Martin Luther King Jr

“Stride Toward Freedom is Martin Luther King’s personal account of the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955, which lasted for 381 days. During segregation, in some areas of the South, black people, who paid the same fares as white riders, were forced to sit in the back of the bus and give up their seats to white passengers if there weren’t enough. Rosa Parks sparked the boycott. But an incredibly bright and articulate 26 year old man known as Martin Luther King emerged as a leader of the protests. He incorporated Gandhi’s principles of nonviolence, which he learned from other leaders. He went on to galvanise the civil rights movement and win the Nobel peace prize.” Read more...

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Keith Ellison, Lawyer

“Personally, I think the Letter From the Birmingham Jail from Martin Luther King was as eloquent and as influential a document on the civil rights movement and progressive thinking about rights as anything that I’ve ever read. It’s one of the most powerful pieces I’ve ever read, period. On Martin Luther King day it’s one of my favourite things to remind me, it’s so powerful. It’s unfortunate many people have never read it or if they have they have forgotten the power of it.” Read more...

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John Kerry, Politician

“Well, the Martin Luther King speech, of course… To understand it, you have to see it within the historical context. It was made three months after a very successful and very searing campaign in Birmingham, Alabama, in April of 1963, when the country and the world saw pictures of young negro girls and boys being pummelled against a wall with fire hoses and police dogs nipping at their ankles as they were peacefully marching in opposition to racial segregation. So that was April 63, and then, in August, some four months later, King was speaking at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial to more than 250,000 people. He was speaking to celebrate and to validate the success of the civil rights movement at that point, but also speaking prophetically about his hope for a better America. The ‘I Have A Dream’ speech, the portion that is most talked about, was totally spontaneous and extemporaneous. It wasn’t written.” Read more...

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Clarence B Jones, Lawyer