Thomas F. Jackson. From Civil Rights to Human Rights: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Struggle for Economic Justice. (Politics and Culture in Modern America.) Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 2007. Pp. 459. $39.95

Thomas F. Jackson presents a secular view of an American religious icon. Jackson wants his readers to recall what contemporaries and other movement leaders never forgot: Martin Luther King, Jr.'s radicalism. In so doing, Jackson portrays the civil rights leader as a politically astute activist, a perspective often downplayed or forgotten in other biographies and studies that concentrate primarily on King as a religious figure with an emphasis on his orthodox religious beliefs and activities. This book challenged my stereotype of King as a political neophyte, totally dependent on the advice and guidance of older, more seasoned black political leaders such as A. Philip Randolph. Although Jackson admits that “King kept his socialism relatively private in a place and time where red baiting and race baiting suppressed movements for basic constitutional rights,” he carefully documents how King “openly supported...