Martin Luther King Jr. goes down in history as one of the principal leader of the civil rights movement in the United States and a prominent advocate
of nonviolent protest. King’s challenges to segregation and racial discrimination helped convince many white Americans to support the cause of civil
rights in the United States.

King was born in Atlanta, Georgia, and was ordained as a Baptist minister at age 18. He graduated from Morehouse College in 1948 and from Crozer
Theological Seminary in 1951. In 1955 he earned a doctoral degree in systematic theology from Boston University. While in Boston, King met Coretta
Scott, whom he married in 1953.

In 1954 King accepted his first pastorate at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. Montgomery’s black community had long-standing
grievances about the mistreatment of blacks on city buses. Heading the year-long bus-boycott against segregation in buses, King soon became a national
figure.

In 1957 King helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), an organization of black churches and ministers that aimed to challenge
racial segregation. King and other SCLC leaders encouraged the use of nonviolent marches, demonstrations, and boycotts to protest discrimination.

King and other black leaders organized the 1963 March on Washington, a massive protest in Washington, D.C., for jobs and civil rights. King delivered
his famous “I Have a Dream” speech to an audience of more than 200,000 civil rights supporters. The speech and the march created the political momentum
that resulted in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibited segregation in public accommodations and discrimination in education and employment. As
a result of King’s effective leadership, he was awarded the 1964 Nobel Prize for peace.

Throughout 1966 and 1967 King increasingly turned the focus of his activism to the redistribution of the nation’s economic wealth to overcome
entrenched black poverty. In the spring of 1968 he went to Memphis, Tennessee, to support striking black garbage workers. King was assassinated in
Memphis on April 4, 1968.

King’s Philosophy: the Power of Non-violence

An essay by: Martin Luther King, Jr. June 4, 1957

From the very beginning there was a philosophy undergirding the Montgomery boycott, the philosophy of nonviolent resistance. There was always the
problem of getting this method over because it didn’t make sense to most of the people in the beginning. We had to use our mass meetings to explain
nonviolence to a community of people who had never heard of the philosophy and in many instances were not sympathetic with it. We had meetings twice a
week on Mondays and on Thursdays, and we had an institute on nonviolence and social change. We had to make it clear that nonviolent resistance is not a
method of cowardice. It does resist. It is not a method of stagnant passivity and deadening complacency. The nonviolent resister is just as opposed to
the evil that he is standing against as the violent resister but he resists without violence. This method is nonaggressive physically but strongly
aggressive spiritually.

NOT TO HUMILIATE BUT TO WIN OVER

Another thing that we had to get over was the fact that the nonviolent resister does not seek to humiliate or defeat the opponent but to win his
friendship and understanding. This was always a cry that we had to set before people that our aim is not to defeat the white community, not to
humiliate the white community, but to win the friendship of all of the persons who had perpetrated this system in the past. The end of violence or the
aftermath of violence is bitterness. The aftermath of nonviolence is reconciliation and the creation of a beloved community. A boycott is never an end
within itself. It is merely a means to awaken a sense of shame within the oppressor but the end is reconciliation, the end is redemption.

Then we had to make it clear also that the nonviolent resister seeks to attack the evil system rather than individuals who happen to be caught up in
the system. And this is why I say from time to time that the struggle in the South is not so much the tension between white people and Negro people.
The struggle is rather between justice and injustice, between the forces of light and the forces of darkness. And if there is a victory it will not be
a victory merely for fifty thousand Negroes. But it will be a victory for justice, a victory for good will, a victory for democracy.

Another basic thing we had to get over is that nonviolent resistance is also an internal matter. It not only avoids external violence or external
physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. And so at the center of our movement stood the philosophy of love. The attitude that the only
way to ultimately change humanity and make for the society that we all long for is to keep love at the center of our lives. Now people used to ask me
from the beginning what do you mean by love and how is it that you can tell us to love those persons who seek to defeat us and those persons who stand
against us; how can you love such persons? And I had to make it clear all along that love in its highest sense is not a sentimental sort of thing, not
even an affectionate sort of thing.

