Martin luther king autobiography excerpt

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Sign up for free Log in. Parks had long worked as an assistant to E. Her refusal to give up her seat led to her arrest, which energized black working people, the majority of whom rode buses. They boycotted for days, walking or getting rides in car pools to their jobs. Martin had the qualities that allowed him to lead a mass movement that joined working-class people to the middle class through the black church.

Nixon, meanwhile, embodied the connection between labor and civil rights, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars as treasurer of the MIA by appealing to union members across the country, and by helping to connect King to "the world of civil rights unionism and pacifism. Nixon, and the residences and churches of other activists, the Montgomery movement stayed united and won a Supreme Court ruling against segregation in transportation.

Many black labor activists, such as Bayard Rustin, Ella Baker, and Stanley Levison, helped King tighten his ties to civil rights and labor advocates. King also went to Ghana to celebrate its independence from British colonialism, and visited India to learn more about nonviolence. As Indian Prime Minister Nehru spoke with him about democratic and socialist anticolonial movements in the developing world, King gained an increasingly global perspective and became adept in identifying the links between issues.

American conservatives and segregationists constantly attacked Martin Luther King, Jr. But King was not the dupe of anyone — he viewed civil liberties and civil rights as indivisible, and he recognized that denying freedom of speech for leftists created an air of fear aimed at silencing all movements for change. Along with other leading black intellectuals, King called for the abolition of HUAC, the antisubversive Senate committee, and other efforts to suppress freedom of speech and thought.

Although Martin's reputation as a leader of masses sometimes by far exceeded his resources and experience, although he could not export the bus-boycott model to other communities, although he struggled in his efforts to organize a mass movement, King's fascinating autobiography demonstrates that he soldiered on, searching for new viable strategies and expanding his view of the the problems and the possible solutions confronting the freedom movement.

This valuable book presents us Martin Luther King, Jr. It helps us realize his humanity, his personal and public pains; it reminds us that he was similar to us, that we could go and do likewise. Nii Lamptey. Martin makes Christianity attractive. He's somebody to model a life after. Carson takes some liberties adopting an "autobiography" construct.

By using the first person singular, the author makes the subject of his book seem, for example, more defensive when Dr. King decided not to remain in jail awaiting trial instead of remaining true to the nonviolent direct action tenet of demonstrating civil disobedience by remaining incarcerated. The author has heavily borrowed from a number of Dr.

Kings books and writings; authentic, but for someone familiar with civil rights best known martyr, a bit redundant. A good book, but a bit disappointing in that the author has such access to and knowledge of Martin Luther King's mind and conscience. It takes a lot of patience and resilience to constantly turn the other cheek especially when dealing with racial injustice, hate, disrespect and acts of indignity.

MLK advocated for non-violent means to combat racial injustices and inequalities, a practice he emulated from Mahatma Gandhi. He believed that only through love, and not hate, can the negro achieve justice. Even after his house, containing his wife and baby, was bombed. Even after he was wrongfully arrested and jailed multiple times. And somehow I know, even after his assassination.

It truly breaks my heart what the african american faced and continues to face.

Martin luther king autobiography excerpt

Families were separated because fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters had to leave home and fight for equality. Children had to leave school and protest for freedom. This fight has taken so much from the african american. Children can't be children and families can't be complete yet the white man uses all the resources in its power to protect its families and prevent the humanity of the negro.

I may not fully agree with the nonviolent means without self defense because 1. It doesn't really work if the oppresionist doesn't have a guilty conscious and 2. However, it was interesting to read about his views. I'm tempted to reread X's autobiography and compare their approaches and which was more effective in garnering change and respect.

All in all we lost two great leaders. The book was very insightful and Clayborne Carson did a splendid job with this autobiography. It got a little repetitive towards the end but nothing I couldn't get over. Any great recommendations would be appreciated. If I am stopped our work will not stop. For what we are doing is right. What we are doing is just.

And God is with us. A fascinating book and great audio with snip-its from Martin Luther King Jr. I liked what it had to say about organizing, definitely some good tips especially about picking a target and not just protesting generally. Like most people, I assume, I am most familiar with MLK's work in the south and was fascinated to learn about his efforts in Chicago.

His methods and goals seem to have shifted at that point and I would like to learn more. From my extreme ignorance, it seems to have been less effective and I wonder why. Especially near the end, I don't always agree with the rhetoric, but I find it interesting hearing where it came from and I feel I probably need to study it more to state a stronger opinion.

Definitely worth listening to this one. Jeremy Perron. Like The Autobiography of Malcolm X, it was written after he died. It was assembled by the editor, Clayborne Carson, who went over King's papers both public and personnel and edited his work into a biographical format. The book received the endorsement of Coretta Scott King in The book is a brilliant piece of literature.

Carson is careful to let the reader know what the material is and is not edited. When he takes Dr. King's words directly and unaltered he puts them in italics, so the reader knows for certain that he is getting pure primary material. King is a combination of many influences though out his life, he begins by talking about his boyhood growing up in the segregated south, where his father was a preacher in the local church.

Martin Luther King, Sr. His mother, Alberta Williams, he describes as being more of a gentle soul whom a lot of his patience would come from. As the Pastor's son he had a type of special status within the local community. He describes his first experience with racism at the age of six when his white friend told him that his the white boy's father would not let them be friends anymore because he was black.

As the book goes on King discusses his education and how the works of different scholars and philosophers had upon his world view, whether Reinhold Niebuhr, Karl Marx or Mahatma Gandhi. King discussed meeting his future wife, getting married, and the hard decision to go back to the segregated South. King would take the ministry at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, and from there he would build an activist base.

