New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1963. First edition. First printing, with "D-N" code on copyright page. Inscribed "Best Wishes - Martin Luther King" for Phoebe Jacobs, Executive Vice President and Director of the Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation. A Near Fine copy in Very Good dust jacket. Publisher's quarter black cloth over gray paper boards. Cloth a bit sunned at top edge. Some toning to endpapers. Unclipped dust jacket (with $3.50 price and 0663 date code) with some chipping to edges, abrasion to back panel, some toning and foxing to interior, and a bit of predation to folds. Still, jacket presents well externally. An appealing inscribed copy of King's sermons.

Martin Luther King, Jr. began composing the sermons compiled in Strength to Love in a jail cell in Albany in 1962. King had been arrested for holding a vigil outside Albany City Hall and was jailed for two weeks, during which he prepared the drafts for the sermons “Loving Your Enemies,” “Love in Action,” and “Shattered Dreams." His editors at Harper & Brothers "praised the first results, seeing Strength to Love as the words of a minister who addressed his congregation with messages of 'warmth, immediate application, and poetic verve'" (Stanford). Unfortunately, King's editors later scrubbed some of his most controversial sentiments from the book, including his scathing assessment of segregation and his criticisms of colonialism, capitalism, the military, and war. Despite the changes made to the text, however, Strength to Love "was a landmark work...King's fusion of Christian teachings and social consciousness...continues to promote his vision of love as a potent social and political force for change, the efficacy of religious faith in surmounting evil, and the vital need for true human integration, or, as he defined it, 'genuine intergroup and interpersonal living' (King, 23). This volume brought to the forefront King’s identity as a compelling, well-educated, and compassionate preacher at a time when many whites knew him only as a civil rights leader" (Stanford).

For over forty years, Phoebe Jacobs (1919 - 2012) served as the Executive Vice President and Director of the Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation (LAEF), an organization that supports music education programs for all ages, including concerts, scholarship programs, and summer camps. Before co-founding the LAEF, Jacobs had worked closely with Louis Armstrong as a public relations specialist, and maintained a close relationship with his wife Lucille as well. In 1974, five years after Armstrong's death, Jacobs joined Lucille on a memorial tour, during which "they carried memories of Armstrong’s music to countries behind the Iron Curtain" (LAEF website). Jacobs, a lifelong devotee of jazz, also helped establish the Louis Armstrong Archives at Queens College; New York's original Jazz Museum (now integrated into the collections of the Schomburg Center for Research on Black Culture in Harlem); and the Jazz Foundation of America.

Note: King did not address his inscription to Jacobs, but he signed this copy while in her presence. The book was purchased directly from Jacobs' descendant. Near Fine in Very Good dust jacket. (Item #7964)