The {photograph} taken after the 1968 assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on the Lorraine Motel balcony in Memphis, Tennessee, is one of probably the most recognizable of the twentieth century. As the civil rights chief lay dying, individuals close by pointed to one thing out of body whereas one man knelt at King’s facet. The picture captures a tragic second in historical past, however for Leta McCollough Seletzky, the picture is especially haunting—as a result of her father was the one attempting to manage first help. As she writes in her absorbing memoir, The Kneeling Man, “For my family, the assassination was a lifelong wound, something we didn’t touch for fear of aggravating it.”
Leta McCollough Seletzky reveals that it took her almost 35 years to ask her father why he was current on the night time of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination.
Seletzky wasn’t born till eight years after King’s demise, and her mother and father break up up when she was 3. Her father, Marrell “Mac” McCollough, took a job with the CIA, moved to Washington, D.C., and didn’t see a lot of his daughter. As an grownup, nevertheless, Seletzky started questioning him about his life, particularly about his time working for the Memphis Police Department earlier than she was born. In 2015, she started an intensive interviewing, analysis and writing undertaking that resulted on this account, which not solely chronicles her father’s life but in addition reckons together with his position in historical past.
Mac was the ninth of 12 kids born to oldsters who rented 40 acres of Mississippi farmland from a white man who lived in Memphis. Growing up, his focus was on getting his highschool diploma after which his school diploma, targets that weren’t simply achieved. At the time of King’s assassination, Mac was 23 years outdated and starting to take part-time school lessons whereas working as an undercover cop to infiltrate a gaggle of Black activists referred to as the Invaders. Seletzky’s detailed but fluid prose shapes her father’s story right into a compelling narrative arc—starting together with his beginning in Mississippi and ending together with his 1999 retirement from the CIA—whereas holding house for her to grapple with Mac’s historical past as a Black man spying on Black Power activists for the police.
While Seletzky retains the concentrate on her father’s story, his experiences and observations make intriguing contributions to the MLK assassination canon. For instance, Mac noticed that the bullet that killed Dr. King exploded on influence, which is the kind of know-how he believed wasn’t bought in gun shops at the moment. When Seletzky informed civil rights activist Andrew Young that she needed to know what actually occurred that night time, he suggested, “No, you don’t.” In a later dialog, he indicated that he wasn’t satisfied that James Earl Ray, King’s convicted killer, was the one who pulled the set off.
Near the tip of her e book, Seletzky admits, “I’d jumped into Dad’s story not knowing what I’d find and afraid of what I might uncover.” Thankfully she persevered, rising nearer to her father within the course of. The Kneeling Man will enlighten generations to come back a few pivotal, disturbing second in our nation’s historical past.
Discussion about this post