Mahatma Gandhi and Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. both shook, and changed, the world, in their quest for peace among all people, but what threads connected these great activists together in their shared goal of social revolution?
A lawyer and activist, tiny of stature with giant ideas, in British-ruled India at the beginning of the 20th century.
A minister from Georgia with a thunderous voice and hopes for peace at the height of the civil rights movement in America.
Born more than a half-century apart, with seemingly little in common except one shared wish, both would go on to be icons of peaceful resistance and human decency. Both preached love for all human beings, regardless of race or religion. Both believed that freedom and justice were won by not one, but many. Both met their ends in the most unpeaceful of ways—assassination.
But what led them down the path of peace? How did their experiences parallel...and diverge? Threads of Peace keenly examines and celebrates these extraordinary activists’ lives, the threads that connect them, and the threads of peace they laid throughout the world, for us to pick up, and weave together.---from the publisher
336 pages 978-1-4814-1678-8 Ages 9-13
Keywords: social activists, biography, social issues, social conditions, civil rights, role of the individual, power of the individual, 9 year old, 10 year old, 11 year old, 12 year old, Social Studies Curriculum, assassination, peace, diversity, diverse books
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“It isn’t nice to block the doorway
It isn’t nice to go to jail
There are nicer ways to do it
But the nice ways always fail
It isn’t nice, it isn’t nice
You told us once, you told us twice
But if that is Freedom’s price
We don’t mind (no, no, no!)”
--Malvina Reynolds (1964)
“In 1906, a new law in the Transvaal province of South Africa called Gandhi to action once again. The Asiatic Registration Act required Indians and other Asians to register their fingerprints and carry registration certificates or face deportation. Those affected were outraged.
At a mass meeting at the Empire Theatre in Johannesburg, Gandhi laid out a new approach to resistance. He called upon the Indians to defy the law in an entirely new way. No one should take up arms. Rather, they should simply disobey the unfair law. If they were arrested, they should go cheerfully to jail.
It was a serious thing to ask, and he knew it. He was asking them to disobey the authorities, much as young Kastur had disobeyed him years ago when he had been unfair. Only this enemy had far greater power than a foolish young husband. In this new movement, Gandhi was asking for heroes.
He called his passive resistance strategy satyagraha, or ‘holding fast to truth.’ Truth in Gandhi’s mind equaled justice, and every waking minute, justice is what he sought. He even traveled to London, hoping to persuade the British to reject the unfair law. He met with a high-ranking official named Winston Churchill but returned to Johannesburg disappointed. Instead of giving up, however, Gandhi launched the promised protests.
Thousands of Indians went on strike. They refused to register with the authorities. Many were arrested, The jails filled rapidly. Gandhi received his own sentence in a courtroom where he had once argued a case as a lawyer.”
The first section of THREADS OF PEACE serves as the best bio for young people on Mahātmā Gandhi that I’ve ever read. It also serves as the introduction to the author’s thesis--how Gandhi inspired America’s great hero, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
This connect-the-dots title is fresh and sophisticated. In the same manner as one better grasps U.S. constitutional history by learning the underlying philosophies propounded by Locke, Montesquieu, and Rousseau, the modern U.S. Civil Rights Movement is better understood after one reads how MLK studied Gandhi, who had been moved by the writings of Tolstoy. Tolstoy, in turn, had been inspired by the New Testament lessons of Jesus.
The book's second section is both a biography of MLK and an overview of the American Civil Rights Movement. In it, we learn that Dr. King wasn’t necessarily the best student when he first entered college. But he picked up the pace as he went along. We come to understand how he became inspired by Gandhi’s good works and writings, and how he came to employ Gandhi’s philosophies to significantly impact U.S. history.
“King was the orator that Gandhi never became. As the civil rights movement went on, King came to rely less on Gandhi’s writing and more on his own interpretations and his conscience. Still. one thing is clear. It fell to King to help fulfill Gandhi’s prophecy, made to Howard Thurman and his group, long ago in a tent in India: Black Americans would deliver ‘the unadulterated message of nonviolence’ to the world.”
The book’s third section--”When the Threads Break”-- begins with brief biographies of the two assassins who robbed the world of these immortal peacemakers. Gandhi was shot to death by Nathuram Godse, a Hindu nationalist who had twice previously nearly succeeded in killing him. Dr. King was shot to death by James Earl Ray, a career criminal/escaped convict/white supremacist who spent time working on George Wallace’s segregationist presidential campaign. The section goes on to discuss the ways in which Black Americans continue to be victimized by prejudice and a failure of the country to address issues like fair housing.
Throughout, the book is enriched by a breadth of notable, high-quality photos, and interesting sidebars. The writing is sufficiently straightforward to be accessible to plenty of 10-year-olds, and the content is rich enough to share it with teens.
As the recent Black Lives Matter movement has laid bare, significant changes are needed to achieve real equality in America. THREADS OF PEACE is moving and informative, and it has the ability to inspire potential young activists to help craft the next chapters in our history.
I trust that the Sibert committee will be discussing this one at length.
Recommended by: Richie Partington, MLIS, California USA
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