses, both in America and throughout the world, to King's death. Whether celebrating or mourning, most agreed that the final flicker of hope for a multiracial America had been extinguished.
A deeply moving account of a country coming to terms with an act of shocking violence, The Heavens Might Crack is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand America's fraught racial past and present.
352 pages, Hardcover
First published March 20, 2018
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
May 27, 2018
April 2018, marked fifty years since the murder of Martin Luther King on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. There to give support to a garbage workers strike, in his clear, telling speech, he predicted his death. Extensively researched, this author outlines the events occurring after King's assassination. In a majority of American major cities, riots broke out wherein shooting and looting reigned as buildings and entire city blocks were set on fire.
Before his death, King seemed to change his direction from Civil Rights to focus on the travesty of Viet Nam. A year before his death, from the pulpit of Riverside Church in New York City, King implored America politicians to enact bills to spend money on feeding their poor instead of raining deadly chemicals down on innocents in a foreign land. King spoke of an increasingly vile, morally-lacking society. America was in trouble and going downward more rapidly than any could predict.
Advocating for jobs and housing for the poor, King's speeches became increasingly caustic. When he walked with those working in the sanitation field, chaos and looting occurred on a large scale. This, his opposition noted, was nothing new -- King fostered violence where ever he went.
While the joy of the previous passing of the Civil Rights Act occurred, increasingly, President Johnson put distance between himself and King as King threw volley after volley of criticism of a war that should not have started, and could not be won.
Many believed that King was nothing more than a rabble-roser, who created crime, looting and violence where ever he was. Post his receipt of the Noble Peace Prize, even those who counted themselves as members of his team, felt his ego was increasingly out of control.
And, as his control slipped, no longer was the focus on passive dis-obiedence, now instead, there was a loud call for militancy. Instead of hope and love, the call for violence on the white man rang throughout American as Malcolm X and Stokley Carmichael were able to lead a majority of disenfranchised poor who were weary of the wait. And, throughout America as the rift between black and white grew, the cities burnt.
The author does an incredible job in outlining how King's legacy of hope and love, grew to be a sharp focus on the black who blamed the white man for killing King, while the white majority continued the chasm of meeting in the middle.
Four Stars!
Before his death, King seemed to change his direction from Civil Rights to focus on the travesty of Viet Nam. A year before his death, from the pulpit of Riverside Church in New York City, King implored America politicians to enact bills to spend money on feeding their poor instead of raining deadly chemicals down on innocents in a foreign land. King spoke of an increasingly vile, morally-lacking society. America was in trouble and going downward more rapidly than any could predict.
Advocating for jobs and housing for the poor, King's speeches became increasingly caustic. When he walked with those working in the sanitation field, chaos and looting occurred on a large scale. This, his opposition noted, was nothing new -- King fostered violence where ever he went.
While the joy of the previous passing of the Civil Rights Act occurred, increasingly, President Johnson put distance between himself and King as King threw volley after volley of criticism of a war that should not have started, and could not be won.
Many believed that King was nothing more than a rabble-roser, who created crime, looting and violence where ever he was. Post his receipt of the Noble Peace Prize, even those who counted themselves as members of his team, felt his ego was increasingly out of control.
And, as his control slipped, no longer was the focus on passive dis-obiedence, now instead, there was a loud call for militancy. Instead of hope and love, the call for violence on the white man rang throughout American as Malcolm X and Stokley Carmichael were able to lead a majority of disenfranchised poor who were weary of the wait. And, throughout America as the rift between black and white grew, the cities burnt.
The author does an incredible job in outlining how King's legacy of hope and love, grew to be a sharp focus on the black who blamed the white man for killing King, while the white majority continued the chasm of meeting in the middle.
Four Stars!
June 17, 2018
Good book overall. Normally, I only 4-star books like this, but ...
Although not of 400 page depth, everything Sokol talked about he nailed, and with at least a reasonable depth. Also, though written for the 50th anniversary of King's assassination, it didn't appear a rush job.
