Martin Luther King, Jr. was more than the civil rights movement's most
visible figure, he was its voice. This book describes what went into the creation of
that voice. It explores how King used words to define a movement. From a place
situated between two cultures of American society, King shaped the language that
gave the movement its identity and meaning. Fredrik Sunnemark shows how
materialistic, idealistic, and religious ways of explaining the world coexisted in
King's speeches and writings. He points out the roles of God, Jesus, the church, and
"the Beloved Community" in King's rhetoric. Sunnemark examines King's use
of allusions, his strategy of employing different meanings of key ideas to speak to
different members of his audience, and the way he put into play international ideas
and events to achieve certain rhetorical goals. The book concludes with an analysis
of King's development after 1965, examining the roots, content, and consequences of
his so-called radicalization.