What are the odds that a scrappy, idealistic white teenager – orphaned by his beloved mother and abandoned by his father soon after — from a working class Irish family in Cambridge, Massachusetts, would meet Martin Luther King, Jr., the leader of the Civil Rights Movement, and become one in mind and heart?
In Driving Dr. King: Chasing the Dream, Tom Houck reveals his remarkable story of how the high school dropout became an honorary member of the King family, chauffeuring Dr. King, his wife Coretta and their young children. Houck offers a unique and intimate vantage point on the Civil Rights Movement’s most extraordinary leader and the unexpected role the teenager played as one of King’s confidantes. Driving Dr. King takes the reader from the Kings’ supper table after church on Sundays to Houck organizing poor whites for the Poor People’s Campaign when he got word of his beloved hero’s assassination.
“Tom has been a witness and participant in the civil rights movement from a very young age. His story and his long association with the King family will provide new insights for the reader – lending a fresh perspective on race in America.”
–Representative John Lewis
U.S. Congress, Georgia Fifth District
“Tom Houck provides an intimate look at the private Martin Luther King Jr. not found anywhere else. There’s no scandal here – only an up-close, personal, never-before-seen look at the 20th century’s greatest civil rights icon.”
– Julian Bond, Board Chairman
NAACP
