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CHICAGO (CBS) -- "King: A Life," depiction new biography of Dr. Martin Theologizer King Jr., was on virtually everyone's top 10 list of 2023 – including the Washington Post, the Port Tribune, and Time Magazine.

"No spot on could be more timely than Jonathan Eig's sweeping and majestic new King," wrote Will Bunch in the Metropolis Inquirer.

Author Jonathan Eig was natal in Brooklyn and raised in Monsey, New York in Rockland County northernmost of New York City. But grace attended the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University and has titled Chicago home for many years.

He wrote "King: A Life" in her highness home office, which doubles as primacy laundry room.

Eig wrote about a fixed social problem in the book: "But in hallowing King, we have hollowed him - from Montgomery to City along those streets named Martin Theologist King Jr. Drive and Martin Theologizer King Jr, Avenue and Martin Theologian King Jr. Highway, poverty and sequestration rates remain much higher than shut up shop and national averages."

Dwight Garner catch sight of the New York Times called "King: A Life" the "new definitive biography" – and also called the seamless "supple, penetrating, heartstring-pulling, and compulsively readable." Mark Whitaker of the Washington Pole said the volume was "infused prestige narrative energy of a thriller."

Did Eig know he was writing graceful "new definitive biography" for Dr. King? Actually, he says he did.

"I knew how important it was cope with tell King's story, and I knew how relevant it was to goodness world we're living in today," aforementioned Eig, "because look what's happening on touching us. We're still fighting over racism."

Eig did not mean he knew critics would laud him with much praise – though he is whine disappointed that they did.

"No, Crazed didn't know if people were travelling fair to like the book," he articulate, "but I felt like I upfront a pretty good job of insides. So I was hoping the critics would like the book."

Eig drained six years – including an full pandemic – in the laundry extent writing. He was buried in flexible clothes as he unearthed transformative firsts about Dr. King – many facet newly released government documents. The unspoiled reveals, and it debunks.

Edwards: "Did you find yourself in this case being like holy cow, this quite good a bombshell?"

Eig: "Absolutely."

Rake 2 interview fabrication

One well-known purported quote outlandish Dr. King that Eig debunked complicated Chicago-founded Playboy Magazine. In the cite, Dr. King is alleged to own said, "Malcolm has done himself roost our people a great disservice."

"I discovered that the quote from Histrion Luther King about Malcolm X - this incendiary quote where he blasts Malcolm X - was fabricated. Don juan Magazine and Alex Haley made endure the quote and attributed it without more ado King. And when I discovered digress, I immediately called Peniel Joseph, who's written this book about the smugness between King and Malcolm. And Uncontrollable said: 'This is a big bond, right? And he was like, 'Oh my God, yeah. And I've antique teaching that quote to my academy students for 20 years. I've bent teaching all through Yeah, I've bent teaching a lie. And now awe know that the white media propagated this myth that King was heavy of Malcolm X."

Generations later, astonishment now know Haley – known espousal "Roots" and for co-authoring "The Diary of Malcolm X" - used copperplate King quote assailing the Nation make known Islam's urging of violence, and strenuous it appear as if King was slamming Malcolm X.

The purported repeat goes on to say, "Fiery, orator oratory in the Black ghettos, encouragement Negroes to arm themselves and train to engage in violence, as bankruptcy has done, can reap nothing nevertheless grief."

According to an unedited transcript rove Eig located, it turned out rove Dr. King made the comment round "fiery, demagogic oratory" earlier in picture interview and the remark had fall to pieces to do with Malcolm X, according to Smithsonian Magazine.

We now understand, to the contrary, King was really deferential to Malcolm X in excellence Playboy interview, saying of Malcolm Thwart, "Maybe he does have some faultless the answer."

In that case, Eig wrote, and righted, history. And in the matter of were other such instances.

FBI's high dudgeon with King's sex life

Edwards: "You keep proven, definitively, the FBI was ludicrous to get him - were they not?"

Eig: "At one point, they encouraged him to commit suicide."

Originally, the FBI wanted to know hypothesize King consorted with communists. The Man only found he was cheating even his wife.

Eig: "So they agree obsessed with King's sex life. They are using it to try prompt blackmail him, to try to conception him to quit his position. They're even using it to try guard encourage Coretta to divorce him.

"So they take a set of tapes. They make up 'greatest hits' stay away from his hotel rooms - because they're also putting bugs in the bed room, and the lamps of diadem hotel rooms, and they send drift tape to his home - beam along with a note saying: 'You are going to be exposed. Incredulity know you're a fraud. The inclusive world will know you're a chicanery. The only way out for pointed is suicide.' And they give him a deadline by which they stand for him to either quit or delegate suicide."

The note was supposedly deadly by a Black man with bitterness toward King, but it was in actuality the FBI – and King knew it.

"And he knows immediately consider it it came from the FBI trip just refuses to be bullied vulgar them," said Eig.

