...Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr: Legendary Leader Matthew M. Thomas Harrison College Instructor Ward March 13, 2015 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr: Legendary Leader Black history month of 2015 saw some milestones. The 50th anniversary of bloody Sunday and the movie “Selma” which tells the story of Dr. King’s march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma Alabama. These milestones have also made people reflect on the greatest leader in African American history, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In this paper, we will look at Dr. King’s traits, ethics, leadership style, and his method of creating team work in such a way that it changed the world forever. Dr. King’s Traits and Characteristics Dr. King was an Honest, god-fearing, loving person who got his roots in the African American church. Dr. King was a visionary who knew how to keep his eyes on the prize of equal rights, and he also had an ability that few possess to this day. He had the ability to people who normally would be feuding to work together toward a common cause. His famous “I Have a Dream” speech is a great testament to Dr. King’s ability to move the hearts of all men. Dr. King displayed courage in the face of adversity. He was sprayed with water as well as his followers and till yet he was consistent. Consistent with his fight and his message of protest and non-violence. He kept the entire movement moving in the right direction even when it seemed the movement for equality would destroy itself. When...
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...Two Influential and Morally Different African Americans Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. are both household names of men who fought diligently for African American rights in the postmodernism 1960’s. The 1954 Supreme Court ruling favored that segregated educational structure left blacks at a disadvantage. This was the spark that triggered uprising in the following years. Malcolm X and King Jr’s emphasis on their beliefs is evident in the works and actions that they have done through their lives. Their philosophies do differ from one another, as we will see in “The Autobiography of Malcolm X” and with “Letter from Birmingham Jail”. Both men had different approaches and desires for the black community as well as different upbringings that influenced them. We will see how such differences are reflected throughout their work to get a better understanding on how they compare and contrast. Known as Malcolm Little, the Omaha-born future activist suffered an impoverished start in life due to his father’s early demise. Prior to his death, Malcolm’s father was a “follower of Marcus Garvey, who instilled racial pride among the masses of African Americans” (Lauter 3088). To make end’s meet, Malcolm became a drug dealer and thief while living in Harlem, which landed him time in jail. His experience in jail and childhood shaped him and encouraged him in to becoming the activists that he was known for. Malcolm “replaced his own last name with “X” which stands for the African name...
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...The American Civil Rights Movement in the late 1960s represents an important event in world history. The positive changes it brought to voting and civil rights continue to be felt throughout the United States and much of the world. Although the struggle for black equality was fought on throughout the United States. Lawmakers, law enforcement officers, public officials, and private citizens particularly from the south worked together to maintain the segregated way of life that had dominated the southern states since the end of the Civil War in 1865. Furthermore the people from the south ensured the preservation of segregation by the constant use of threat and violence against people who sought to end it. In contrast, the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement chose the tactic of nonviolence as a tool to dismantle the institutionalized racial segregation, discrimination, and inequality in the south. The movement was guided based on Martin Luther King Jr.’s principles of nonviolence and passive resistance. The success of the American Civil Rights Movement and the fight for racial equality in the United States is a testament to the determination of millions of African Americans who fought against discrimination in the 1960s. Instead of using the alternative strategy of using an armed uprising such as one of Malcom X, Martin Luther King Jr. championed and thrived on the strategy of protesting for equal rights without using violence. King's non-violent approach was inspired and derived...
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...Martin Luther King Jr. made a dramatic impact on the world. One of his most notable and greatest accomplishments was the push he made for desegregation. “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.” I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood” (King Jr., 1963). He spoke out loudly on the issue of segregation, and helped to bring about gradual and positive change. Even after his death, large steps have been made in equality for all people regardless of race. He also was instrumental in showing that one person can stand up and make a difference in a big issue. There have always been people that stand up and defy something they may see as unjust or upsetting. However, there are not as many people that started with little to no backing. Martin Luther King Jr. built a movement that has stood the test of time with organizations like the NAACP who attempt to continue his good work. He cried out loudly against the evils he saw, and changed the world forever. “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly” (King Jr., 1963). Gandhi is another great example of a man who stood for...
