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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 Drawing on rare archival materials, unpublished interviews, personal letters, and King’s own reflections, Martin traces the formative seasons of King’s youth: a boy navigating academic uncertainty and the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
- The Ancona School
- The Avery Coonley School
- Avoca D37
- Baker Demonstration School
- Barrington D220
- Beacon Academy
- Bennett Day School
- Bernard Zell Anshe Emet Day School
- Brickton Montessori School
- British International School of Chicago
- Catherine Cook School
- Chiaravalle Montessori School
- Compass Health Center
- Connections Health
- Countryside Day School
- Evanston Scholars
- Evanston Township High School D202
- The Family Institute at Northwestern University
- Family Service Center
- Foundation 65
- The Frances Xavier Warde School
- Francis W. Parker School
- Glenbrook High School D225
- Glenview Public Library
- Gorton Center
- Hyde Park Day School
- Illinois Student Assistance Commission
- Josephinum Academy
- Kenilworth D38
- Lake Bluff D65
- Latin School of Chicago
- Leo Catholic High School
- Lycée Français de Chicago
- Near North Montessori School
- North Shore Country Day
- Northwestern University Office of Neighborhood and Community Relations
- Northwestern University School of Education and Social Policy
- Oakton College
- Pope John XXIII School
- Regina Dominican College Preparatory High School
- Rogers Park Montessori School
- Sacred Heart Schools
- Santa Clara University School of Law
- Science & Arts Academy
- The Sonia Shankman Orthogenic School
- Stevenson High School D125
- Township High School D113
- Township High School D214
- Wilmette Public Library
- Wintrust Bank
- Woodlands Academy of the Sacred Heart
- Youth & Opportunity United (Y.O.U.)
Upcoming Events
Dad Brain: The New Science of Fatherhood and How It Shapes Men’s Lives
Darby Saxbe, Ph.D.
Clinical psychologist and professor of psychology at the University of Southern California
Richard V. Reeves, Ph.D.
Founder and president of the American Institute for Boys and Men
ON ZOOM
Agency: The Psychological History of Human Progress
Martin E.P. Seligman, Ph.D.
Zellerbach Family Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania and Director of the Positive Psychology Center
James O. Pawelski, Ph.D.
Professor of practice and director of education in the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania
ON ZOOM
Girlhood, Translated: Understanding Young Women in the Age of Therapy Speak and Self-Diagnosis
Suzanne Garfinkle-Crowell, MD
Psychiatrist and Founding Director of the Academy for Medicine and the Humanities at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
Erica Ghignone, MD
Medical Director at Compass Health Center Chicago
North Shore Country Day Auditorium
Note: Event start time is Central Time (CT).
NO REGISTRATION REQUIRED.
