A new book on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the young adult category (ages 12-18) is an adaptation of Jonathan Eig’s Pulitzer Prize-winning bestseller King: A Life. The adaptation is co-authored by Dr. Yohuru Williams, the Distinguished University Chair, professor of history and founding director of the Racial Justice Initiative at the University of St. Thomas.
The inspiring, young adult edition of King: A Life highlights Eig’s “never-before-seen research – including recently declassified FBI documents – while reaffirming and recontextualizing the lasting effects and implications of King’s work for the present day,” according to the book publisher.
“Working with Michael Long on adapting Jonathan’s work has been an incredible journey, and I’m excited to see how the story of Dr. King will resonate with young readers,” said Williams, who dedicated the book to his first teacher – his mother, the late Elizabeth Williams, and the other extraordinary teachers who he said shaped his life.
Williams said these teachers taught him about “the transformative power of reading and the profound impact a devoted educator can have on the lives of others.”
In honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, which is celebrated as a federal holiday in America on the third Monday of every January, Williams asked one of the student ambassadors for the Racial Justice Initiative to read an excerpt from the book.
Celeste Conteh ’26 is a nursing student in the Susan S. Morrison School of Nursing at the Morrison Family College of Health at St. Thomas. She was also the 2023 president of the Black Empowerment Student Alliance and the recipient of a 2024 Excel! Research Scholar, a Haggerty Nursing Scholarship, and a Ryan BSN Scholarship.
The excerpt she reads appears on Page 20 of King: A Life by Jonathan Eig, adapted for young readers by Dr. Yohuru Williams and Michael Long.
On November 19, 1950, King traveled to Philadelphia to attend a lecture by Mordecai Johnson, a Morehouse graduate and President of Howard University. Johnson, who just returned from a trip to India, lectured on Gandhi. “His message was so profound.” King wrote years later, “that I left the meeting and bought a half-dozen books on Gandhi’s life and works.”
To King, Gandhi’s life offered evidence that “the love ethic of Jesus… was a potent instrument for social and collective transformation. It was in this Gandhian emphasis on love and nonviolence that I discovered the method for social reform that I had been seeking for so many months.”