Martin Luther King, Jr. - Political and Social Views

King wrote these two paragraphs, probably as notes to himself, during the Christianity and Society course. He criticizes aspects of Marxist thought but asserts that “capitalism has seen its best days.”

Will

In a 22 December 1958 letter, Morehouse president Benjamin Mays invited King to address the graduating class of 1959; King accepted six days later.

King and other civil rights supporters applaud the State Department’s protest of the Sharpeville massacres and urge Eisenhower to issue a declaration “placing the administration firmly on the side of Negroes” in the South, adding: “Africans are turning to the UN for moral support and encouragement; must we?” In response, Gerald Morgan, deputy assistant to the president, referred to Eisenhower’s earlier expression of sympathy for the “efforts of any group to enjoy the rights of equality.”¹

King debates segregationist editor James J.

On 21 March South African police in the black township of Sharpeville killed more than sixty peaceful protesters who had been demonstrating against pass laws, which required blacks to carry identification. The incident sparked a massive outbreak of strikes, demonstrations, and riots in South Africa and focused international criticism on the apartheid regime.

King was elected president of the Southern Leaders Conference on 14 February during the organization’s second meeting at New Zion Baptist Church in New Orleans.¹ The one hundred delegates from thirty-five communities in ten states heard addresses by King, his father, and Nashville minister Kelly Miller Smith.² At a press conference after the meeting King released the text of the following telegram to Eisenhower, asking the pres

Presidential assistant Rabb condemns the previous day's violence in Montgomery.

The Reverend Martin Luther King
530 S. Union Street
Montgomery, Alabama

Dear Mr. King:

The President has asked me to thank you for your telegram of January 8.¹ It was good of you to advise us of the conference which was held in Atlanta this week.

King delivered a version of this sermon at Dexter in Montgomery, Alabama, as the congregation considered him as a candidate to be their new pastor.¹ In a letter sent prior to King’s appearance, Dexter deacon and choir director Joseph T.

Writing in the campus newspaper, the Maroon Tiger, King argues that education has both a utilitarian and a moral function.¹ Citing the example of Georgia’s former governor Eugene Talmadge, he asserts that reasoning ability is not enough. He insists that character and moral development are necessary to give the critical intellect humane purposes. King, Sr., later recalled that his son told him, “Talmadge has a Phi Beta Kappa key, can you believe that?

During the summer after his sophomore year at Morehouse, King wrote this letter to the editor of Atlanta’s largest newspaper.