Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
(1929-1968) was born Michael Luther King, Jr., but later had his name
changed to Martin. Martin Luther attended segregated public schools in
Georgia, graduating from high school at the age of fifteen; he received the
B. A. degree in 1948 from Morehouse College. After three years of
theological study at Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania, he was
awarded the Bachelor of Divinity in 1951 and enrolled in graduate studies at
Boston University, completing his residence for the doctorate in 1953 and
receiving the degree in 1955.
In 1954, Martin Luther King accepted the pastoral of the Dexter Avenue
Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. King was, by this time, a member of
the executive committee of the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People. In 1957 he was elected president of the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference. The ideals for this organization he took from
Christianity; its operational techniques from Gandhi. In the eleven-year
period between 1957 and 1968, King traveled over six million miles and spoke
over twenty-five hundred times and wrote five books as well as numerous
articles. He was awarded five honorary degrees; was named Man of the Year by
Time magazine in 1963; and became the symbolic leader of American blacks.
At the age of thirty-five, Martin Luther King, Jr., was the youngest man to
have received the Nobel Peace Prize. On the evening of April 4, 1968,
while standing on the balcony of his motel room in Memphis, Tennessee, where
he was to lead a protest march in sympathy with striking garbage workers of
that city, he was assassinated.
"Darkness cannot drive out
darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only
love can do that."
"In the End, we will remember
not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."
"If a man hasn't discovered
something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live."
"Hatred paralyzes life; love
releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life;
love illuminates it."
"A religion true to its
natures must also be concerned about man's social conditions. Religion deals
with both earth and heaven, both time and eternity. Religion operates not
only on the vertical plane but also on the horizontal. It seeks not only to
integrate men with God but to integrate men with men and each man with
himself."
"Everybody can be great...
because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve.
You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a
heart full of grace. A soul generated by love."
"If you succumb to the
temptation of using violence in the struggle, unborn generations will be the
recipients of a long and desolate night of bitterness, and your chief legacy
to the future will be an endless reign of meaningless chaos."
"Life's most persistent and
urgent question is, 'What are you doing for others?'"
"Love is the only force
capable of transforming an enemy into friend." |
