Bearing Witness

MY LIFE WITH MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. by Coretta Scott King. 372 pages. Holt, Rinehart & Winston. $6.95.

When they first met for a lunchtime date in Boston, she thought he was short and unimpressive. But she soon noticed that "he became better-looking as he talked, so strongly and convincingly." Coretta Scott soon found, too, that "M. L. King Jr.," as he called himself, made quick decisions. By the end of the date, he had told her that she "had everything I have ever wanted in a wife." As she observes in this fond memoir of their 15 years together, "it was as if he had no time for mistakes, as if he had to make up his mind quickly and correctly, and then move on with his life."

From the moment she decided to marry him in 1952, she became as convinced as he was that God had a special mission planned for Martin. When he was asked to take on the leadership of the spontaneous Montgomery bus boycott in 1955, they began to understand what the mission would be. All along the extraordinary path that his life then took he agonized over the difficult consequences of his actions. But he never doubted that he was the instrument of God. Once when a mood of deep depression seemed suddenly to have lifted from him overnight, a reporter wondered if he had changed because he had talked with someone. "No. I haven't talked with anyone," said King. "I have only talked with God."

Underlined Horror. Books like this tend to be ghostwritten, but Mrs. King wrote this one herself. The resulting weaknesses are also the book's strength. If there is an overabundance of expressions of gratitude to myriad friends, there is also much affection that might have been mawkish if presented in more professional prose. The story, moreover, is full of details: The Kings' eldest daughter Yolanda explaining at school that her daddy "goes to jail to help people"; the awed Martin Luther King Sr. listening to his son preach in London's St. Paul's Cathedral and whispering what he would have shouted right out in church at home--"Make it plain, son, make it plain"; Martin as a boy beginning his stoic endurance of punishment by refusing to shed a tear during whippings administered by his father for disobedience.

Curiously, the book is at its best when retelling familiar events. From the bus boycott through the Atlanta sitins, from the jailing in Birmingham to the assassination in Memphis, Mrs. King succeeds not merely by adding intimate touches but by providing a personal context within which the events of King's public life take on a deepened drama. "If anybody had told me a couple of years ago that I would be in this position," King once explained to Coretta, "I would have avoided it with all my strength. But gradually you take some responsibility, then a little more, until finally you are not in control any more. You have to give yourself entirely." When President Kennedy was assassinated, King quietly told his wife, "This is what is going to happen to me." She recalls, "I could not say 'It won't happen to you.' I felt he was right. I moved closer to him and gripped his hand in mine."

When Mrs. King is at her best as a writer, she displays the same dignified control she first showed on television at her husband's funeral. Then her restraint underlined the horror of the days following her husband's death. Now her spare narrative has the same intensifying effect--particularly in the final section on the assassination. The book offers no particular analysis of the tactics of nonviolence. Her portrait of Dr. King is not drawn with an especially clear or unbiased eye; wifely loyalty often robs him of the humanity of having faults. Dispassionate reportage is not her real purpose. Rather, she has undertaken to bear witness to his life, and she has done so with great warmth and skill.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.