The key part is from about 1980, the effort to make King's birthday a holiday, with conservative resistance and backlash, followed by acceptance that was combined with basically trying to emasculate, figuratively, both King the person and his message. (That said, in red-lands America, especially in more rural areas, one can still find plenty of more racist, rather than neutering, takes on King.)
Although not of 400 page depth, everything Sokol talked about he nailed, and with at least a reasonable depth. Also, though written for the 50th anniversary of King's assassination, it didn't appear a rush job.
The key part is from about 1980, the effort to make King's birthday a holiday, with conservative resistance and backlash, followed by acceptance that was combined with basically trying to emasculate, figuratively, both King the person and his message. (That said, in red-lands America, especially in more rural areas, one can still find plenty of more racist, rather than neutering, takes on King.)
March 28, 2023
I first came to Sokol's scholarship through his very good study of how white Southerners were impacted by the Civil Rights movement, brilliantly titled, There Goes My Everything: White Southerners in the Age of Civil Rights, 1945-1975. While not quite to the level of that work on Civil Rights history, this book on the death and legacy of Dr. King is a good addition to the scholarship on King and that period of history. Sokol has written another good study here and it pairs nicely with David Chappell's, Waking From the Dream: The Struggle for Civil Rights in the Shadow of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Sokol's work here is primarily a narrative, as his own interpretation, while present, isn't the driving engine of the book. The first couple of chapters center on the assassination itself and the immediate aftermath socially and politically. While not a blow-by-blow account (read Hampton Sides' incredible account Hellhound on His Trail for that) Sokol does a find job retelling that fateful day and the days that followed. The events and characters of Sokol's narrative unfold the story well.
It is in the "legacy" of King's death and life's work that the majority of the book resides. Sokol unpacks neatly the divisional, even radical nature of King, and chronicles his impact on whites and blacks alike, and how his last years cleaved the country along the fracture lines of politics, race, religion, the philosophy of non-violence, and the Vietnam war.
But most of the legacy that draws Sokol's attention is that which follows almost directly on the heels of the assassination. With depth and clarity, Sokol takes the reader through the responses of whites and blacks, college students and artists, Africans and Europeans, politicians and writers. These varied reactions - from deep sorrow and mourning to violence and rage - are set in the context of how these groups were "reading" or responding to King's activism in the last years of King's life when he was pushing "revolutionary" rhetoric alongside the appeals to nonviolence; when he was appealing to the consciences of white middle class Christians while planning for a Poor People's march and in his final days, readying himself to march alongside striking sanitation workers.
His messages resonated with some, repulsed others and as he became a vocal critic of the US engagement in the Vietnam War, he stood in opposition to long held cultural notions of military might and the methodology of the Cold War. King's growing stature as a "radical" preceded his death and informed the varied convulsions that followed his burial.
Sokol did not adhere his research to an equal measure of a longer-term legacy, and while surprising to this reader, such is not a criticism. It is not until the last chapter that the analysis is brought into a more "modern" context, if one starts the era of modernity in the late 1970's and 80's. I found these final pages and analysis enlightening as Sokol demonstrates how the nation, while remaining divided along racial lines and in terms of what to do with the memory of King nonetheless got to work arguing over everything from gun control legislation to renaming streets (and which streets in which part of the city!) to installing a Federal holiday in King's memory and honor. While the chorus rose quickly over these needs, so too did the din that dared to drown out such efforts. As much as King was controversial before death, so too was his immediate legacy following it.
Though it took time, in the end, King's legacy settled into the soil of American "sainthood" replete with a Washington DC memorial and a federal holiday, not to mention hundreds of streets renamed for him across the land. He had become a hero, in part because with martyrdom "myth naturally follows." (page 253). Sokol writes: Americans were able to so admire King because they picked and chose which parts of his career they wanted to embrace. They scrubbed his message and blunted his meaning. Eventually, the historical King -- a courageous dissident who unsettled the powerful -- would be replaced by a mythical one. Many white Americans concentrated on that single line from King's "I Have a Dream" speech and effectively reduced his life to one quotation. They began to appropriate King's legacy and wield it in their own causes. ... King's legacy remained bitterly contested." (pages 223-224)
In that lies, perhaps, the nature of prophet-like figures. King spoke against the militancy of the black separatism and a rising Black Power movement of his day, which many in the white majority loved (or appreciated), yet he also dared to challenge the status quo on the US involvement in Vietnam while advocating for affirmative action and a democratic socialism on economic matters that (would have) increasingly annoyed or even angered whites had he lived on and preached on into the 1970's or beyond.
