RBG MLK Multimedia-In His Own Words

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IN HIS OWN WORDS

2. Martin Luther King Jr. Biography and
MP3s (Lectures/Sermons/Speeches) for Download
1

3. CLICK AND PLAY OR TO SAVE OPEN THE MP3>FILE>SAVE AS
play Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr — Entrance
into the Civil Rights Movement
play MLK Jr. — I Have Been To The
Mountaintop
play Mumia Abu-Jamal On The True Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr
play MLK — Police Brutality Will Backfire
play CBS NEWS — Martin Luther King Jr.
Assaination
play Martin luther king jr - Drum Major for
Justice
play MlK Jr — Address to the A.J.C.
play MLK Jr. — I Have A Dream (Full Speech)
play Robert F. Kennedy Announces
Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr
play Martin Luther King Jr – Rediscovering
Lost Vaules
play MlK Jr. — Against Vietnam 1
play MLK Jr. — Against Vietnam 2
Biography
Birth and Family Martin Luther King, Jr. was born at noon Tuesday, January 15, 1929, at the
family home, 501 Auburn Avenue, N.E., Atlanta, Georgia. Dr. Charles Johnson was the
attending physician. Martin Luther King, Jr., was the first son and second child born to the
Reverend Martin Luther King, Sr., and Alberta Williams King. Other children born to the Kings
were Christine King Farris and the late Reverend Alfred Daniel Williams King. Martin Luther
King's maternal grandparents were the Reverend Adam Daniel Williams, second pastor of
Ebenezer Baptist, and Jenny Parks Williams. His paternal grandparents, James Albert and
Delia King, were sharecroppers on a farm in Stockbridge, Georgia. Continued below...
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4. He married the former Coretta Scott, younger daughter of Obadiah and Bernice McMurray Scott
of Marion, Alabama on June 18, 1953. The marriage ceremony took place on the lawn of the
Scott's home in Marion. The Reverend King, Sr., performed the service, with Mrs. Edythe
Bagley, the sister of Mrs. King, maid of honor, and the Reverend A.D. King, the brother of Martin
Luther King, Jr., best man. Four children were born to Dr. and Mrs. King: Yolanda Denise
(November 17, 1955 Montgomery, Alabama)
Martin Luther III (October 23, 1957 Montgomery, Alabama)
Dexter Scott (January 30, 1961 Atlanta, Georgia)
Bernice Albertine (March 28, 1963 Atlanta, Georgia)
Education
Martin Luther King, Jr. began his education at the Yonge Street Elementary School in Atlanta,
Georgia. Following Yonge School, he was enrolled in David T. Howard Elementary School. He
also attended the Atlanta University Laboratory School and Booker T. Washington High School.
Because of his high score on the college entrance examinations in his junior year of high
school, he advanced to Morehouse College without formal graduation from Booker T.
Washington. Having skipped both the ninth and twelfth grades, Dr. King entered Morehouse at
the age of fifteen.
In 1948, he graduated from Morehouse College with a B.A. degree in Sociology. That fall, he
enrolled in Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania. While attending Crozer, he
also studied at the University of Pennsylvania. He was elected president of the senior class and
delivered the valedictory address; he won the Pearl Plafker Award for the most outstanding
student; and he received the J. Lewis Crozer fellowship for graduate study at a university of his
choice. He was awarded a Bachelor of Divinity degree from Crozer in 1951.
In September of 1951, Martin Luther King began doctoral studies in Systematic Theology at
Boston University. He also studied at Harvard University. His dissertation, "A Comparison of
God in the Thinking of Paul Tillich and Henry Wieman," was completed in 1955, and the Ph.D.
degree from Boston, a Doctorate of Philosophy in Systematic Theology, was awarded on June
5, 1955.
Honorary Degree
Dr. King was awarded honorary degrees from numerous colleges and universities in the United
States and several foreign countries. They include the following:
1957
Doctor of Humane Letters, Morehouse College
Doctor of Laws, Howard University
Doctor of Divinity, Chicago Theological Seminary
1958
Doctor of Laws, Morgan State College
Doctor of Humanities, Central State College
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5. 1959
Doctor of Divinity, Boston University
1961
Doctor of Laws, Lincoln University
Doctor of Laws, University of Bridgeport
1962
Doctor of Civil Laws, Bard College
1963
Doctor of Letters, Keuka College
1964
Doctor of Divinity, Wesleyan College
Doctor of Laws, Jewish Theological Seminary
Doctor of Laws, Yale University
Doctor of Divinity, Springfield College
1965
Doctor of Laws, Hofstra University
Doctor of Human Letters, Oberlin College
Doctor of Social Science, Amsterdam Free University
Doctor of Divinity, St. Peter's College
1967
Doctor of Civil Law, University of New Castle Upon Tyne
Doctor of Laws, Grinnell College, Grinnell, Iowa
Martin Luther King entered the Christian ministry and
was ordained in February 1948 at the age of nineteen
at Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta, Georgia.
Following his ordination, he became Assistant Pastor
of Ebenezer. Upon completion of his studies at Boston
University, he accepted the call of Dexter Avenue
Baptist Church, Montgomery, Alabama. He was the
pastor of Dexter Avenue from September 1954 to
November 1959, when he resigned to move to Atlanta
to direct the activities of the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference. From 1960 until his death in
1968, he was co-pastor with his father at Ebenezer
Baptist Church and President of the Southern
Christian Leadership Conference.
Dr. King was a pivotal figure in the Civil Rights
Movement. He was elected president of the
Montgomery Improvement Association, the
organization which was responsible for the successful
Montgomery Bus Boycott from 1955 to 1956 (381
days). He was arrested thirty times for his participation
4

