Clarence B. Jones, close King advisor and draft speechwriter, has done much to reinforce a conservative hijacking of King’s image with the publication of his controversial books What Would Martin Say? (2008) and Behind the Dream (2011). King emerges from Jones’s books not as a prophetic radical who attacked systemic racial injustice, economic exploitation, and wars of aggression, but as a fiercely conservative figure who would oppose affirmative action and illegal immigration. The Domestication of Martin Luther King Jr. offers a critique of Jones’s work and the larger effort on the part of right-wing conservatives to make King a useful symbol, or the sacred aura, in a protracted campaign to promote their own agenda for America. This work establishes the need to rethink King’s legacy of ideas and activism and its importance for our society and culture.
About the author
Rufus Burrow Jr. is a Martin Luther King Jr. scholar and Indiana Professor of Christian Thought, Emeritus, at Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis. In addition to his many publications on King, he has written much on ethical prophecy, including God and Human Responsibility: David Walker and Ethical Prophecy (2002), and coauthored, with Mary Alice Mulligan, Daring to Speak in God’s Name: Ethical Prophecy in Ministry (2002) and Standing in the Margin (2004).