

“She was a very devout Christian,” recalled Michael, who would go on to change his name to Martin Luther King Sr.

Yet when Delia heard that her neighbor had a sick cow that wouldn’t give milk, she acted without hesitation. The white man kept most of the money from the crops, but it was the King family, one generation removed from slavery, that cleared the soil stone by stone, planted and picked the cotton, and went hungry when the scorching sun rendered the earth no more fertile than a rutted road. The shack and the land around it belonged to a white man. TAKE THIS BUCKET of milk to the neighbors, Delia King told her son Michael one day.ĭelia and her husband, Jim King, lived with their growing brood of children in a tiny wooden sharecroppers’ shack in Stockbridge, Georgia, about twenty miles southeast of Atlanta.

Here & Now's Scott Tong talks with Jonathan Eig, author of " King: A Life." magazine / Library of Congress) Book excerpt: 'King' knew as a college student that he was going to "kill Jim Crow." We learn about King in a new biography that includes some new revelations about the man. Gordon “Gunny” Gundrum (park ranger) eyes the crowd, and Mahalia Jackson (hat andĭr. As King delivers his “I Have a Dream” speech, Bayard Rustin (in glasses) stands behind,