6. in civil rights activities. He was a founder and president of Southern Christian Leadership
Conference from 1957 to 1968. He was also vice president of the national Sunday School and
Baptist Teaching Union Congress of the National Baptist Convention. He was a member of
several national and local boards of directors and served on the boards of trustees of several
institutions and agencies. Dr. King was elected to membership in several learned societies
including the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
 Awards
Dr. King received several hundred awards for his leadership in the Civil Rights
Movement.
Among them were:
* Selected one of the most outstanding personalities of the year by Time, 1957.
* Listed in Who's Who in America, 1957.
* the Spingarn Medal from NAACP, 1957.
* The Russwurm Award from the National Newspaper Publishers, 1957.
* The Second Annual Achievment -- The Guardian Association of the Police Department
of New York, 1958.
* Link Magazine of New Dehli, India, listed Dr. King as one of the sixteen world leaders
who had contributred most to the advancement of freedom during 1959.
* Named Man of the Year by Time, 1963.
* Named American of the Decade by Laundry, Dry Cleaning, and Die Workers
International Union, 1963.
* The John Dewey Award, from the United Federation of Teachers, 1964.
* The John F. Kennedy Award, from the Catholic Interracial Council of Chicago, 1964.
* The Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. At age 35, Dr. King was the youngest man, the second
American, and the third black man awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
* The Marcus Garvey Prize for Human Rights, presented by the Jamacian Government.
(posthumously) 1968.
* The Rosa L. Parks Award, presented by the Southern Christian Leadrship Conference.
(posthumously) 1968.
* The preceding awards and others, along with numerous citations, are in the Archives of
the Martin Luther King, Center for Nonviolent Social Change, Inc. in Atlanta, Georgia.
Publications
See: Martin Luther King, Jr. The Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers Project
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7. Speeches
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a vital personality of the modern era. His lectures and remarks
stirred the concern and sparked the conscience of a generation; the movements and marches
he led brought significant changes in the fabric of American life; his courageous and selfless
devotion gave direction to thirteen years of civil rights activities; his charismatic leadership
inspired men and women, young and old, in the nation and abroad.
Dr. King's concept of somebodiness gave black and poor people a new sense of worth and
dignity. His philosophy of nonviolent direct action, and his strategies for rational and non-
destructive social change, galvanized the conscience of this nation and reordered its priorities.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965, for example, went to Congress as a result of the Selma to
Montgomery march. His wisdom, his words, his actions, his commitment, and his dreams for a
new cast of life, are intertwined with the American experience.
Dr. King's speech at the march on Washington in 1963, his acceptance speech of the Nobel
Peace Prize, his last sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church, and his final speech in Memphis are
among his most famous utterances (I've Been to the Mountaintop). The Letter from Birmingham
Jail ranks among the most important American documents.
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8. Death/ Assassination
Dr. King was shot while
standing on the balcony of the
Lorraine Motel in Memphis,
Tennessee on April 4, 1968, by
James Earl Ray. James Earl
Ray was arrested in London,
England on June 8, 1968 and
returned to Memphis,
Tennessee to stand trial for the
assassination of Dr. King. On
March 9, 1969, before coming
to trial, he entered a guilty plea
and was sentenced to ninety-
nine years in the Tennessee
State Penitentiary. Dr. King had
been in Memphis to help lead
sanitation workers in a protest
against low wages and intolerable conditions. His funeral services were held April 9, 1968, in
Atlanta at Ebenezer Church and on the campus of Morehouse College, with the President of the
United States proclaiming a day of mourning and flags being flown at half-staff. The area where
Dr. King was entombed is located on Freedom Plaza and surrounded by the Freedom Hall
Complex of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, Inc. The Martin
Luther King, Jr. Historic Site, a 23 acre area was listed as a National Historic Landmark on May
5, 1977, and was made a National Historic Site on October 10, 1980 by the U.S. Department of
the Interior:
Source of Bio Text:
Major Events in the Life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Handout included in curriculum package, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., A Biographical Sketch,
prepared by the National Library Involvement Committee, Martin Luther King, Jr. Federal
Holiday Commission. (Washington D.C.: Martin Luther King, Jr. Federal Holiday Commission),
1994.
Links
 The King Center
 "Martin Luther King Jr. Collection", Morehouse College, RWWL
 Photo Essay: "The Last Days of Martin Luther King, Jr.", Time
 The Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers Project
 MLK online
 Martin Luther King Jr., "A New Sense of Direction (1968)"
 Martin Luther King, Jr. at Find a Grave
 "Martin Luther King Jr.", The Seattle Times
 Speeches of Martin Luther King
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9.  1956 Comic Book: Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story
 Kirk, John A., "Martin Luther King, Jr.", New Georgia Encyclopedia
 "Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Global Freedom Struggle", online
encyclopedia, chronology and document library, The Martin Luther
King, Jr. Research and Education Institute, Stanford University.
 "Interview with Dr. Kenneth Clark", PBS
 "Martin Luther King, Jr.", Encyclopedia of Alabama
 Works by or about Martin Luther King, Jr. in libraries (WorldCat
catalog)
 Works by Martin Luther King, Jr. at Project Gutenberg
 Martin Luther King Jr.: Peacemaker - a slideshow by Life magazine
Video and audio material
 Audio from April 1961 King, "The Church on the Frontier of Racial
Tensions" - speech at Southern Seminary
 Audio recordings of King speeches including "I Have a Dream"
 Martin Luther King, Jr. Historic Speeches and Interviews
 Video of speeches - "I Have a Dream" and "I've Been to the
mountaintop"
 "I Have a Dream" Hiphop song sampling
 The New Negro, King interviewed by J. Waites Waring
 "I Have a Dream" speech video
 "Beyond Vietnam" speech text and audio
 YouTube clip of "How Long? Not Long!" speech
 YouTube clip of "Mountaintop" speech
 King Institute Encyclopedia multimedia
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10. 9

