Join the Charlestown Preservation Society and the friends of the Charlestown Branch Library for a Virtual Book Discussion with authors Stephen Kendrick and Paul Kendrick to discuss their book Nine Days: The Race to Save Martin Luther King’s Life and Win the 1960 Election on Wednesday, Feb. 28.
Nine Days documents a young Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s perilous first imprisonment and how it clarified his path to changing a nation as well as the story of three Kennedy campaign civil rights advisors who went rogue to free King. This interracial trio risked the razor-close 1960 election against Nixon to get King out of prison and shift the Black vote, changing our political parties forever.
The authors will also discuss their earlier work Sarah’s Long Walk: The Free Blacks of Boston and How Their Struggle for Equality Changed America and its ties to 112 High Street in Charlestown.
The event will take place on Wednesday, February 28, from 7 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.
A Virtual Book Discussion with authors Stephen Kendrick and Paul Kendrick. The link to register for the talk is : https://bit.ly/KendrickTalk
Nine Days: The Race to Save Martin Luther King Jr.’s Life and Win the 1960 Election , was published January 2021, and is being hailed by critics. The book documents the story of young Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s perilous first imprisonment and how it clarified his path to changing a nation. It is also the story of how an overlooked, interracial team of civil rights advisors on the John Kennedy campaign risked the razor-close election against Nixon to get King out of prison and swing the Black vote, changing our political parties forever.
A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice “10 New Books We Recommend This Week,” the Times wrote, “No brief review can do full justice to the Kendricks’ masterly and often riveting account of King’s ordeal and the 1960 ‘October Surprise’ that may have altered the course of modern political history. Suffice it to say that any reader who navigates the many twists and turns and surprises in this complex tale will come away recognizing the power of historical contingency.”
Oprah Magazine named Nine Days a “Best Books of February 2021 to Fall in Love With,” calling it, “brilliant, gripping work of reportage…King’s transcendent ability to keep his eyes on the prize is one theme of this work, but the authors also find many other heroes in this story–more evidence that it takes a village.”
Chicago Tribune wrote, “Enlightening and captivating…fascinating if largely overlooked chapter…this book tackles not only a story that resonates loudly in our current times as a thoughtful examination of the tricky relationship between race and politics…exciting reading…impeccable research…a narrative flair worthy of a great political thriller. They have given us a story that excites as it informs…magnificent, an important trip back to a time that helps explain, for better and for worse, how we got to where we are now.”
Through extensive research and interviews with those who were there, Nine Days fully tells these dramatic historical events for the first time. The Kendricks recently spoke to CBS News about the book, its characters, and its message on the moral leadership we need today. Paul was also recently interviewed on MSNBC’s Way Too Early with Kasie Hunt.
Father and son co-authors Stephen and Paul Kendrick have previously published Douglass and Lincoln: How a Revolutionary Black Leader and a Reluctant Liberator Struggled to End Slavery and Save the Union and Sarah’s Long Walk: The Free Blacks of Boston and How Their Struggle for Equality Changed America .