Yazdiha, Hajar. Struggles for the People's King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement.

• Author: Davis-Sowers, Regina

Yazdiha, Hajar. Struggles for the People's King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2023, Xvi + 270 pages. Hardcover, $95.00.

In Struggles for the People's King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement, sociologist Hajar Yazdiha has written a timely and powerful book that provides a look at the consequences to minoritized groups when the majority group distorts elements of the collective memories of the civil rights movement. She has written a dynamic book that helps in understanding the history of America that led to the rise of Trumpism in the twenty-first century.

Utilizing a mixed methods analysis of archival data, focus groups, primary and secondary sources, narrative analysis, and the methods of comparative-historical sociology, Yazdiha explores three basic questions: How did the collective memory of the civil rights movement, of Dr. King, become a ready-made political strategy for mobilization by groups with divergent, even antithetical aims? What are the consequences of these (mis)uses of collective memory? How does remembering the past matter for contemporary politics, and how does it shape the direction of our collective future?

Yazdiha examines three close-case studies of oppositional social movements and two groups that are more parallel than oppositional, to meet three clear goals: 1) to explore the trajectories of the collective memory of the civil rights movement as a political strategy over time; 2) to compare how groups with a range of collective identities across the political spectrum reshape the memory of the civil rights movement to make and contest political claims; and 3) to analyze the multilevel consequences of these (mis)uses of memory for political culture and the societal future.

One of the strengths of the book is its use of racial and social movement history across all six chapters. This is particularly true in Chapter One, where she demonstrates through the contentious politics of the debates in Congress between political parties regarding commemorating Dr. King's birthday as a holiday. It is a necessary addition, for it allows the reader to comprehend where and when the distortions of the messages and statements of Dr. King originated. She illustrates the processes in which the collective memories of the civil rights movement were made and then coopted by powerful groups that Yazdiha refers to as Kingmakers, including...