01:King attempted suicide as a young boy.
When King was 12, he attended a parade against his parents' wishes. His maternal grandmother suffered a fatal heart attack that day. King blamed himself for her death, because his six-year old little brother A.D., whom he was supposed to be home watching, accidentally knocked their grandmother unconscious while sliding down a bannister. Young Martin did not know the unconsciousness was unrelated to the heart attack. Associating his absence with the tragic turn of events, Martin attempted suicide by jumping from a second-story window in his family home. His father later reported that the boy was distraught for days, unable to sleep.
This sense of melancholy, while perfectly understandable, and a sign of his love for his grandmother, presaged the bouts of depression King experienced over philosophical divisions within the Civil Rights Movement (i.e. militants vs. nonviolent activists), and the challenges of the Poor People's Campaign. Of his grandmother's death, King said, "It was after this incident for the first time that I talked at any length on the doctrine of immortality. My parents attempted to explain it to me and I was assured that my grandmother stil lived." On the eve of his own death, King preached, "Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you."
02
😛lagiarism in Speeches – King’s efforts in civil rights activism led him to the 1963 “March on Washington”, where he delivered his “I Have A Dream” speech. There, he expanded American values to include his vision of a color-blind society and established his reputation as a great orator – but should he have this reputation?
Archibald Carey, Jr. originated MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech.
King plagiarized the “I Have A Dream” speech from one given at the Republican Convention in 1952 given by Archibald J. Carey, Jr., an an African-American lawyer, judge, alderman, diplomat and clergyman from the south side of Chicago.
Carey’s speech spun off the words of the song “My Country ‘Tis of Thee – America”, the American patriotic song written by Samuel Francis Smith. There are no easily obtainable copies of the audio of his speech but the text of the ending is here:
We, Negro Americans, sing with all loyal Americans: My country ’tis of thee, Sweet land of liberty, Of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, Land of the Pilgrims’ pride From every mountainside Let freedom ring!
That’s exactly what we mean – from every mountain side, let freedom ring. Not only from the Green Mountains and White Mountains of Vermont and New Hampshire; not only from the Catskills of New York; but from the Ozarks in Arkansas, from the Stone Mountain in Georgia, from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia–let it ring not only for the minorities of the United States, but for the disinherited of all the earth–may the Republican Party, under God, from every mountainside, LET FREEDOM RING!