Aliceville Museum to Host Event for Black History Month

To celebrate Black History Month, the Aliceville Museum is hosting a program by Dr. Derryn E. Moten, Professor and Chair of the Department of History and Political Science at Alabama State University, on Thursday, February 7 at 6:00 p.m. in the Museum’s Events Room at 104 Broad Street NE in Aliceville.

Dr. Moten will discuss the new edition of the first biography of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Crusader Without Violence by L. D. Reddick. Admission is free, and light refreshments will be available before the program. Copies of the book will be sold ­after the program at $23.95 each, and Dr. Moten will be available to sign them.

Published to critical acclaim in 1959 and long out of print, Crusader Without Violence was the first biography of the dynamic leader who emerged from the 1955–56 Montgomery Bus Boycott as the spokesman of the Twentieth Century American civil rights movement. NewSouth Book’s 60th Anniversary Edition, with a new introduction containing new biographical details about its author, returns to general circulation a valuable, rare, and engaging account of Martin Luther King Jr. before he became an American phenomenon.

The author, L. D. Reddick, had known the young King in Atlanta. They became reacquainted when Reddick moved to Montgomery in 1956, where King pastored the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. Reddick became a congregant and King’s friend and was active with him during the bus protest. He was thus able to report firsthand and at length on King within the setting of the young minister’s early career and family life.