Impactful but lesser-known facts that shaped the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
By TIFFANI M. TURNER, DR. JENNIFER J. CONNER and ROBYN H. JIMENEZ
The Dallas Examiner
While Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is best known for his civil rights marches and I Have a Dream speech, less is known about his life beyond the movement, engagement as a scholar and strategist, and many of the risks and repercussions he faced.
King’s early years shaped the trail he blazed. He was influenced by his family, studies of nonviolent leaders and life experiences – which are rarely highlighted.
His journey is often romanticized, yet during the 39 years of his life, King faced personal and professional consequences that read like a twisted suspense or psychological thriller novel.
The formative years
At birth, Martin Luther King Jr. was named after his father Michael King Sr. While traveling around the world on a religious journey, his father developed an admiration for the prominent Protestant leader named Martin Luther. When Michael King Jr. was 5 years old, his father returned home and changed both of their names to Martin Luther King – Sr. and Jr., according to the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History.
Around the age of 6, King befriended a White boy whose father owned a store near his home. For years they played together whenever he went to the store with his father. One day, the boy told King that his father would no longer allow them to play together. That was the first time King realized that there was a race issue in America, he reflected in The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.
“My parents would always tell me that I should not hate the white man, but that it was my duty as a Christian to love him. The question arose in my mind: How could I love a race of people who hated me and who had been responsible for breaking me up with one of my best childhood friends?” King wrote.
King had a close relationship with his maternal grandmother, who lived in his home and helped raise him and his siblings. She died when King was 12 after he left the house against his parent’s instructions to stay with her. He blamed himself for her death. Suffering from depression, he jumped out of a second-story window of his home in a suicide attempt. He dealt with the pain from injuries sustained during the jump for many years. King lived with depression throughout his life, Psychology Today and MindSite News reported.
A young scholar
Growing up, he and his siblings received piano lessons from their mother, Alberta Williams King. He also played sports and had a job delivering newspapers. He graduated high school early after skipping the 9th and 12th grades, according to the NMAAH.
King’s beliefs were rooted in his academic journey, beginning with his studies at Morehouse College at the age of 15 where he was first introduced to Indian social reformer Mahatma Gandhi’s teachings of nonviolence. He also found value in Henry David Thoreau’s lecture Resistance to Civil Government published in 1849. King was particularly captivated by Thoreau’s belief that it should be a person’s moral duty to resist unjust laws and practices, even at the risk of breaking the law, according to Morehouse College’s Martin Luther King Jr. Collection and The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University.
King was also inspired by several of his college professors who encouraged him “to think beyond his early fundamental instruction regarding the Bible and theology,” Morehouse documented. He graduated Morehouse at the age of 19 and continued his education at Crozer Theological Seminary.
He went on to Boston University in 1951. His studies empowered him to produce new ideas, applying traditional theology to modern thinking, Morehouse noted.
He met his wife a year later.
He took philosophy classes at Harvard University in 1952-1953 while earning a doctorate in systemic theology at Boston.
He was initiated into the Sigma chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity at Boston in 1952. The fraternity awarded him with the Alpha Award of Honor for “Christian leadership in the cause of first-class citizenship for all mankind” at the fraternity’s 50th anniversary convention in Buffalo in 1956, according to the Institute at Stanford.
After his classes, King could be found playing pool or cards. He enjoyed listening to jazz and gospel music, according to various reports and biographies.
King’s education not only prepared him for pastoral leadership but also contributed to his command of language. He authored 5 books, along with producing a substantial collection of speeches, sermons, essays and scholarly works. Collectively, his writings reflected his commitment to academic research, a broad range of knowledge and the consistency of his central themes, including nonviolence, according to the King Center.
Nonviolence as a Strategic Choice
In the 1958 autobiographical essay Pilgrimage to Nonviolence, King explained his journey to fully adopting a nonviolent philosophy, which he credited his Christian upbringing, academic study, and his lived experience with the Montgomery Bus Boycott. While his writings demonstrated his scholarly intellect, it also revealed his ability to turn theory into practice, despite the presence of critics who favored alternative methods.
In the book The Critique of Nonviolence, writer Mark Christian Thompson discussed how several Black political leaders criticized King’s nonviolent approach, arguing that it was too slow and ineffective, while others advocated for armed self-defense. However, King always maintained his stance on nonviolent protests, which he discussed in several of his works, including the 1958 book Stride Toward Freedom and the 1963 essay Letter from a Birmingham Jail.
As a deep-thinker and strategic planner, he consistently utilized a philosophy of nonviolence to reveal unjust laws, recruit supporters, and made agitators uncomfortable, thereby forcing changes in the law.
Radical thinker
In addition to being a scholar and strategist, King was also radical in his writings. His rhetoric continuously evolved as he acquired new knowledge, often responding to current societal issues in real time.
