Author: Jeanne Theoharis in conversation with Lerone A. Martin

Best selling author Jeanne Theoharis will discuss her new book, King of the North, with Lerone A. Martin, Director of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University.   

Garnering starred reviews from both Kirkus and Publishers Weekly, King of the North is a groundbreaking work that reframes the life and legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. as a leader who didn’t just inspire a movement but stood in solidarity with struggles for justice from New York to Los Angeles. It is also the first book to ever uncover the depths of Coretta Scott King’s involvement in the movement, her husband’s pursuits and the shaping of modern history.  

Jeanne Theoharis is Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Brooklyn College of City University of New York and the author or co-author of thirteen books and numerous articles on the civil rights and Black Power movements and the contemporary politics of race in the United States. Her New York Times-bestselling biography The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks won a 2014 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work Biography/Autobiography and the Letitia Woods Brown Award from the Association of Black Women Historians. It has been adapted into a documentary of the same name, directed by Johanna Hamilton and Yoruba Richen and executive produced by Soledad O’Brien for NBC-Peacock, where she served as a consulting producer. The film won a Peabody Award and a Television Academy Honor Award. Her book A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History won the 2018 Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize in Nonfiction. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, MSNBC, The Nation, TIME, the Atlantic, Boston Review and the Chronicle of Higher Education.   

Lerone A. Martin is the Martin Luther King, Jr., Centennial Professor in Religious Studies and Director of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University. Martin is an award-winning author. His most recent book, The Gospel of J. Edgar Hoover: How the FBI Aided and Abetted the Rise of White Christian Nationalism was published in February 2023 by Princeton University Press. The book has garnered praise from numerous publications including The Nation, Foreign Affairs, The Guardian, Publisher’s Weekly and History Today. In 2014 he published, Preaching on Wax: The Phonograph and the Making of Modern African American Religion (New York University Press, 2014). The book received the 2015 first book award by the American Society of Church History. He currently serves as Senior Editor of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers Project and is completing a nonfiction book and an adapted graphic novel about the adolescence and calling of Martin Luther King, Jr., both to be published by HarperCollins.