Bearing the Cross

Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference is a 1986 book by David J. Garrow about Martin [Luther King Jr.], the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Freedom Rides, March on [Washington for Jobs and Freedom|The March on Washington] and the American [Civil Rights Movement]. The content of this book is derived from more than 700 recorded conversations – with such close associates of King as Coretta Scott King, Andrew Young, and Ralph D. Abernathy, as well as with political opponents – and thousands of previously unreleased FBI documents.
The book won the 1987 Pulitzer [Prize for Biography or Autobiography|Pulitzer Prize for Biography] and the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award.
Bearing the Cross was first published in hardback by William Morrow and Company, with a HarperCollins paperback in 2004.