Tag: Martin Luther King Jr.

The greatest orator of the twentieth century inspired seismic changes at home that reverberated around the world.

The Reverend Joseph Lowery is uncharacteristically quiet as he sits at a long table inside the modest room in Downtown’s Atlanta Life Insurance Company building. Between bites of fried chicken and peach cobbler, he occasionally interjects or asks a question, but mostly he listens attentively, staring out at a group that’s as diverse as the issues for which its members are so passionate.

The remarkable behind-the-scenes story of Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1968 funeral.

One after another social commentators have watched Martin Luther King Jr.‘s children and wondered if one day one would assume the mantle once worn by the "king of peace" himself.

On the night of Thursday, April 4, 1968, Louise and I were in our bedroom at home watching television and reading the newspaper when a bulletin flashed on the screen: MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., SHOT IN MEMPHIS.

John Lewis and Julian Bond. Two men whose lives were shaped in the crucible of the civil rights movement, whose beings were transformed by the soaring energy and ringing eloquence of the man who came to symbolize that movement, Martin Luther King Jr., and whose major roles have been played out in the cold vacuum of his absence.

"My father was sent to do a very specific job. . . . He was a God-sent man and when his work was done he moved on higher. . . ." —Yolanda Denise King

If the road to Equal Opportunity is paved with the good intentions of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center For Social Change to address the experience of all people, then the implementation of their planning must surely focus on the poor and oppressed. Isn’t that what the dream was all about?