They have been out of print for over a decade but four "prescient" titles by Martin Luther King Jr are to be made available again following a deal struck by King's son with American publisher Beacon Press.
King's son Dexter Scott King said the deal would help bring his father's "urgently needed teachings of nonviolence and human dignity, and his dream of freedom and equality, to a new global audience". It gives the Boston-based independent publisher Beacon Press sole right to bring out new editions of previously published King titles, and to compile his writings, lectures and sermons into new editions with introductions by scholars.
The first titles to be brought back into print will hit shelves on 18 January 2010 – Martin Luther King day – and will include Stride Toward Freedom, King's account of the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955 and 1956 which opposed racial segregation on public transport, and his last book, an analysis of the state of American race relations, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community, which sees him assess the rise of black nationalism and condemn the advocacy of black separatism. Both have been unavailable since the 1990s, said Beacon Press.
"What surprises me most is how current his thinking is, how he seems to be speaking not from the 1950s or 60s but from the post 9/11 era, even from the Obama era," said Beacon Press director Helene Atwan. "What he has to say to us in an age of globalization, in a so-called 'post-racial' age, is as valid as ever; and in some respects more urgent in a world where 25,000 children die in poverty every day; in a world where American soldiers are killing and dying in an unjust war, in a world where too many people are judged daily by the colour of their skin, or the name they give their God, rather than the content of their character." The publisher's executive editor Gayatri Patnaik agreed, saying that publishing King "in the age of our first African American president reminds us of his prescience: in addition to being a civil rights legend, he was an early global visionary, deeply concerned with peace and nonviolence, not only in America but indeed the world".
Other forthcoming King titles include a new edition of the orations he delivered six months before he was assassinated on 4 April 1968, The Trumpet of Conscience, and a new edition of Strength to Love, a collection of his sermons.