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Lerone A. Martin, Ph.D.
Martin Luther King, Jr., Centennial Professor in Religious Studies and Director of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University
Young King: The Making of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Book Giveaway: FAN is giving away copies of Young King at the event, while supplies last.
We know who Martin Luther King, Jr., became. But who was he at the beginning? Before he was a civil rights leader, a Nobel laureate, and a global icon, King was a sensitive boy and a middling high-school student devoted to fashion, dancing, sports, and dating. How did his moral clarity and world-changing resilience emerge from those ordinary roots?
In Young King: The Making of Martin Luther King, Jr., preeminent King scholar Lerone A. Martin, Ph.D., (FAN ’24) turns his full attention to MLK’s early years, correcting the myth of inevitability and showing that King’s greatness was not preordained but shaped by choices, experiences, mentors, and struggles. Drawing on rare archival materials, unpublished interviews, personal letters, and King’s own reflections, Martin traces the formative seasons of King’s youth: a boy navigating academic uncertainty and the daily humiliations of the Jim Crow South, even as flashes of brilliance and moral imagination begin to take shape.
Structured in five stages that mirror King’s coming of age, the book reveals a young man searching, stumbling, questioning, and evolving long before the world knew his name. Martin, who wrote it in part as a father, calls it a kind of superhero backstory. King, he suggests, would not be shocked by our present challenges. He would be shocked that we are surprised, when his own life shows that progress is never inevitable.
Martin is the Martin Luther King, Jr., Centennial Professor in Religious Studies and Director of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University. Previously, he was a member of the faculty in the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics and Director of American Culture Studies at Washington University in St. Louis. He currently serves as senior editor of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers Project and as an advisor on the forthcoming PBS documentary series The History of Gospel Music & Preaching.
This event is suitable for youth ages 12 and up. It will be recorded but not live streamed and available on FAN’s website and YouTube channel.
NO REGISTRATION REQUIRED.
Event Sponsors
- The Alliance for Early Childhood
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- Beacon Academy
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- Glenview Public Library
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- Woodlands Academy of the Sacred Heart
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PROGRAM NOTE: Because of today’s Microsoft email outage, we have not be able to process Zoom registrations since midday. Please use the public join link instead.
Note: Event start time is Central Time (CT).
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Note: Event start time is Central Time (CT).
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