The times are (probably always) right for Hampton Sides' "Hellhound on His Trail: The Stalking of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the International Hunt for His Assassin."
Today's polarization has achieved what only the Internet could produce; individualized polarization. There's a "position" for every sphincter out there and each one of them is either enabling or interfering with the "position" of it's neighbors.
In the mid sixties times were, it seems, simpler. You were for the war or against it. You were for Racial Integration or for Racial Segregation. You were straight or you were a hippie. Yet those poles were felt so much more fervently, regardless of their fractious compositions, because they were the only poles to choose from.
Mr. Sides brings a lot of retrospective clarity to the period with his usual non-linear storytelling. The same intensive study of the historical documents combined with the same willingness to breathe a little humanity into the details that made "Blood and Thunder" and "Ghost Soldiers" such compelling histories serve the subject of Martin Luther King and his assassin well.
Mr. Sides is my rough contemporary - both of us were kids as we watched the events of the Sixties unfold and eventually take on mythic proportions. Mr. Sides, however, was living in Memphis TN at the time and I was in Albuquerque.
He saw out his window a much different view than I did. While I saw principle events of the Sixties -Vietnam, Haight-Ashbury, the attempt on the life of George Wallace and the assassinations of John and Bobby and Doctor King - through the TV set he watched some of the most telling portions of our history unfold in his hometown.
You won't find any spoilers here. There was divisiveness in the movement. Dr. King was not a paragon of virtue and neither was Herbert Hoover. Correta King and Jackie Kennedy shared some moments. Dr. King's assassin was "odd."
Perhaps the best attribute of Mr. Sides' telling is how he weaves the lives of Martin Luther King and his killer together in such a way we are on the trail ourselves as their paths start so far apart, slowly approach their violent crossroad, and then diverge in ways that shed light on the relative value of the principles.
Doctor King was, as many of us know, a mortal man who committed sins that, had they had time to come to light in his day, may have derailed the movement he did so much for.
While his killer was much less than respectable or, even, sympathetic, Mr. Sides points out the killer is just the person the Doctor wanted to help.
Maybe in this retrospective we can step back from our individual positions and gain the perspective we require to come together as humanity.
