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Sign up todayThe Kneeling Man
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Learn moreThe intimate and heartbreaking story of a Black undercover police officer who famously kneeled by the assassinated Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr—and a daughter’s quest for the truth about her father
In the famous photograph of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. on the balcony of Memphis’s Lorraine Motel, one man kneeled down beside King, trying to staunch the blood from his fatal head wound with a borrowed towel.
This kneeling man was a member of the Invaders, an activist group that was in talks with King in the days leading up to the murder. But he also had another identity: an undercover Memphis police officer reporting on the activities of this group, which was thought to be possibly dangerous and potentially violent. This kneeling man is Leta McCollough Seletzky’s father.
Marrell McCollough was a Black man working secretly with the white power structure, a spy. This was so far from her understanding of what it meant to be Black in America, of everything she eventually devoted her life and career to, that she set out to learn what she could about his life, his actions and motivations. But with that decision came risk. What would she uncover about her father, who went on to a career at the CIA, and did she want to bear the weight of knowing?
LETA McCOLLOUGH SELETZKY is a National Endowment for the Arts 2022 Creative Writing Fellow. A litigator turned essayist and memoirist, her work appears in The Atlantic; The New York Times; TheGrio; O, The Oprah Magazine; The Washington Post; and elsewhere. She holds a BA from Northwestern University and a JD from the George Washington University Law School. She grew up in Memphis, Tennessee, and now lives in Walnut Creek, California.
Reviews
“Leta McCollough Seletzky narrates her audiobook about the man who is kneeling beside Martin Luther King, Jr., in the iconic photo of the Civil Rights leader's assassination. He was Seletzky's father, Marrell McCollough, who worked as a spy within the Black activist group called the Invaders.… As author and narrator, she captures the complex emotions she felt as she uncovered hidden aspects of Civil Rights history. Most shocking was her discovery that a member of her own family was an eyewitness to some of those events.” —AudioFile Magazine
"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 . . . The result is a nuanced and insightful look at the complex spaces African Americans have navigated in the pursuit of racial justice." —Publishers Weekly
"As reconstructed by his daughter, the life of an undercover police officer present at the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr . . . Seletzky’s approach is nuanced, weaving her father's story and its many loose threads into her own . . . Students of 1960s anti-war movements and civil rights history will find useful information in this revealing footnote." —Kirkus Reviews
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