Dr. King: Nonviolence is the Most Powerful Weapon

AGAPE LOVE

The Greek language uses three words for love. It talks about eros. Eros is a sort of aesthetic love. It has come to us to be a sort of romantic love
and it stands with all of its beauty. But when we speak of loving those who oppose us we’re not talking about eros. The Greek language talks about
philia and this is a sort of reciprocal love between personal friends. This is a vital, valuable love. But when we talk of loving those who oppose you
and those who seek to defeat you we are not talking about eros or philia. The Greek language comes out with another word and it is agape. Agape is
understanding, creative, redemptive good will for all men. Biblical theologians would say it is the love of God working in the minds of men. It is an
overflowing love which seeks nothing in return. And when you come to love on this level you begin to love men not because they are likeable, not
because they do things that attract us, but because God loves them and here we love the person who does the evil deed while hating the deed that the
person does. It is the type of love that stands at the center of the movement that we are trying to carry on in the Southland—agape.

SOME POWER IN THE UNIVERSE THAT WORKS FOR JUSTICE

I am quite aware of the fact that there are persons who believe firmly in nonviolence who do not believe in a personal God, but I think every person
who believes in nonviolent resistance believes somehow that the universe in some form is on the side of justice. That there is something unfolding in
the universe whether one speaks of it as a unconscious process, or whether one speaks of it as some unmoved mover, or whether someone speaks of it as a
personal God. There is something in the universe that unfolds for justice and so in Montgomery we felt somehow that as we struggled we had cosmic
companionship. And this was one of the things that kept the people together, the belief that the universe is on the side of justice.

God grant that as men and women all over the world struggle against evil systems they will struggle with love in their hearts, with understanding good
will. Agape says you must go on with wise restraint and calm reasonableness but you must keep moving. We have a great opportunity in America to build
here a great nation, a nation where all men live together as brothers and respect the dignity and worth of all human personality. We must keep moving
toward that goal. I know that some people are saying we must slow up. They are writing letters to the North and they are appealing to white people of
good will and to the Negroes saying slow up, you’re pushing too fast. They are saying we must adopt a policy of moderation. Now if moderation means
moving on with wise restraint and calm reasonableness, then moderation is a great virtue that all men of good will must seek to achieve in this tense
period of transition. But if moderation means slowing up in the move for justice and capitulating to the whims and caprices of the guardians of the
deadening status quo, then moderation is a tragic vice which all men of good will must condemn. We must continue to move on. Our self—respect is at
stake; the prestige of our nation is at stake. Civil rights is an eternal moral issue which may well determine the destiny of our civilization in the
ideological struggle with communism. We must keep moving with wise restraint and love and with proper discipline and dignity.

THE NEED TO BE “MALADJUSTED”

Modern psychology has a word that is probably used more than any other word. It is the word “maladjusted.” Now we all should seek to live a
well—adjusted life in order to avoid neurotic and schizophrenic personalities. But there are some things within our social order to which I am proud to
be maladjusted and to which I call upon you to be maladjusted. I never intend to adjust myself to segregation and discrimination. I never intend to
adjust myself to mob rule. I never intend to adjust myself to the tragic effects of the methods of physical violence and to tragic militarism. I call
upon you to be maladjusted to such things. I call upon you to be as maladjusted to such things. I call upon you to be as maladjusted as Amos who in the
midst of the injustices of his day cried out in words that echo across the generation, “Let judgment run down like waters and righteousness like a
mighty stream.” As maladjusted as Abraham Lincoln who had the vision to see that this nation could not exist half slave and half free. As maladjusted
as Jefferson, who in the midst of an age amazingly adjusted to slavery could cry out, “All men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with
certain inalienable rights and that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” As maladjusted as Jesus of Nazareth who dreamed a
dream of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. God grant that we will be so maladjusted that we will be able to go out and change our world
and our civilization. And then we will be able to move from the bleak and desolate midnight of man’s inhumanity to man to the bright and glittering
daybreak of freedom and justice.

Martin Luther King’s view on Greatness: