Description
"American Gandhi" examines the discursive power and limitations of political celebrity in an age of mass electonic media. How did Martin Luther King, his media advisers and activist colleagues frame King's public persona as a "militant moderate" as they opposed racism and economic injustice, mobilized African Americans and appealed to national constituencies? How did editors and journalists frame King's dissident critiques of racism, militarism, and "materialism," as they followed routines of newsgathering and definitions of "civil rights"? What did King mean to ordinary people, who interpreted his messages on their own terms? How was King's radical synthesis of democratic socialism, pacifism, and pragmatic black power interpreted by the press and ordinary Americans? How did King develop alternative channels of communication to ensure his dissident critiques were heard? Increasingly, the layers of egalitarian meaning King attached to nonviolence diverged from both dominant and oppositional cultures, as elites saw nonviolence itsef as a threat to domestic order, and black militants regarded it as an irrelevant strategy in pursuit of outdated "middle-class" goals. More and more, King's vision of social justice was drownd out by debates about whether he had the power to restrain popular violence. As cities burned and social relations of newsgathering turned hostile to white reporters. King took upon himself this impossible burden. Increasingly many whites questioned whether civil disobedience might be provoking white violence and leading ineluctably to violent black revolt. Though circumscribed in his ability to be the catalyst for "a revolution of values" in thought and action, King struggled to be heard in the mainstream media. And he opened channels of communication in the democratic left to articulate his holistic dream of antiracism, economic equality, and international nonviolence.
