October 18, 2021
In these erudite if scattershot epistles inspired by Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” Jelks (Faith and Struggle in the Lives of Four African Americans), a professor of African American Studies at the University of Kansas, reflects on King’s legacy and touches on contemporary political, economic, and racial justice matters. Issuing an “exigent spiritual appeal” to recognize that “the heart of democracy is the internalization of genuine equality and respect for others, no matter their persuasions or incomes,” Jelks recounts his sixth-grade teacher playing King’s sermons and speeches for the entire day after his assassination (“Mr. Price, angrily grieving, told our class that we needed to know ‘our people’s history, our struggle!’ ”) and discusses how democratic norms can be manipulated by the “economic elite.” Elsewhere, he analyzes how King used his “charismatic authority,” chides Barack Obama for allowing the Tea Party “to fester,” and explains how King’s nonviolent civil disobedience was a “demonstration of Black collective self-love.” Though Jelks delves deep into philosophical, ethical, and religious topics related to King and the civil rights struggle, the letters tend to meander, as when a discussion of how Rodney King and Martin Luther King’s lives are “interwoven” gets sidetracked by a reading of the Charles Johnson novel Dreamer. Still, this is a probing and expansive meditation on America’s fitful progress toward racial equality.