The Kneeling Man: My Father’s Life as a Black Spy Who Witnessed the Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr

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.