Christine King Farris is the oldest child Atlanta's esteemed King family and big sister to Martin Luther King, Jr. In her newly released book, 'Through It All: Reflections on My Life, My Family and My Faith,' (Simon and Shuster, $25), Mrs. King Farris shares an intimate look into the King family growing up and how her strict but loving upbringing not only affected her life, but of course, that of her brother and thus the world.

"I have to chuckle as I realize that there are people who actually believe ML just appeared. They think he simply happneed, that he appeared fully formed, without context, ready to change the world. Take it from his big sister, that's simply not the case."

Writing with a quiet strength and reserved dignity, King Farris, 80, clearly captures life growing up as a preachers daughter in the famed Ebeneezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, with all of the privledges and responsibilities therein. She notes that the King and Williams familes "are the the products of a long line of activists and ministers."

King Farris herself led an accomplished life, getting an undergraduate degree in Economics from Spelman College and then a graduate degree in Education from Columbia University in New York. She speaks fluent French and is now the matriarch of the King family, continuing its legacy through the King Center foundation. Farris King has also been a professor for over 40 years at her beloved Spelman.

Though by no means a tell-all into the King family business, King Farris paints short flourishes of life with a young Martin Luther King (ML to his family) with details into his life that only a sister could know. Like fact that MLK's nickname, "Tweed," was based on a brown, tweed Zoot suit that he loved. Or the fact that MLK had an extremely competitive streak -- both applying to college early and joining the church at the same time as his big sister, just to best her.

'Through It All' gives lens into the beginning stages of the man who would lead the Civil Rights movement and died at the hand of assassins on a Memphis Tenessee balcony and the age of 39. King Farris writes that she learned of her brother's death in an Atlanta airport bathroom with her sister in law Coretta Scott King.

In what could only be described as a climate filled with terror, King Farris wrote that after her brother's house was bombed during the Montgomery bus boycott, her family was reminded of that "the price of freedom was high...and that it would demand sacrifice that some day could require the ultimate sacrifice of ML's life." She said that the family resolutely accepted that the "looming specter of death would be a constant presence in our lives."

Of course most all of us know of the tragedy that befell the King family on that fateful night in April, but what many do not know is the sustained tragedy that the King family faced in the years after Martin King's murder. In what could only be described as Kennedy-esque, King Farris also tells of the many deaths that visited the King family through the years and how her faith helped to sustain her.

After Martin King was murdered, less than a year later, her only other brother, AD, who was also an activist and minister, was found drowned in his pool. Two of his children also died prematurely. And in what King Farris describes as one of the worst days of her life, the original King family matriarch, Alberta Williams King, was shot and killed by a deranged gunman at Ebenezer on a Sunday morning in 1974 while playing the church organ.

Yes, there were many funerals in the King family, but King Farris' story is not just one of sustained sorrow but of faith and pride, Christian responsibility and legacy. She accopmanied Martin King to Oslo, Norway when he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. She recounts her fathers swelling pride in his son:


"Here was a man, a sharecropper's son from Stockbridge, Georgia, watching his son receive one of the world's greatest humanitarian honors. He was simply overjoyed, and the tears flowed freely and unashamedly during the ceremony."

It is moments like these, given from an insider's perspective, as well as rare family photos and glimpses into not only Martin Luther King's early life, but the life an African American woman growing up in the 1940s and 1950s that makes 'Through It All' yet another rich strip in the tapestry of America's history.