Martin Luther King Jr.: A Reference Guide to His Life and Works allows the reader to explore not just the facets of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s career but the network of associates across the Civil Rights Movement that enabled him to move forward with his campaigns for racial justice. Drawing on wide-ranging scholarship, the volume allows the reader to understand King in the context of his times. It features a chronology, an introduction that briefly covers his life, a comprehensive bibliography, and a dictionary section with entries on people, places, and events related to him.

This book explores the significance of Dr Martin Luther King Jr. ‘I have a dream’ speech and the continued legacy to education and academia demonstrated through the study of his life, achievements, works and ultimate assassination, which are included in social studies and history as part of the curriculum. There are lessons to be learned from his speech about access, success and progression to and from education at all levels. The influence of religion is a key feature that is manifested through social inclusion and tolerance which if considered from an academic perspective results in achievement. From peaceful demonstration and humble engagement with authorities, King made a mark that would be referenced 50 years later in all areas of academia from teaching young people about his life and achievements to equality, rights and tolerance, reflected throughout this book. The impact of prejudice, discrimination and segregation addressed by King’s campaign which through adversity resulted in the passing of the Civil Rights Bill in the USA supported the non-political rights of all citizens is discussed. All of these concepts influence perception and realistic possibilities in the quest for people from all walks of society to access and benefit from education, which is explored. What motivated King to speak out and selflessly address the rights of the underprivileged, Black and White putting at risk his liberty and ultimately his life? King’s speech is considered and associated with current issues faced by the people that are socially excluded. The struggle for social equality is considered with a focus on the impact of exclusion from education that demonstrates the need for a dream that gives hope to current and future generations that suggests that education can be accessed and lead to academic success.

"[Sh]ould take a prominent place on the shelf of literature about the man who changed 20th century America." Publishers Weekly, Starred Review In this new biography, distinguished historian Paul Harvey examines Martin Luther King’s life through his complex, emerging religious lives. Harvey introduces many readers, perhaps for the first or only time, to the King of diverse religious and intellectual influences, of an increasingly radical cast of thought, and of a mélange of intellectual influences that he aligned in becoming the spokesperson for the most important social movement of twentieth-century American history. Not only does Harvey chronicle King’s metamorphosis and its impact on American and African American life, but he seeks to explain his “afterlives”—how in American culture King became transformed into a mainstream civil saint, shorn of his radical religious critique of how power functioned in America. Harvey’s concise biography will allow readers to see King anew in the context of his time and today.

Collects the personal papers of Martin Luther King Jr. from January 1961 to August 1962, that sees King stop participating in Freedom Rides and his arrest in Albany.

Martin Luther King, Jr.'s ideas—his call for racial equality, his faith in the ultimate triumph of justice, his insistence on the power of nonviolence to bring about a major transformation of American society—are as vital and timely as ever. The wealth of his writings, both published and unpublished, is now preserved in this authoritative, chronologically arranged multi-volume edition. Volume III chronicles the Montgomery bus boycott of 1956 and Dr. King's emergence as a public figure who attracted international attention. Included is the galvanizing speech he gave on the first day of the bus boycott, transcribed from a fragile tape recording and published here in its entirety for the first time. Also included are his remarks to an angry crowd after the bombing of his home and his powerful speech at the 1956 NAACP convention. King's words from this period reveal the evolution of his distinctive blend of Christian and Gandhian ideas and show his appreciation of the broader significance of the Montgomery movement, a protest that revealed the "longing for human dignity that motivates oppressed people all over the world." The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr. is a testament to a man whose life and teaching continue to have a profound influence not only on Americans, but on people of all nations. The Martin Luther King, Jr., Papers Project at Stanford University was established by The Center for Nonviolent Social Change, Inc., in 1984.

First in a series of 14 volumes, this book contains the complete texts of King's letters, speeches, sermons, student papers, and other articles. The papers range chronologically from his childhood to his young manhood. An introductory biographical essay presents a broad picture of the events that the documents themselves cover, while extensive annotations of the documents deal with specific details of King's life during these years. The passion that drove him is observable in nearly every document. ISBN 0-520-07950-7:

Doubts about James Earl Ray, Dr. Martin Luther King’s lone assassin, arose almost immediately after the civil rights leader was fatally shot on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis on 4 April 1968. From the start, his aides voiced suspicions that a conspiracy was responsible for their leader’s death. Over time many Americans became convinced the government investigations covered up the truth about the alleged assassin. Exactly what led Ray to kill King continues to be a source of debate, as does his role in the murder. However, Mel Ayton believe the answers to the many intriguing questions about Ray and how conspiracy ideas flourished can now be fully understood. Missing from the wild speculations over the past fifty-two years has been a thorough investigation of the character of King’s assassin. Additionally, the author examines exactly how the conspiracy notions came about and the falsehoods that led to their promulgation. The Man Who Killed Martin Luther King is the first full account of the life of James Earl Ray based on scores of interviews provided to government and non-government investigators and from the FBI’s and Scotland Yard’s files plus the recently released Tennessee Department of Corrections prison record on Ray. Most importantly, the testimony of Anna Sandhu has often been ignored by writers but her story is crucial in gaining an understanding of Ray’s deceptive ways. A courtroom artist, who, after listening to Ray’s story, later married him. Also missing from accounts of the alleged ‘conspiracy’ is the story told to this author by Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary Deputy Warden Rolland H. Cisson, which decisively renders Ray’s claims of innocence to be bogus. In the short-lived freedom he acquired after escaping from the Missouri State Penitentiary in 1967, following being sentenced to twenty years in prison for repeated offenses, he traveled to Los Angeles and decided to seek notoriety as the one who would stalk and kill Dr. King, who he had come to hate vehemently. From the time of King’s murder, the reader will follow Ray to solitary confinement in a Nashville prison. Then, six years later, on 10 June 1977, James Earl Ray again escaped from prison, this time with five others. Ray was the last to be recaptured, having survived only on wheatgerm. Finally, the book relays Ray’s stabbing by several black inmates, then his resulting diagnosis with Hepatitis C, which caused his death twelve years later, in 1998.

It has been nearly fifty years since Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. Appraisals of King's contributions began almost immediately and continue to this day. The author explores a great many of King's chief ideas and socio-ethical practices: his concept of a moral universe, his doctrine of human dignity, his belief that not all suffering is redemptive, his brand of personalism, his contribution to the development of social ethics, the inclusion of young people in the movement, sexism as a contradiction to his personalism, the problem of black-on-black violence, and others. The book reveals both the strengths and the limitations in King's theological socio-ethical project, and shows him to have relentlessly applied personalist ideas to organized nonviolent resistance campaigns in order to change the world. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.

“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of convenience and in moments of comfort, but where he stands in moments of challenge and moments of controversy” (Martin Luther King Jr.). The purpose of Martin Luther King Jr.’s Opposition to the War in Vietnam is to investigate and describe King’s involvement within the Vietnam War and the critical responses that followed. His speaking out against the conflict was not spontaneous; he deliberated two years before doing so. As early as 1965, he made mention of the war, but because of criticisms from senior officials in the civil rights movement, he postponed his efforts. However, on April 4, 1967, he gave his “Beyond Vietnam” speech, which outlined his position on the war. Criticisms were many and severe, ranging from some of his closest associates to that of the Johnson administration. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Opposition to the War in Vietnam is the first published book that deals solely with King’s involvement within the Vietnam crisis.