Such controversies are shrouded in death, thus Sokol's interpretation of how white America appropriated the "bits" of King's legacy strikes the reader as valid. There were plenty of pieces of King's legacy that white Americans - even those who held him at a distance prior to his death - could embrace. The agitating parts that kept some roiled and revolted by the idea of honoring him on into the future with a holiday or a boulevard - could be forgotten or swept under the rug of mythology.
History has a way of blurring the sharp edges of people and eras. With the passage of time, we see things differently, or maybe, the way we want to see them. Such is what has happened to King. 94% of Americans in 2011 held a favorable view of King. But winning the Gallup polls (page 259) does little to change the historical reality, even if the polls suggest that story has been largely forgotten or rewritten. Our quest, our need to make heroes or martyrs of those who have gone before us often erases the complexity of being human and the ironies or paradoxes that are present in all of us. Sokol writes, "King's heroic life and his brutal death thus anticipated the central irony of race in our time. If he tried to bring the races together during his life and pointed our country toward a multiracial tomorrow, then his death illuminated the depths of white racism, quickened the pace of black radicalism, and helped to break the races further apart."
King and his legacy is a complicated one. Sokol's work helps to remind us of that past, and, indirectly, of this present.
Sokol's work here is primarily a narrative, as his own interpretation, while present, isn't the driving engine of the book. The first couple of chapters center on the assassination itself and the immediate aftermath socially and politically. While not a blow-by-blow account (read Hampton Sides' incredible account Hellhound on His Trail for that) Sokol does a find job retelling that fateful day and the days that followed. The events and characters of Sokol's narrative unfold the story well.
It is in the "legacy" of King's death and life's work that the majority of the book resides. Sokol unpacks neatly the divisional, even radical nature of King, and chronicles his impact on whites and blacks alike, and how his last years cleaved the country along the fracture lines of politics, race, religion, the philosophy of non-violence, and the Vietnam war.
But most of the legacy that draws Sokol's attention is that which follows almost directly on the heels of the assassination. With depth and clarity, Sokol takes the reader through the responses of whites and blacks, college students and artists, Africans and Europeans, politicians and writers. These varied reactions - from deep sorrow and mourning to violence and rage - are set in the context of how these groups were "reading" or responding to King's activism in the last years of King's life when he was pushing "revolutionary" rhetoric alongside the appeals to nonviolence; when he was appealing to the consciences of white middle class Christians while planning for a Poor People's march and in his final days, readying himself to march alongside striking sanitation workers.
His messages resonated with some, repulsed others and as he became a vocal critic of the US engagement in the Vietnam War, he stood in opposition to long held cultural notions of military might and the methodology of the Cold War. King's growing stature as a "radical" preceded his death and informed the varied convulsions that followed his burial.
Sokol did not adhere his research to an equal measure of a longer-term legacy, and while surprising to this reader, such is not a criticism. It is not until the last chapter that the analysis is brought into a more "modern" context, if one starts the era of modernity in the late 1970's and 80's. I found these final pages and analysis enlightening as Sokol demonstrates how the nation, while remaining divided along racial lines and in terms of what to do with the memory of King nonetheless got to work arguing over everything from gun control legislation to renaming streets (and which streets in which part of the city!) to installing a Federal holiday in King's memory and honor. While the chorus rose quickly over these needs, so too did the din that dared to drown out such efforts. As much as King was controversial before death, so too was his immediate legacy following it.
