An easy burden Book

In this book the author provides us with an inside view of the Civil Rights movement from the early 1960’s to the tragic death of Martin Luther King in 1968. Andrew Young joined SCLC in 1961 and the bulk of the book deals this period; don’t look for observations on the Freedom Rides for instance, because the author was not involved with this.

The book is well written and sprinkled with some good humour now and then. We are given many insights on how SCLC struggled within itself and with companion groups like SNCC. Mr. Young paints himself as a rationalist and pragmatist – he was certainly not a firebrand and was not comfortable with an activist stance such as participating in demonstrations and marches. He gives us a behind the scene perspective as to how decisions and activities came to be decided – and in many cases how events took on a life of their own and the momentum had to be followed and improvised. For example, in many cases Martin Luther King was asked to be a guest speaker and after was asked to participate, without any pre-planning, in protest marches in the following days. This is what happened in the Albany protests which the author describes in detail; where one speech became many months of engrossing marches and demonstrations.

Mr. Young makes clear that many in the movement (including himself) were exhausted and approaching burn-out. There were simply too many unpredictable and random demands. Mr Young spent little time with his growing family. Martin Luther King would go on with very little sleep. Resources were stretched to the limit and as depicted in the book, tempers flared sometimes. Even though they were striving for racial equality, Mr. Young acknowledges that the movement itself had little regard for the role of women.

In historical retrospect, as Mr. Young points out, the Civil Rights movement pushed the concept of human rights to the forefront of America’s vision of itself and the wider world. Martin Luther King endeavoured to uplift the spiritual and human values of his country. With the United States redressing itself on the treatment of its minority groups this gave a lasting legacy of what constitutes democratic society. As Mr. Young elucidates towards the end of his book, poverty is still a massive issue in the United States. Little is being done to relieve this recurring cycle of impoverishment and large segments of society are being abandoned.

This is a major work that contributes to our understanding of this important era. My favourite quote from Martin Luther King (page 429 of my book): “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”