In the 1967 speech Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence, King openly criticized the Vietnam War and its negative impact on poor people and Vietnamese civilians. In the same year, he addressed systemic oppression and poverty in the speech The Other America. King also reflected on the aftermath of race relations in America in the 1967 book Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, emphasizing the need for global change to end poverty for all.
King was a radical thinker much of his life and consistently held beliefs that challenged society. The 2015 book The Radical King, showcased his revolutionary convictions, particularly regarding systemic oppression, capitalism, militarism and global imperialism.
Beyond the movement
The TV series Star Trek was a favorite of King and wife – the only show his children were allowed to stay up to watch at night. Upon being introduced to actress Nichelle Nichols in 1967, who played Lt. Nyota Uhura – in the series, he thwarted her plan to exit the show.
Nichols, the first African American in a lead role on TV, was going to leave the show to perform on Broadway. King insisted that she could not leave the show.
“Don’t you understand what this man has achieved? For the first time on television, we will be seen as we should be seen every day, as intelligent, quality, beautiful people who can sing, dance, but who can go into space, who can be lawyers, who can be teachers, who can be professors – who are in this day, but yet you don’t see it on television until now,” Nichols said King told her, in the film Women in Motion.
“I just stood there realizing every word he was saying was the truth. At that moment, the world tilted for me,” Nichols said, according to BBC News. She continued in the role for several more years.
The risks of a King
King was arrested 29 or 30 times during his fight for civil rights in the U.S. The National Park Service and the Equal Justice Initiative listed some of his key arrests:
• Speeding, going 30 in a 25-mph zone during the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1956. It was the first time King was arrested.
• King was arrested along with 51 other activists for participating in a sit-in at the segregated lunch counter in Rich’s Department Store in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1960.
• King and Ralph Abernathy were arrested for obstructing the sidewalk and protesting without a permit to desegregate the city’s public facilities in Albany, Georgia, in 1961.
• Leading a demonstration without a permit in Birmingham, Georgia, in 1963. During his stay, he wrote his famous Letter from a Birmingham Jail.
• Leading 250 people to register to vote at the Dallas County Courthouse in Selma, Alabama, in 1965. They were all arrested. The arrest took place just over two weeks before Bloody Sunday, according to the Equal Justice Institute.
• King and Abernathy were arrested immediately after a flight for previously leading a protest against segregation, which defied a court order. This was notably his last arrest.
Repercussions of activism
The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation began monitoring King’s movements and phone calls in December 1955. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover had distain for King and declared him to be a communist. During their surveillance, they declared obtaining evidence of him having extramarital affairs, according to the Institute at Stanford.
In August 1967, targeting King, along with other civil rights leaders and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the FBI created a domestic counterintelligence program to combat what they called “Black Nationalist–Hate Groups,” the institute documents revealed. The U.S. Senate Committee convened in the 1970s to investigate the bureau’s actions. The committee concluded it should seek to discredit King, who had gain “too much power,” rather than targeting those they believed influenced him, according to documents from the committee.
FBI agents admitted they had no evidence that King was a communist during an investigation conducted by the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities in 1967. The files were declassified years after King’s death, revealing other misrepresentations spread by the bureau. Other files included a letter the bureau falsely stated was sent from the SCLC in 1964 that suggested King should commit suicide to save himself the embarrassment when the “truth” came out. The bureau also sought to discredit King to prevent him from being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize or meeting Pope Paul VI in 1964, as noted by the King Institute and the MLK50: Justice Through Journalism.
Despite his overwhelming exhaustion and thoughts of self-doubt – for which he often confided in his closest advisors – his dedication and bravery pushed him to continue his fight for equality and justice, as documented by History.com and other reports.
War and resistance
Segregationists and some civil rights colleagues began to criticize and distrust King when he opposed the Vietnam War, stating that it would accomplish nothing. The FBI also interpreted King’s stance as evidence of him being a communist, the King Institute documented.
King launched the Poor People’s Campaign in 1968 to demand economic justice for underserved communities. The campaign formed a multiracial coalition to build a powerful voting bloc to mandate the passage of the Economic Bill of Rights.
King was assassinated April 5, 1968, disrupting the momentum of the campaign. His wife, Coretta Scott King, and Abernathy took the lead in the campaign and took fight to Washington, D.C.
His legacy
King was a dedicated and loving husband and father. He was extremely intelligent, a master of strategy, charismatic communicator and eloquent speaker. Beyond his iconic speeches and historic protest, he was a leader steeped in scholarly research that influenced his rhetoric and philosophy, as well as a sustained practice in deliberate planning and thought.
King’s death was mourned throughout the country, but his life and legacy will continue to be celebrated for generations to come.