Though it took time, in the end, King's legacy settled into the soil of American "sainthood" replete with a Washington DC memorial and a federal holiday, not to mention hundreds of streets renamed for him across the land. He had become a hero, in part because with martyrdom "myth naturally follows." (page 253). Sokol writes: Americans were able to so admire King because they picked and chose which parts of his career they wanted to embrace. They scrubbed his message and blunted his meaning. Eventually, the historical King -- a courageous dissident who unsettled the powerful -- would be replaced by a mythical one. Many white Americans concentrated on that single line from King's "I Have a Dream" speech and effectively reduced his life to one quotation. They began to appropriate King's legacy and wield it in their own causes. ... King's legacy remained bitterly contested." (pages 223-224)
In that lies, perhaps, the nature of prophet-like figures. King spoke against the militancy of the black separatism and a rising Black Power movement of his day, which many in the white majority loved (or appreciated), yet he also dared to challenge the status quo on the US involvement in Vietnam while advocating for affirmative action and a democratic socialism on economic matters that (would have) increasingly annoyed or even angered whites had he lived on and preached on into the 1970's or beyond.
Such controversies are shrouded in death, thus Sokol's interpretation of how white America appropriated the "bits" of King's legacy strikes the reader as valid. There were plenty of pieces of King's legacy that white Americans - even those who held him at a distance prior to his death - could embrace. The agitating parts that kept some roiled and revolted by the idea of honoring him on into the future with a holiday or a boulevard - could be forgotten or swept under the rug of mythology.
History has a way of blurring the sharp edges of people and eras. With the passage of time, we see things differently, or maybe, the way we want to see them. Such is what has happened to King. 94% of Americans in 2011 held a favorable view of King. But winning the Gallup polls (page 259) does little to change the historical reality, even if the polls suggest that story has been largely forgotten or rewritten. Our quest, our need to make heroes or martyrs of those who have gone before us often erases the complexity of being human and the ironies or paradoxes that are present in all of us. Sokol writes, "King's heroic life and his brutal death thus anticipated the central irony of race in our time. If he tried to bring the races together during his life and pointed our country toward a multiracial tomorrow, then his death illuminated the depths of white racism, quickened the pace of black radicalism, and helped to break the races further apart."
King and his legacy is a complicated one. Sokol's work helps to remind us of that past, and, indirectly, of this present.
July 9, 2020
I'm a little flabbergasted that after spending over half of my life in school, I learned so very little of MLK. Growing up we're taught once he had a national holiday declared, that he's always been reveered as a saint. This couldn't be further from the truth. In fact, it was until 2000 that all 50 states celebrated it, and few even co-celebrate it with Robert E. Lee day (Confederate officer / slave owner).
MLK was a democratic socialist who was described as white people's best friend and best chance at bridging the racism gap. This book goes into particular details about how higher education, the public, politicians, and even other countries handled his assassination. It goes into Johnson passing meaningless legislation in his name, and then Reagan finally bowing to enact his holiday after gutting all of the civil rights laws he stood far. It is a grotesque book that has stark comparisons to the looting and riots we see today and how most white people see it as barbarism rather than an effect of systemic racism and cruelty. Our own FBI is proven to have urged him to commit suicide and cause uprisings against him after he denounced the Vietnam war. It's also sickening that gun reform was only considered after Bobby Kennedy was killed shortly after MLK, but not before.
Some interesting quotes:
"...Martin Luther King was executed by a firing squad that numbered in the millions. White Americans fed words of hate into the ear of the assassin".
"King focused on three great problems the world faced: racism, poverty, and war".
"Only a sick country would spend more on napalm to be used in Vietnam than on food and shelter for impoverished citizens in its own cities. With its values confused and it's image in ruins, America was approaching 'spiritual death'".
"...overall, he asked for $30 billion in antipoverty spending. To many Americans this sounded like communist lunacy. In most European nation's, such ideas were lauded as common sense".
MLK was a democratic socialist who was described as white people's best friend and best chance at bridging the racism gap. This book goes into particular details about how higher education, the public, politicians, and even other countries handled his assassination. It goes into Johnson passing meaningless legislation in his name, and then Reagan finally bowing to enact his holiday after gutting all of the civil rights laws he stood far. It is a grotesque book that has stark comparisons to the looting and riots we see today and how most white people see it as barbarism rather than an effect of systemic racism and cruelty. Our own FBI is proven to have urged him to commit suicide and cause uprisings against him after he denounced the Vietnam war. It's also sickening that gun reform was only considered after Bobby Kennedy was killed shortly after MLK, but not before.
