James Baldwin’s memoir No Name in the Street begins, as many memoirs do, with the writer’s very first memory. He is not yet five years old. His mother says to him, “I have a good idea,” and then, looking at a piece of black velvet, she puts it away in the closet. From this inconsequential action, little Jimmy reasons that an idea is something tangible like a wad of velvet. It can be put away. Baldwin does not pursue this parable in print, but everything he writes is an act of finding and saving. Mediocre writers make allowances for losing things. But in Baldwin nothing is lost. The tangible experiences of growing up in Harlem, hating his stepfather, becoming a boy preacher, leaving the church, leaving America, learning to write, flourishing in a White man’s world, and falling in love are material ideas, with heft, feel, and duration. They are pent-up in his body. They release their own light for all to see.

At the time of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s death in 1968, his voice was everywhere. The civil rights movement in America moved to the pulse of his cadences.

Among the many laments after King’s assassination was the poignant realization that we would no longer hear that voice. Moved by that melancholy silence, I set out to write a book about King the preacher.