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Zusatztext "Baldwin's readable! thoughtful! and fresh compilation gives full voice to King's belief that "[a]ll inhabitants of the globe are now neighbors."— Publishers Weekly Informationen zum Autor Dr. Martin Luther King! Jr. (1929-1968)! Nobel Peace Prize laureate and architect of the nonviolent civil rights movement! was among the twentieth century's most influential figures. One of the greatest orators in U.S. history! King is the author of several books! including Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story! The Trumpet of Conscience! Why We Can't Wait! and Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? His speeches! sermons! and writings are inspirational and timeless. King was assassinated in Memphis! Tennessee! on April 4! 1968. Lewis V. Baldwin is professor of religious studies at Vanderbilt University and an ordained Baptist minister. An expert on black-church traditions! he is author of The Voice of Conscience: The Church in the Mind of Martin Luther King! Jr.; There Is a Balm in Gilead: The Cultural Roots of Martin Luther King! Jr.; and Never to Leave Us Alone: The Prayer Life of Martin Luther King! Jr. Charlayne Hunter-Gault is an author! journalist! and foreign correspondent for National Public Radio. In 1961! she was one of two black students to desegregate the University of Georgia. From the Introduction This is a new kind of book about the world vision of Martin Luther King, Jr. Too many people continue to think of Dr. King as "a southern civil rights leader" or "an American Gandhi," thus ignoring his impact on poor and oppressed people everywhere. “In a Single Garment of Destiny” is the first book to treat King’s positions on global liberation struggles through the prism of his own words and activities. The purpose is not only celebration, but also a critical engagement with a towering figure whose ideas and social praxis have become so significant in the reshaping of the modern world. King’s interest in the problems of the poor and oppressed worldwide was evident long before he achieved national and international prominence. He came out of a family background that encouraged a concern for world affairs; his own father, Martin Luther King, Sr., the distinguished pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia, communicated with black South African activists and addressed the problems of racism and poverty in America and in other lands when King, Jr. was a child. Inspired by this family tradition, King, Jr., at age fifteen, in a high school speech called, “The Negro and the Constitution,” spoke of the resonating irony of an America claiming freedom while denying basic rights to blacks, and also referred to the United States’ moral responsibility in a world that threatened the true flowering of democracy. As a student at Atlanta’s Morehouse College and at Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania in the late forties and early fifties, King, Jr. came to the conclusion that blacks in America would not win genuine freedom as long as peoples of color abroad suffered on grounds of race and economics. King had experiences in Montgomery, Alabama that not only increased his interest in international events, but also solidified his commitment to ending racism, poverty, colonialism, and other social evils that disproportionately afflicted black Americans and peoples in the so-called Third World. While serving as pastor of Montgomery’s Dexter Avenue Baptist Church from 1954 to 1959, King occasionally drew parallels between white racism in the United States and European colonialism in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, and it was his conviction that the black struggle in the Jim Crow South had much to contribute to and learn from movements for independence abroad. This conviction matured during the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955-56, and was signif...