Some interesting quotes:
"...Martin Luther King was executed by a firing squad that numbered in the millions. White Americans fed words of hate into the ear of the assassin".
"King focused on three great problems the world faced: racism, poverty, and war".
"Only a sick country would spend more on napalm to be used in Vietnam than on food and shelter for impoverished citizens in its own cities. With its values confused and it's image in ruins, America was approaching 'spiritual death'".
"...overall, he asked for $30 billion in antipoverty spending. To many Americans this sounded like communist lunacy. In most European nation's, such ideas were lauded as common sense".
May 14, 2019
This book offers a broader perspective of Martin Luther King Jr.'s legacy than just being a champion of civil rights for black Americans. He was also a vocal opponent of the war in Vietnam, which according to Jason Sokol, made him an even greater target on the FBI's radar. He had a hand in turning the American public against the war. Also, the book talks about how many people, white and black, he influenced into political activism worldwide. The one thing that i'm glad the writer pointed out is how many people used and still uses Martin Luther King's words and legacy to carry out agendas that went against King's philosophy. Of course, the more right-wing groups of people like to bring up that King was colorblind, and he would have issues with policies that boosted people over others based on race. The writer eloquently dispels that "colorblind" notion. Dr. King said that the negro has been treated a special kind of what in the U.S. for a long time, and there needed to be special treatment to put things back in balance. Futhermore, Sokol argued that what King meant by "colorblindness" was equality in every facet of American life. Equality in pay, in governmental services, in quality of life. Most of his opponents then thought he was a communist and being anti-American for asking what the constitution of the United States guaranteed.
June 9, 2024
Informative and captured me from start to finish. No stone was left unturned in the description of the days after Martin Luther King was killed. The chapter about his funeral was particularly devastating as it starts with James Baldwin arriving in Atlanta for the service. Honest in its portrayal of the hate much of the country held towards King, some even rejoiced at his death. What I appreciated in the book was the clarity in which King's beliefs were described. He was anti-war and fervent in his support of ending poverty in America. He was indeed radical for the times and essential. I was moved to tears multiple times in the book. It felt as if the heavens did crack in important ways.
January 9, 2019
Perhaps the most important book I've read on MLK in years - Sokol compellingly shows that, far from the milquetoast, white-colonized figure that exists in American popular imagination, that King was a fierce prophet, hated by many white Americans at the time of his death, whose analysis of the United States rings as uncomfortably true today as it did when he was alive.
While Sokol occasional digresses into ancillary issues and a few too many anecdotes for my taste, I can't recommend a book more highly, especially with Martin Luther King day right around the corner.
While Sokol occasional digresses into ancillary issues and a few too many anecdotes for my taste, I can't recommend a book more highly, especially with Martin Luther King day right around the corner.
May 4, 2023
As a kid I always felt like history was taught to me as a series of unrelated (or maaaybe vaguely related) important people/events. Books like this interest me in the way they help me weave history together and start to really understand the bigger picture - not just for what has happened but what is currently happening and how that came to be. I was especially struck by the section on gun control and being able to follow the thread to what I'm seeing in the news currently.
April 30, 2018
Thank you to UNH Prof Sokol who wrote this book about the climate, issues, obstacles that littered the years after the world lost MLK. I found the book informative and well conceived. I closed the book saddened by the loss of individuals such as MLK who had a greater purpose and were struck down tragically.
November 6, 2024
A detailed and informative look at the ripple cause and effect of the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King had on a nation and the world. Startling and shocking revelations on how world leaders and common folk acted and reacted, then and how those responses still linger, and resurfaces in contemporary times.
April 24, 2018
Interesting book. Particularly interesting chapter on the history of gun control in America.
July 8, 2019
very good book, educational for me as I know little about the Civil Rights Movement and MLK Jr. This book led me to read Letter from Birmingham Jail, another great read.
March 9, 2024
A great review of the real MLK.
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