11. Martin Luther King, Jr. quotes
from the book
All too many of those who live in affluent America ignore those who exist
in poor America; in doing so, the affluent Americans will eventually have to
face themselves with the question that (Adolph) Eichman chose to ignore:
How responsible am I for the well-being of my fellows?
***
If an American is concerned only about his nation, he will not be concerned
about the peoples of Asia, Africa, or South America. Is this not why nations
engage in the madness of war without the slightest sense of penitence? Is
this not why the murder of a citizen of your own nation is a crime, but the
murder of citizens of another nation in war is an act of heroic virtue?
***
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12. History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social
transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling
silence of the good people.
***
The profit motive, when it is the sole basis of an economic system,
encourages a cutthroat competition and selfish ambition that inspires men
to be more concerned about making a living than making a life.
***
The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of
comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and
controversy.
***
One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly ... and with a willingness
to accept the penalty.
***
Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal.
***
Most people ... are thermometers that record or register the temperature
of majority of opinion, not thermostats that transform or regulate the
temperature of society.
The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reason, but with
no morals.
***
Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a
tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is
force to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no
longer be ignored.
***
Many white Americans of good will have never connected bigotry with
economic exploitation. They have deplored prejudice but tolerated or
ignored economic injustice.
***
Those who assert that evil means can lead to good ends are deceiving
themselves.
***
Something about evil we must never forget, namely, that evil is
recalcitrant and determined, and never voluntarily relinquishes its hold
short of a persistent, almost fanatical resistance.
***
To ignore evil is to become an accomplice to it.
***
Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded
by the oppressed.
***
History is the struggle between good and evil.
***
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13. "Martin Luther King is the most notorious liar in the country." J. Edgar
Hover
***
To accept passively an unjust system is to cooperate with that system;
thereby the oppressed become as evil as the oppressor.
***
It is not possible to be in favor of justice for some people and not be in
favor of justice for all people.
***
I have come to see that America is in danger of losing her soul, Something
must happen to awaken the dozing soul of America before it is too late.
***
The willingness to accept the penalty for breaking the unjust law is what
makes civil disobedience a moral act and not merely an act of lawbreaking.
***
Morality cannot be legislated but behavior can be regulated. Judicial
decrees may not change the heart, but they can restrain the heartless.
***
The law may not be able to make a man love me, but it can keep him from
lynching me.
***
The habits, if not the hearts of people, have been and are being altered by
legislative acts, judicial decisions, and executive orders. Let us not be
misled by those who argue that segregation cannot be ended by force of
law.
***
One may well ask: How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying
others? The answer lies in the fact that
***
there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to
advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral
responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility
to disobey unjust laws.
***
How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a
man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An
unjust law is a code that l is out of harmony with the moral law.
***
An unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels
a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself. This is
difference made legal. By the same token, a just law is a code that a
majority compels a minority to follow and that it is willing to follow itself.
***
Laws only declare rights; they do not deliver them. The oppressed must
take hold of laws and transform them into effective mandates.
***
12

14. Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice . . . when they
fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that
block the flow of social progress.
***
... A genuine leader doesn't reflect consensus, he molds consensus.
***
If we are to have peace on earth, our loyalties must become ecumenical
rather than sectional. Our loyalties must transcend our race, our tribe, our
class, and our nation; and this means we must develop a world
perspective.
***
Success, recognition, and conformity are the bywords of the modern world
where everyone seems to crave the anesthetizing security of being
identified with the majority.
***
... we will never have peace in the world until men everywhere recognize
that ends are not cut off from means, because the means represent the
ideal in the making, and the end in process, and ultimately you can't reach
good ends through evil means, because the means represent the seed and
the end represents the tree.
and the end represents the tree.
***
It is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends.... It is just as
wrong, or perhaps even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral
ends.
***
The means by which we live have outdistanced the ends for which we live.
Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided
missiles and misguided men.
***
... middle-class values were less important than human values.
***
Middle-class values stress the importance of career and money. These
were not the values which led to the civil rights movement; these are not
the values which lead to positive social transformation.
***
They (the young blacks who made history in the early 1960s) abandoned
those (middle class) values when they put careers and wealth in a
secondary role. When they cheerfully became jailbirds and troublemakers,
when they took off their Brooks Brothers attire and put on overalls to work
in the isolated rural south, they challenged and inspired white youth to
emulate them.
***
A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military
defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.
***
... The trailblazers in human, academic, and religious freedom have always
been in the minority.
13

