Famous Words (source # 4)

During research, I came across a cite that was loaded with quotes from Martin Luther King Jr. They are all pretty inspirational, and uplifting. I thought I would use this blog to share a few of the ones I thought were most interesting. They also give you a sense of how Dr. King spoke to his audiences while he was still alive.

"Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true."-MLK

"The good neighbor looks beyond the external accidents and discerns those inner qualities that make all men human and, therefore, brothers." - MLK 'Strength to Love,' 1963

"Now, I say to you today my friends, even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: - 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal." - MLK Speech at Civil Rights March on Washington, August 28, 1963

"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy."- MLK Strength to Love, 1963

"Quotations by Author." The Quotations Page. 17 Feb. 2007 http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Martin_Luther_King_Jr./.

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Vietnam War

While researching about MLK's political philosophies, I found some information about his stand on the Vietnam War. First, he felt that the war took away from the poverty program that had been started in the U.S. It not only took attention away from the issue but also funding. He thought of the war as an enemy to the poor. Before the war, it looked as if there was going to be a solution to poverty, but as Vietnam began to buildup, that hope faded in the background. King knew that as long as our nation’s government was going to participate in the war, they would not give extra funds or attention to the poverty problem in their own backyard (Beyond p.9). Also, we were sending troops over to Vietnam, both black and white, to help guarentee liberties in Southeast Asia, which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem here at home in the U.S.. The nation was seeing pictures of young white men and young black men dying together for a nation that was unable to seat them together in school. The irony of the situation seemed to be overwhelming. It didn’t make much sense as to why we were sending blacks and whites to fight for liberty in a country so far away, when they didn’t have the same liberties back in their home country (Beyond p.10) I agree with much of what King says, because I didn't thing that it made much sense to participate in a war thousands of miles away, before we could solve the problems within our own country.

Works Cited

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Peers Helping Peers

During Tuesday's class we got together and shared our papers. We are all working on different subjects and we all have somewhat different writing styles so I found it to be pretty helpful to get some insite on my paper.

I got a lot of help with changing up a few sentences or phrases that sounded awkward to the reader. Along with that my peers made a few grammer corrections such as commas and incorrect spelling. I think it is always helpful to have a new set of eyes go over your paper. They always seem to catch the mistakes that you miss from reading the paper too many times in your own head.

I basically gave the same kind of corrections to my peers as well. Again grammer and spelling errors, along with a few mechanical things. There was some repetition in one paper, and citation errors in the others.

Overall I thought that meeting as a group and going over our papers was helpful. I got to tell them what to look for and what I needed help with, and they delivered.

Looking to Gandhi (source # 3)

I found out in my one of my other sources that Martin Luther King Jr. took his ideals from his strong Christian background, and his operational ways from Gandhi. That cued me in on finding more about Gandhi and his ideas in order to understand how MLK operated.

Dr. King was heavily influenced by Dr. Johnson, a famous educator, while he attended Crozer Theological Seminary. Dr. Johnson, having recently returned from India, was full of admiration for Gandhi. Gandhi was the subject of an address he made, which Dr. King attended his senior year. Dr. Johnson stressed Gandhi's demonstration of the redemptive power of love as an instrument of nonviolent social reform. King then pursued Gandhi's writings about ahimsa and satyagraha.

King then used what he learned and spoke of love as the answer to overcome social inequality issues. For example, when King's home was bombed in 1956, he urged the crowd to not resist police because violence must be met with nonviolence. He calmed the angry crowd down, and it was evident that the words of Gandhi were now embedded into his mind, and his life.

Power, Paul F. The Meanings of Gandhi. First ed. The UP of Hawaii, 1971. 158-163

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So Far...

Besides trying to keep track of how many blogs are due at this point in the semester, everything is going pretty well. As one could assume, there is plenty of information out there about Martin Luther King Jr., so I'm not having trouble finding any sources. I am, however, somewhat struggling on how to sift through these sources to find qualifying information for my paper. I think that once I make an outline of how I want my eight + pages to look, I'll be able to find the key information that I need.

I also think that right now I just have a jumble off things for this paper all scattered around, whether it be on my desk or in cyber space. Once I get organized and can really see my paper coming together I wont stress so much over it.

I know that there is plenty of information all over the place about Martin Luther King, but im worried that my paper is going to turn into a biography instead of just about the points I want to cover. Those points include his social, moral, and political philosophies. I know I can get away from MLK by talking about where he gets his ideals from which is his strong Christian background. I may be able to discuss that topic and get a few pages out of that and a few pages out of Gandhi which is where he got his operational ideas from. Im just hoping I can make this paper turn out the way I planned for.

The Life of MLK (source # 2)

This source that I’ve found through the internet will be very useful to me during the course of writing my research paper. As you navigate through the website there are a variety of this to look at and go through. There is a brief biography of his life and his works. The biography skips through his life pretty fast, so I need to gather information to fill all the gaps that were left out, but it at least gives me somewhere to start. There is also a section that has parts of his speeches that I can use to put on blog spot to make the site a little bit more interesting. There is a timeline to better view his life and to get important dates and events from. There are photos I can also use to make the blog spot more appealing.

After going through this website i found out that there is a lot of information that i do not know about MLK. For example he wasn’t’ born with the name Martin, instead it was Michael. It was changed to Martin when he was six years old. However, the biography does not say why his name was changed, so that is an example of the kind of information I would be looking for in another source, in order to complete his background in my paper.

"The Life of Martin Luther King Jr." The Seattle Tmes. 01 Feb. 2007 .http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/mlk/king/biography.html.

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Martin Luther King Jr.

I’ve recently decided to switch my subject from discrimination to Martin Luther King Jr., in order to be able to organize my research in an easier fashion. I felt that discrimination was too broad of a subject, and I couldn’t think of the right topic to go with it. My topic is now the social, moral, and political philosophies of Martin Luther King Jr.

Obviously the main figure in of my paper will be Martin Luther King Jr., so I’ve decided to begin my research with learning about his background.
MLK was born on January 15, 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia. MLK’s father, Martin Luther King Sr. was the pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church, and his mother Alberta King was a teacher. Many might not know that MLK was born Michael Luther King and didn’t have his named changed to Martin until he was six years old.

MLK never planned on following in his father’s footsteps in becoming a pastor, and he enrolled in to Morehouse College in 1944. While attending, he met a man by the name of Dr. Benjamin Mays who eventually showed King that becoming a pastor was the right thing for him to do. He then attended Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania after receiving a BA at Morehouse. At Crozer he won the Plafker Award for being the most outstanding student of his class, and along with that he won the J. Lewis Crozer Fellowship. King finished his doctorate in 1955 after he completed his dissertation.

He then moved to Montgomery, Alabama and became the pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. That was when he began to pave the way into the civil rights movement. He mobilized the black community during a 382-day boycott of the city's bus lines. He overcame arrest, violent harassment (the thing he was trying so hard to stop), and even the bombing of his house. His work paid off however, when the US supreme court decided that the segregation of public buses was unconstitutional.

"The Life of Martin Luther King Jr." The Seattle Tmes. 01 Feb. 2007 .http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/mlk/king/biography.html.

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