Martin Luther King

Raised in the bosom of the church, as both his father and his grandfather were preachers, it seemed almost preordained that Martin Luther King, Jr., would enter a seminary. Instead, he became the leading voice of his people, a man of profound conviction and courage. As a young man, King was deeply influenced by theories of social activism and the religious life. These forces shaped him to become the leader of the civil rights movement. The teachers at Crozer Theological Seminary exposed King to the two thinkers who left the greatest impression on him--Mahatma Gandhi and Karl Barth. A precocious leader, King bloomed intellectually and socially and was valedictorian of his graduating class. Not surprisingly, he chose to continue his studies in theology and completed his doctorate at Boston University. By the time Dr. King graduated and accepted a position with a small church in Montgomery, Alabama, he had fallen in love with and married Coretta Scott, a music student at the New England Conservatory. It was in Montgomery that Rosa Parks, the secretary for the local NAACP, was arrested for refusing to move to the back of one of the city's public buses. Parks's arrest outraged the black community and thrust King, a relative newcomer, into the forefront of the growing civil rights movement. The distinguished historian V. P. Franklin gives us possibly the most succinct profile of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., to date. Concise, factually rich, and incisive, Martin Luther King, Jr. reveals the roots of King's dream for the future of race relations in America. Franklin's treatment reveals the public and the personal lives behind the man. He sought justice at a time when justice was a dream, and he fought hatred where it had grown for generations. Martin Luther King, Jr., forced open the nation's arms to all its citizens as he led the cause of civil rights in the 1950s and '60s. Distinguished professor V. P. Franklin follows King the man up the long road to the mountaintop, from the streets of Rosa Parks's Montgomery and "Bloody Sunday" on Selma's Pettus Bridge, to the Nobel Peace Prize and his ultimate sacrifice for African-American equality.