The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

questions about King’s life history. 114 While it does not take a naïve position adopted
by many works ‐ that King might have been born into leadership – Akomfrah’s film is
still based on fairly conventional methods of chronological narration, tracing a process
of transformation in the development of leadership.
In this historicisation, it was the Montgomery Bus Boycott that “transformed King’s
life and changed American politics forever”. It was there where the tactics of non‐
violence, which were to shape the Civil Rights Movement, were thrashed out. King
became the “indispensable symbol of a new form of politics”. With the mantle placed
on him without him seeking it, King was “trapped from the very beginning, and it was
just never to ever let him go”. It was in Birmingham, the “bastion of segregation”
which was ready to confront non‐violence with brute force where King became “the
undisputed national leader of the Civil Rights Movement”. Capitalising on this
“moment of glory”, King threw his weight behind the movement’s “most spectacular
event”, the 250 000 person march on Washington in 1963. The ‘I Have a Dream’ speech
King made in front of the Lincoln Memorial represented the “finest example of his
powers as an orator, leader and visionary” and it is for this that he would be most
remembered. More than a Baptist minister and a Civil Rights leader, King had become
“America’s moral conscience”. After receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, King returned to
lead a campaign for voter registration in Selma. It is on the march from Selma to
Montgomery, two weeks after the ‘Bloody Sunday’ brutality, that “a new King
emerged”, a “more militant King”, preoccupied with the war in south east Asia,
concerned about the growing gap between rich and poor, and worried by the
mounting criticism of youth. Before he was assassinated, King had found the strength
“to redeem himself”. 115
114 Martin Luther King, Jr: The Man and His Dreams (Directed by John Akomfrah, Produced by Lina
Gopaul, a Black Audio Film Production for the BBC and Arts & Entertainment Channel,
‘Reputations’ Series Editor, Janice Hadlow, 1997).
115 Martin Luther King, Jr: The Man and His Dreams.
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