A Sneeze Away

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was almost famous in September 1958. In certain precincts, such as among fellow African-Americans, King was very well known indeed, generally for fighting without violence for civil rights and specifically for having led a year-long boycott that in December 1956 had succeeded in desegregating seating on the municipal bus system in Montgomery, Alabama. King also was well known to ill-wishers who had tried to bomb his front porch, delivered death threats, and arrested him. Always he remained calm. A year earlier, Harper & Brothers had offered King a contract to write a memoir of the bus boycott. Now Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story, was on store shelves, and King, elated at bringing out his first book, was doing his best to promote sales.

of in Harlem, uptown Manhattan’s historically black neighborhood. However, instead of working with an independent bookstore, his publisher had booked him