ABSTRACT
Erkisonian psychohistory has the methodological strength to encourage the exploration of unconscious and conscious emotional states in human development, but it also has two weaknesses. This chapter attempts to correct this weakness here and check, confirm, or question points made by an author in an autobiographical text through grounding my analysis in context-building archival and secondary historical sources and one-on-one interviews with people who knew the author and others related to him. It analyzes Benjamin Elijah Mays's autobiography Born to Rebel. The chapter contends that book was a double-edged production in myth and needs to be to unraveled to understand the real relationship between Mays and King and the psycho historical generational context and consequences for Mays's development as a black who came of age in the ascent of Jim Crow America. It examines archival records and interviews with those who knew Dr. King during his childhood to age twenty-five as well as rare secondary sources.
