Martin Luther King, Jr.
The structural recipe requires opening with the single most-cited work in the fact sheet. Because no specific work title appears in the FACTS list, the opening will instead anchor on the most prominent documented public role — his leadership of the civil rights movement — before moving through the biographical arc the recipe specifies.
Martin Luther King Jr. was a prominent leader of the civil rights movement in the United States from 1955 until his assassination in 1968. A Baptist minister and writer who worked in English throughout his public life, he was also associated with the labor movement in the United States. His efforts on behalf of civil and human rights brought him recognition from several major institutions across more than a decade of public activity.
King was born Michael King Jr. on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta. He attended David T. Howard High School before pursuing higher education at Morehouse College, Crozer Theological Seminary, and Boston University, and he was also educated at the Candler School of Theology. That sequence of institutions formed the educational foundation from which he went on to serve as a Baptist minister and, beginning in 1955, as a civil rights activist in the United States.
As an American civil rights activist and writer, King received a number of significant honors. These included the Nobel Peace Prize, the Spingarn Medal, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the United Nations Prize in the Field of Human Rights. The breadth of that recognition, spanning both domestic and international bodies, reflects the scope of his documented public role over the years of his leadership.
King led the civil rights movement from 1955 until his death on April 4, 1968. He was assassinated in Memphis, and he died at St. Joseph's Hospital there. He was thirty-nine years old at the time of his death. The United Nations Prize in the Field of Human Rights, among the awards he received, stands as a formal international acknowledgment of his work as an American civil rights activist and Baptist minister.
Quotes by Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr.'s insights on:
Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon, which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals.
Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can't ride you unless your back is bent.
On some positions, Cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?' Expediency asks the question, 'Is it politic?' And Vanity comes along and asks the question, 'Is it popular?' But Conscience asks the question, 'Is it right?'
Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.
Cowardice asks the question, is it safe? Expediency asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? But conscience asks the question, is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because it is right.
Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge which is power; religion gives man wisdom which is control.
Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself.
I am not interested in power for power's sake, but I'm interested in power that is moral, that is right and that is good.