Book Review: Martin Luther King Bullavoid
by Etta B. Harbin
Publication Date: Jul 08, 2014
List Price: $10.99
Format: Paperback, 116 pages
Classification: Fiction
ISBN13: 9781631859915
Imprint: Tate Publishing
Publisher: Tate Publishing & Enterprises, LLC
Parent Company: Tate Publishing & Enterprises, LLC
Read a Description of Martin Luther King Bullavoid
Book Reviewed by Carol Taylor
“Amid mounting threats to his life,
Martin Luther King chose to step onto the
second floor balcony of the Lorraine Motel in the trajectory of the one-eyed
Remington 760 Gamemaster that patiently awaited his arrival…” The resulting
riots of the sixties were to ensure that Dr. King didn’t die in vain and for a
while it seemed that he hadn’t. Many cities honored King’s memory by designating
the site of the riots as Martin Luther King Boulevard, Avenue or Street. Outside
businesses were ousted from neighborhoods and replaced with churches and
tabernacles.
Forty-five years have passed since Dr. King’s death and Etta B. Harbin posits
that most of the thoroughfares that bear his name are “deplorable” reminders of
his death. Today the few entrepreneurs that are on the boulevard do business
through iron bars and bulletproof revolving servers. Though there are plans for
future beautification it won’t impact the growing unemployment rate in the
community, or slow the growing HIV rate among black females, or increase the
plummeting high school and college graduation rates, or decrease the number of
blacks who are incarcerated.
“The problems of the black community have for too long been the topic of forums,
books, sermons, and political agendas that concluded with perpetual plans of
future forums, books, sermons, and political agendas with no concrete plans of
actions to halt the profuse bleeding that ensures the demise of the poor,”
writes Harbin writes in her searing no-holds-barred book, Martin Luther King
BullAvoid: Imploding Communities. In it she hopes to stop the deterioration of
boulevards by offering “practical” solutions for uplifting the community that
moves from a “problem-centered approach to a people-centered solution”.
This small book, only 114 pages, packs a powerful punch not only because of the
candid accounts of how so many once prosperous black neighborhoods devolved into
downtrodden communities but because Harbin asks hard questions. The most
illuminating for me was: “Can we agree on something? There should not be even
one black who disagrees with the right of Trayvon to wear a hoodie…without the
Zimmermans of the world initiating a cause to kill. Not one black should
disagree that Jordan Davis had a right to play his music without the Dunns of
the world…justifying a killing and an attempted mass killing. But, because we
disagree, the power of blacks to make changes for the common good of all is
thwarted…”
Harbin also takes affluent black churches to task. Her 10 “practical” solutions
for change take up the second half of the book; the first part is a history
lesson that brings us to the present. Her solutions speak mostly to churches
because of the key role they play in the community, because of the power they
wield in the community and because of their financial stronghold within the
community. Harbin’s position is that the billion-dollar efforts of outside
entities to create financial gains have failed to remove the barriers to income
equality, close the academic gaps, and create judicial fairness, “because the
root cause of the problem is within the community”. According to Harbin, it’s up
to us to make positive permanent changes. In Martin Luther King Bullavoid, she
wants to show us how.