The kneeling man My father's life as a Black spy who witnessed the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr

James Louw's photograph of Martin Luther King Jr. lying mortally wounded at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968, includes a young man who is trying to stop King's bleeding. Essayist and memoirist Seletzky reveals that this kneeling man is her father, Marrell "Mac" McCullough, an undercover Memphis police officer who was embedded in the Invaders, an activist group. Seletzky explains how her father came to the Lorraine, how he used army first aid training to try to save King, and what happened afterward. Her powerful, well-organized, and fast-moving narrative reveals the challenges Mac and his family confronted and tracks how everyone's lives turned out. Despite King's assassination, the oppression of sharecropping, relatives who die too young, segregation, and racism, Seletzky recounts some triumphs. Mac helped break the color barrier at the Memphis police department and then at the CIA. Her grandparents instilled in Mac and Seletzky a strong work ethic, the grit to face challenges, and the ability to find succor in gardening. Seletzky's compelling account of the story of the sanitation workers' strike, the Reverend King's profound leadership, and efforts to overcome racism in Memphis are richly enlightening and may help illuminate the underlying causes of the January 2023 Memphis police murder of Tyre Nichols.

Seletzky debuts with an intriguing study of her father, Marrell "Mac" McCollough, a police officer and CIA agent who was seen kneeling over Martin Luther King's body in a famous photograph taken just after the civil rights leader was shot on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis in 1968. Seletzky begins with a visceral account of the assassination ("Potent, suffocating odors closed in--burning gunpowder and a sweet cologne overlying sulfurous notes from King's facial hair depilatory") then rewinds to her father's Mississippi Delta childhood, military service, and spur-of-the-moment decision to apply to the Memphis police department in 1967. Recruited by the department's Domestic Intelligence Bureau, Mac infiltrated the Invaders, a local Black Power group involved with King and others in the Memphis sanitation workers' strike. Mac's conflicting roles as an undercover police officer and a Black man moved by King's cries for racial progress are at the forefront of Seletzky's narrative, which includes a fascinating reunion between her father and former Atlanta mayor Andrew Young, who was also on the balcony that day. The result is a nuanced and insightful look at the complex spaces African Americans have navigated in the pursuit of racial justice. Agent: Michael Carlisle, InkWell Management. (Apr.)

The family legacy passed to Seletzky, a 2022 National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellow, is a difficult one for her to come to terms with, especially the life of her father, Marrell McCollough, one of the first Black police officers in Memphis. He worked undercover and infiltrated the Invaders and other Black rights organizations during the height of the civil rights movement. He was present at the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and is famously pictured giving aid, kneeling by King's side, and staunching the flow of blood with a towel. The book is a well-documented and researched narrative of McCollough's life, from impoverished sharecropping child to an eventual career in the CIA. It paints a vivid and gripping picture of Black life at that time, rife with racism, injustice, and moral ambiguity. Interspersed in this narrative are chapters highlighting the author's journey to unravel this story. It is a labor of love and a search for understanding as Seletzky explores the tangled history of the nation and her family. VERDICT This book is perfect for anyone seeking to understand the historical period and what it means to be Black in the United States.--Mason Bennett

As reconstructed by his daughter, the life of an undercover police officer present at the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. The famous photograph of a mortally wounded King on the balcony of the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis shows three people pointing at the window where the bullet came from and one man kneeling at King's side. The kneeling man was Marrell "Mac" McCullough, then an undercover agent for the Memphis Police Department, later a CIA officer. "Dad came and went, but the black-and-white image of horror remained, unalterable and mute," writes litigator and essayist Seletzky, who excavates the facts of her father's life, many of which he was reluctant to discuss for reasons both personal and professional. Many questions remain: Mac, for instance, remembers the smell of gunpowder at the site of King's murder, leading him to suspect that an exploding bullet was involved. At the time, that material was only available to the military, leading eyewitness Andrew Young to tell the author, "I don't want to be in a position to think that high officials in our government arranged to kill my friend." Mac was called before congressional investigators who questioned whether he himself was involved in the assassination. We will likely never know whether the government or Memphis police had anything to do with the murder, and, to judge by his daughter's account, Mac is the kind of man who will take secrets to his grave. Fully aware through hard personal experience of Southern racism, why was McCullough so willing to act as a spy among Black Power student groups? Seletzky's approach is nuanced, weaving her father's story and its many loose threads into her own--e.g., when she considers the racism of his era in light of the present and "the creeping feeling that I had more neighbors supporting Trump than I'd ever imagined." Students of 1960s anti-war movements and civil rights history will find useful information in this revealing footnote. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.