15. ***
"I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely
disappointed by the white moderate," he wrote in his Letter from
Birmingham Jail. "I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that
the Negro's great stumbling block is not the White Citizen's Council-er or
the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to
'order' than to justice, who prefers a negative peace which is the absence
of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice, who
constantly says 'I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree
with your methods of direct action,' who paternalistically believes that he
can set the timetable for another man's freedom.''
***
Money, like any other force such as electricity, is amoral and can be used
for either good or evil.
***
For modern man, absolute right and absolute wrong are a matter of what
the majority is doing. Right and wrong are relative to likes and dislikes and
the customs of a particular community.
***
Our nation was born in genocide when it embraced the doctrine that the
original American, the Indian, was an inferior race.
***
True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of
justice.
***
... truth lies prostrate on the rugged hills of nameless calvaries; and men
do reverence before the false gods of nationalism and materialism.
***
In order to be true to one's conscience and true to God, a righteous man
has no alternative but to refuse to cooperate with an evil system.
***
We are a nation that worships the frontier tradition, and our heroes are
those who champion justice through violent retaliation against injustice. It
is not simple to adopt a credo that moral force has as much strength and
virtue as the capacity to return a physical blow; or that to refrain from
hitting back requires more will and bravery than the automatic reflexes of
defense.
***
Non-violent resistance is not aimed against oppressors but against
oppression.
***
Often the oppressor goes along unaware of the evil involved in his
oppression so long as the oppressed accepts it.
***
One of the most persistent ambiguities we face is that everybody talks
about peace as a goal, but among the wielders of power peace is
practically nobody's business.
***
14

16. True peace is not merely the absence of tension, but it is the presence of
justice.
***
The only real revolutionary ... is a man who has nothing to lose.
***
The dispossessed of this nation -- the poor, both white and Negro -- live in
a cruelly unjust society. They must organize a revolution against that
injustice, not against the lives of the persons who are their fellow citizens,
but against the structures through which the society is refusing to take
means which have been called for, and which are at hand, to lift the load of
poverty.
***
It is not only poverty that torments the Negro; it is the fact of poverty amid
plenty. It is a misery generated by the gulf between the affluence he sees
in the mass media and the deprivation he experiences in his everyday life.
***
There is nothing new about poverty. What is new, however, is that we now
have the resources to get rid of it.
***
... power without love is reckless and abusive and ... love without power is
sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the
demands of justice.
***
I'm not interested in power for power's sake, but I'm interested in power
that is moral, that is right and that is good.
***
Power and morality must go together, implementing, fulfilling and
ennobling each other.... Power at its best is the right use of strength.
***
We need a radical reordering of our national priorities.
***
Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable. Even a superficial look
at history reveals that no social advance rolls in on the wheels of
inevitability. Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice,
suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of
dedicated individuals.
***
He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps
perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really
cooperating with it.
***
We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our
nation is to survive its own folly. Every man of humane convictions must
decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all
protest.
***
15

17. Any religion which professes to be concerned with the souls of men and is
not concerned with the slums that damn them, the economic conditions
that strangle them, and the social conditions that cripple them, is a dry-as-
dust religion.
***
A religion true to its nature must also be concerned about man's social
conditions.
***
A social movement that only moves people is merely a revolt. A movement
that changes both people and institutions is a revolution.
***
Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit
and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal opposition to
poverty, racism and militarism.
***
When scientific power outruns moral power, we end up with guided
missiles and misguided men.
***
One of the sure signs of maturity is the ability to rise to the point of self-
criticism.
***
Evil is not driven out, but crowded out ... through the expulsive power of
something good.
***
We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing"-oriented society to a
"person"-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives
and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant
triplets of racism, materialism and militarism are incapable to being
conquered.
***
We are prone to judge success by the index of our salaries or the size of
our automobiles, rather than by the quality of our service and relationship
to humanity.
***
The Darwinian concept of the survival of the fittest has been substituted by
a philosophy of the survival of the slickest.
***
To cure injustices, you must expose them before the light of human
conscience and the bar of public opinion.
***
We must use our vast resources of wealth to aid the undeveloped countries
of the world. Have we spent far too much of our national budget in
establishing military bases around the world and far too little in
establishing bases of genuine concern and understanding?
***
We in the West must bear in mind that the poor countries are poor
primarily because we have exploited them through political or economic
colonialism.
16

18. ***
Ultimately a great nation is a compassionate nation.
***
Freedom is ... the bonus we receive for knowing the truth.
***
The plea for unity is not a call for uniformity. There must always be a
healthy debate.
***
It is a sad fact that because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of
communism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations
that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have
now become the arch-anti-revolutionaries.
***
I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world
revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values.
A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and
justice of many of our past and present policies.
A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast
between poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across
the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of
money in Asia, Africa, and South America only to take the profits out with
no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: "This is not
just."
It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say:
"This is not just."
The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and
nothing to learn from them is not just.
A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world
***
... the great glory of American democracy is the right to protest for right.
17