King — Ho Che Anderson

The third and final volume in Ho Che Anderson's award-winning comics biography of the Rev. Martin Luther King.Praised for its vivid recreation of this tumultuous period in US history and for its accuracy in depicting King's personal and public lives, this volume picks up where 2002's second volume left off: LBJ signs the Civil Rights bill into law and Martin Luther King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference begin their northern campaign by moving into the Chicago neighborhood of North Lawndale, Illinois. After a largely unsuccessful effort to reduce racial tensions and organize Black resistance into a democratic political force, King is persuaded to go to Memphis to lead a march in support of the city's sanitation workers. The march turns violent, but in order to maintain his credibility, King decides to go back and try to lead a second, peaceful march. His return trip to Memphis will be the last trip King makes. Anderson's writing and art illuminates King's deeply felt, personal commitment to a public cause as well as the wider political eruptions the country was experiencing through a rare and skillful combination of realistic and expressionistic imagery and naturalistic dialogue. This is a respectful, unsparing, truthful biography of a man and his times that captures the moral and political gravitas of the cause as well as its human dimension. Anderson's successful use of comics to tell a major work of history has drawn favorable comparisons to Art Spiegelman's Maus: A Survivor's Tale and Joe Sacco's Palestine. 68 pages b/w and 8 pages color. Author Biography: Ho Che Anderson lives in Toronto, Canada.