To weave a magnificent tapestry like the one James W. Douglass has created with Martyrs to the Unspeakable: The Assassinations of JFK, Malcolm, Martin, and RFK takes a steady hand, a hopeful heart, and a steadfast dedication to seeking truth and telling it through factually based and interwoven stories.
Because of its brilliant complexity and documented details, it is difficult to review, but I will say at the outset that it is a masterpiece, the culmination of Douglass’s life of writing about and fighting for peace and justice for our human family.
It is a book that could only be written by a man sustained by a spiritual faith that inspired his four subjects to face their own deaths without flinching, so that others might be saved. It is a testament to four leaders violently gunned down, written by a man whose faith in nonviolence is unshakeable.
Douglass grasps the prophet and artist’s secret that we all live by stories, and the martyred heroes’ tales he recounts in this book are sorely needed in this darkest of times when the death of our planet is at stake and the spiritual sustenance to prevent it is desperately needed.
The truths he recounts through these stories are sad and joyous, for they convey both the agony of terrible deaths but also the ecstasy of the hope that is resurrected through grasping the courage of four great men who defiantly dared to confront the unspeakable lies of their government and society. Four men who died trying to open others’ eyes to terrible truths hard to swallow......
We can see the hope of life in our valley of death through the testimony of our prophets. Because they asked why, kept turning, and were willing to die, JFK, Malcom, Martin, and RFK all had to go. That is our story now. We are on the same bloody, glorious path of humanity they blazed for our long night’s journey into light.
May we learn on that way to bow to the light in every human personality on Earth until we see it in communion with the lives of all creatures.
Martyrs to the Unspeakable is a masterpiece, a tapestry of profound importance. It is a testament to the martyrs who died trying and to its author who has lived to tell their tales. It is a breathtaking and inspiring book.
