Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story.

KING JR., Martin Luther.

Item Number: 126776

New York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, 1958.

First edition, early printing of Dr. Martin Luther King’s first book. Octavo, original half cloth, illustrated. Association copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, “To my Friend: Julius Kiano, for appreciation for your unswerving devotion to the ideals of freedom and human dignity Martin L. King Jr.” As a young African scholar at the University of California at Berkeley, Dr. Julius Gikonyo Kiano became the first Kenyan to earn a PhD. According to Dorothy Stephens in her 2006 memoir, Kwa Heri Means Goodbye: Memories of Kenya 1957-1959, Kiano dated Coretta Scott, the future wife of Martin Luther King, Jr., for five years. The couple separated due to Scott deeming him ‘too bright’ and ‘too political.’ Near fine in a very good price-clipped dust jacket with light rubbing. Housed in a custom half morocco clamshell and chemise box. An exceptional association.

Stride Toward Freedom is Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s account of the first successful large-scale application of nonviolence resistance in America is comprehensive, revelatory, and intimate. King described his book as "the chronicle of fifty thousand Negroes who took to heart the principles of nonviolence, who learned to fight for their rights with the weapon of love, and who, in the process, acquired a new estimate of their own human worth.''