David J. Garrow

Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference

The 1987 Robert F. Kennedy Book Award was presented to David J. Garrow for Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Bearing the Cross is among the most comprehensive books ever written about the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Based on more than seven hundred interviews with and enhanced by the author's access to King's personal papers and tens of thousands of pages of FBI documents, Bearing the Cross is a powerful portrait of a man and the movement to which he dedicated himself.

David J. Garrow is Presidential Distinguished Professor at Emory University School of Law. He has taught at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Duke University, and the College of William and Mary. He served as a senior advisor for Eyes on the Prize, the award-winning PBS-TV documentary history of the American Civil Rights movement.