When the now internationally famous Rosa Parks refused to get from her seat, she started a movement. The Montgomery Bus Boycott did not even start out as a movement to end segregated bussing, just as a movement for more fair treatment. It was not until the outrageous response by those in power backed by the majority of the white community that caused the movement to push further.

The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a form of nonviolent protest that was inspired by the Mahatma Gandhi and Christian doctrine. I had come to see early that the Christian doctrine of love operating thought the Gandhian method of nonviolence was one of the most potent weapons available to the Negro in his struggle for freedom. About a week after the protest started, a white woman who understood and sympathized with the Negroes' efforts wrote a letter to the editor of the Montgomery Advertiser comparing the buss protest with the Gandhian movement in India.

Miss Juliette Morgan, sensitive and frail, did not long survive the rejection and condemnation of the white community, but long before she died in the summer of the name of Mahatma Gandhi was well known in Montgomery. People who had never heard of the little brown saint of India were now saying his name with an air of familiarity. Nonviolent resistance had emerged as the technique of the movement, while love stood as the regulating ideal.

In other words, Christ furnished the spirit and motivation while Gandhi furnished the method. This was both a blessing a curse at the same time. A blessing in the way he was now able to carry his message to a much larger audience, but a curse in the way that it set some impossible standards for him to meet in future struggles. King would travel the world eventually going to India, the home of his idol.

He was very pleased by what he saw when he got there. They were lasting friends only because Gandhi followed the way of love and nonviolence. The aftermath of nonviolence is the creation of the beloved community, so that when the battle is over, a new relationship comes into being between the oppressed and the oppressor. Also, was a presidential election year, with two candidates John F.

Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon were trying for the nation's top job. Kennedy, after I looked over his voting record, I felt at points he was so concerned about being president of the United States that he would compromise basic principles to become president. But I had to look at something else beyond the man--the people who surrounded him--and I felt that Kennedy was surrounded by better people.

It was on that basis that I felt that Kennedy would make the best president. I never came out with an endorsement. My father did, but I never made one. I took this position in order to maintain a nonpartisan posture, which I have followed all along in order to be able to look objectively at both parties at all times. As I said to him all along, I couldn't, and I never changed that even after he made the call during my arrest.

I made a statement of thanks, and I expressed my gratitude for the call, but in the statement I made it clear that I did not endorse any candidate and that this was not to be interpreted as an endorsement. I had to conclude that the then known facts about Kennedy were not adequate to make an unqualified judgment in his favor. I do feel that, as any man, he grew a great deal.

After he became president I thought we saw to Kennedys--a Kennedy of the first two years and another Kennedy emerging in He was getting ready to throw off political considerations and see the real moral issues. Had President Kennedy lived, I would probably have endorsed him in But, back at that time, I concluded that there was something to be desired in both candidates.

In this fight King would be imprisoned and while in jail, he had been criticized by a letter written by a group of white clergy. King responded with his famous 'Letter from Birmingham Jail. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to 'order' than to justice; who prefers the a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive which is the presence of justice, who constantly says: 'I agree with you in the goal that you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action'; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a 'more convenient season.

Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection. At first I was rather disappointed that fellow clergymen would see my nonviolent efforts as those of an extremist. I began thinking about the fact that I stand in the middle of two opposing forces in the Negro community. One is a force of complacency, made up in part of Negroes who, as a result of long years of oppression, are so drained of self-respect and a sense of 'somebodiness' that they have adjusted to segregation; and in part of a few middle-class Negroes who, because of a degree of academic and economic security and because in some ways they profit by segregation, have become insensitive to the problems of the masses.

The other force is one of bitterness and hatred, and it comes perilously close to advocating violence. It is expressed in the various black nationalist movement groups that are springing up across the nation, the largest and best known being Elijah Muhammed's Muslim movement. Nourished by the Negro's frustration over the continued existence of racial discrimination, this movement is made up of people who have lost faith in America, who have absolutely repudiated Christianity, and who have concluded that the white man is an incorrigible 'devil.

King's main rival as the primary leader in the struggle for civil rights, Malcolm X, was becoming more popular. The primary difference between the two men was that Malcolm X was an advocate for violent resistance. In some ways he was a help to King, because he represented what the alternative to King's message was. However, as a proponent of violence, he attracted it in kind and otherwise alienated members of the white community who might have otherwise been sympathetic.

He was clearly a product of the hate and violence invested in the Negro's blighted existence in this nation. He, like so many of our number was a victim of the despair that inevitably derives from the conditions of oppression, poverty, and injustice which engulf that masses of our race. But in his youth, there was no hope no preaching, teaching, or movements of nonviolence.

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King, Dexter Scott. King, Rev. Martin Luther, Sr. Daddy King: An Autobiography. Martin Luther King, Sr. King, Yolanda Denise; Elodia Tate. Watkins, Angela Farris. Bates, Daisy. The Long Shadow of Little Rock. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas, Bennett, Lerone Jr. New York: Viking Penguin, This black history classic emphasizes the role of African-Americans in American history and culture.

It is based on the trials and triumphs of black Americans. Carson, Clayborne. Massachusetts: Harvard University, Clark, Septima. California: Wild Tree Press, A first-person narrative book on Septima Clark of her participation in the movement. Fager, Charles E. Selma The March that Changed the South. Boston: Beacon Press, Fairclough, Adam.

Athens: University of Georgia, Farmer, James. Lay Bare the Heart. New York: Arbor House, Gilliard, Deric A. Gilliard Communications. Leventhal, Willy S. Black Belt Press. Lewis, John. Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement. Mariner Books. Morris, Aldon. New York: Free Press, This book covers a decade of the Civil Rights Movement, , focusing on the unsung black Americans and their little known community organizations which were a vital force in the Movement.

Pickering, George W.