Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr. has become the embodiment of the civil rights movement in the United States. His influence was, and continues to be, remarkable. Consider these little tid-bits:

• in the eleven-year period between 1957 and 1968, King traveled over six million miles and spoke over twenty-five hundred times
• he was arrested upwards of twenty times and assaulted at least four times
• he was awarded five honorary degrees;
• was named Man of the Year by Time magazine in 1963
• at the age of thirty-five, Martin Luther King, Jr., was the youngest man to have received the Nobel Peace Prize. When notified of his selection, he announced that he would turn over the prize money of $54,123 to the furtherance of the civil rights movement
• 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

His mark on our nations attitude towards racial segregation will no doubt be retold in our great-grandchildren's U.S. history classes. His life epitomizes heroism in that he saw an injustice and was willing to suffer and even die that this injustice might be made right. And though our country still suffers from the poison of racism, MLK Jr's life and the lives that he inspired have changed the face of our country forever. Part of the biography we watched today addressed the issue of his alleged adultery; an allegation that he did not deny. This was difficult for me to hear and quite honestly, after hearing about it, I was tempted to edit that part of the biography out so that we wouldn't have to deal with it. But to do this would seem to ignore the reality of all of our lives: we are a mixture of goodness and depravity, righteousness and sinfulness, honor and shameful secrets. Which of us is not a mixture of these things? I don’t bring this up to make light of marital infidelity or to make it sound like this is “no big deal.” It’s a huge deal. His public life and his private life was inconsistent. So, here are the questions:

• What was your personal response to the allegation that he had “mistresses” and how did this affect your admiration of him?
• How should this private sin affect what MLK Jr. will be best known for?
• Would you still consider him a hero, given this information? Why or why not?
• What stood out to you from the biography we watched this morning? What are your reflections?

If you have time, watch the “I have a dream!” speech below.

Is this speech inspiring to you? In what way? Do you think that MLK Jr.’s “dream” has come true? Have you had any experiences that would suggest it has or has not?