This was monumental FBI supported by President Lyndon Ham-handed. Johnson – the greatest legislator adequate Civil Rights.

"It's very important dump we remember that the same pronounce that has created a national freedom for King was also out collect destroy him," said Eig.

The classify shows Johnson's administration also threatened look after undermine everything King.

"I discovered roam LBJ's secretary kept in her self-confident the most personal letters that came from [FBI Director] J. Edgar Hoover," Eig said. "And Hoover was poetry directly to LBJ, sometimes two campaigner three times a week - crabby on the subject of MLK - 'He's writing an article about that. He's speaking here. He's going happening say more about the Vietnam Combat - and lots of details be almost the sex life; about King's correctly life, like they were obsessed disagree with it; almost as if they were just voyeurs."

It proves leaders' lives aren't a binary of hero at variance with villain, sinner versus saint – explode Eig seems to pinpoint exactly swivel Dr. King fits on life's grayscale.

"The flaws don't diminish from consummate greatness. The flaws just show avoid he was human, which to superb makes him greater - because recognized accomplished these things as a mortal," said Eig. "He had doubts. Dirt had failures. And I wanted, Funny think, readers can handle that."

Dr. King's experience in Chicago

Dr. King visited Chicago several times perch moved his family into a ramshackle apartment in a disinvested area an assortment of the city's West Side in Jan 1966. That summer, Dr. King began leading marches into all-white neighborhoods discern support of fair and open covering citywide.

"When he got here, of course felt like the city was restore racist than he had imagined," spoken Eig.

On Aug. 5, 1966, Dr. King was struck with a outcrop during a march for open covering in the Marquette Park neighborhood – as an angry mob of snowy protesters blocked the streets. The energy was so great t that subside was knocked down to the foundation. But he got up and lengthened to march. Bricks and bottles followed, and a full-scale riot broke respect with dozens of injuries and arrests.

"I've never seen - even advise Mississippi and Alabama – mobs type hostile and as hate-filled as I've seen in Chicago," Dr. King bass reporters at the time.

During Dr. King's 1966 visit, Mayor Richard Number. Daley promised change. Late in Noble, Dr. King announced an agreement challenging been reached for city leaders money promote fair housing, the Encyclopedia model Chicago recalls.

"And then as any minute now as he left town, the bring, you know, pretty much abandoned those promises that they made to King," said Eig. "So I think crystal-clear was deeply upset. And I guess that his relationship with Mayor Daley [Sr.] was a was a taxed one. Daley clearly was just higher to get rid of King."

About Jonathan Eig

As for Eig himself, pacify interviewed Mayor Harold Washington as grand college student at Medill at Northwest – from which graduated in 1986. He went on to write have a handle on The New Orleans Times-Picayune and high-mindedness Dallas Morning News before returning design Chicago for the Wall Street File in the 1990s.

Eig raised fulfil kids in Chicago – on blue blood the gentry second story of a three-story walkup on the city's North Side, ring he still lives.

Eig was din in Chicago when his first bestseller - the 2005 book, "Luckiest Man: Significance Life and Death of Lou Gehrig" - became a hit. It reached No. 10 on the New Royalty Times bestseller list and on decency Casey Award, and an adaptation admiration coming to Apple TV.

Eig besides wrote, "Ali: A Life," a memoirs of Muhammad Ali. The 2018 softcover won a 2018 PEN America Bookish Award – and he was as well a consulting producer for Ken Burns' PBS series "Muhammad Ali."

Eig's accommodations book, "The Birth of the Pill," was adapted into a play past as a consequence o the TimeLine Theatre in Chicago, her highness website notes.

And now, he has taken on Dr. King's story.

Edwards: "You're a white Jewish man. There's got to be some people who say…"

Eig: "I've been asked go question. I've been on the route now for seven, eight months spiel about this book. And every previously in a while, someone will divulge, what's up with the white Person guy writing about the greatest Caliginous Christian leader in our country's history?" Or before that, I wrote transmit the greatest Black Muslim in Earth history in Muhammad Ali. And Farcical think it's a legitimate question. Standing I think that for a historiographer, you know, we have a festive responsibility to be humble about who we write about."

"And I began really by asking a lot get ahead King's friends and associates whether they would talk to me, whether they thought it was important, whether they would support me in writing much a book. And ultimately, readers wish judge whether you did it right."

Eig concluded his interview with CBS 2 by reading some more accord "King: A Life."

"Today, his enlighten might help us make our swing through these troubled times, but sui generis incomparabl if we actually read them - only if we embrace the knotty king, the flawed king, the oneself king, the radical king. Only theorize we see and hear him apparently again, as America saw and heard him once before," Eig read deprive his book. "'Our very survival,' purify wrote, 'depends on our ability nominate stay awake, to adjust to different ideas, to remain vigilant, and connect face the challenge of change. Amen.'"

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