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...A Man of Justice Eng/147 December 15 2014 Ms. Shelagh Smith Martin Luther King Jr was a person with dignity and courage, and he was a powerful black leader that showed an took a positive stand for what he believed in without the act of violence. He began his life as a preacher who led the community and started the Montgomery boycott. He did everything he could to bring equality to America and to ensure civil rights for all people regardless of race. Martin Luther King states "Justice is check (by force, if neces sary) upon ambitions of individuals seeking to overcome their own insecurity at the expense of others" (Mattson, K., 2002). Even though, he bought equality to America, Martin Luther King Jr. is one of the most inspirational leaders in history of our nation. He led by example, and used non-violent protest for change. Martin Luther King Jr was a true leader that many people looked up to for so many reasons. He wanted equality among African Americans. He led the Montgomery Boycott to gain justice on city buses days after Rosa Parks was arrested for not giving up her seat. She was the secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The Montgomery Boycott lasted 381 days, and during this time he had many telephone threats and his house was bombed. Many blacks were able to get to and from work and they were no longer...
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...But a young, intelligent person understood the very aspect of the Civil Rights Movement and the motives behind it. As people graduated from American High School, they attention veered towards the Civil Rights Movement and they feel it. Some communities are a predominantly black community in an inner cit. Many people in these communities do not seem as interested or affected by the historical movement. But everyone knew to follow the rules of not conversing nor interacting with whites. One person describes one hot July day, there was a rally held in Downtown Miami along with many other cities. The really lasted all day but messages were being spread. “I felt a sense of glory because it was the first time I felt a true connection with every other person in the country who was trying to make a difference in this country. “Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love,” A message from Martin Luther King, JR. that showed his passion to promote unity and non-violence during the Civil Rights Movement. During the times of the Civil Rights Movement, many African Americans were angry and had hatred towards white people because of the oppression they endured for years. As a result many African Americans resorted to violence and hostility towards whites. Malcolm X was a very powerful leader in the African American and Muslim community who many claimed him to be a leader who did not want to live in...
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...Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. - A Leadership Icon Annise Hawkins Strayer University PAD 515 Dr. Lisa Saye July 30, 2011 What comes to mind when you hear the terms courage, leadership courage, moral leadership and servant leadership? Do you think of an influential person (s) you know? Or do you think in terms of qualities that leaders need to possess in order to be effective? In order to answer those questions, one must understand the definitions of those terms. Courage is “the ability to step forward through fear. Courage doesn’t mean the absence of doubt or fear, but the ability to act in spite of them” (DAFT 2011, p. 181). Leadership courage requires a leader to “reach deep within themselves to find the strength and courage to resist temptations or to stand up for moral principles when others may ridicule them or when they may suffer financially or emotionally for their actions” (DAFT 2011, p. 180. Moral courage is about “distinguishing right from wrong and doing right, seeking the just, the honest, the good, and the right conduct in achieving goals and fulfilling purpose” (DAFT 2011, p. 172). Finally, servant leadership is when “leaders give up control and make a choice to serve employees” (DAFT 2011, p. 175). When I think of these terms, I immediately think of a prominent leader who possessed all these qualities, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He was truly a leader in his time. According to Webster’s Dictionary, a leader is “one who...
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...Over time there were many people that helped create defining moments in history, these individuals helped not only shape their communities but also the ideas of the people within these communities, one such person was Martin Luther King Jr. Martin Luther King Jr. was born on January 15th 1929 and originally given the name Michael Luther King by his mother, before having his name changed at a later age, went on to become a advocate for the civil rights of the back people. He participated in various protest followed in the footsteps of this father and grandfather by becoming the co-pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church. His belief in using an approach based on non- violence and peaceful protests was something that impacted many around him, and despite his being treated like an outcast, being arrested, having his house bombed and ultimately being assassinated, he worked to make the world a better place and to change the minds of society about persons of other races and ethnicities and cultures and his sole goal in life was to create peace and harmony within the bounds of unity. Martin Luther King attended Morehouse College in Atlanta in a program for gifted students and received his Bachelors of Science for Sociology in 1948. As an undergraduate he wanted to study fields such as law or medicine but in turn decided by his senior year that he would enter the world of ministry and continue his family’s level of the church. He then went on to Crozer Theological Seminary to receive...
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...Over time there were many people that helped create defining moments in history, these individuals helped not only shape their communities but also the ideas of the people within these communities, one such person was Martin Luther King Jr. Martin Luther King Jr. was born on January 15th 1929 and originally given the name Michael Luther King by his mother, before having his name changed at a later age, went on to become a advocate for the civil rights of the back people. He participated in various protest followed in the footsteps of this father and grandfather by becoming the co-pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church. His belief in using an approach based on non- violence and peaceful protests was something that impacted many around him, and despite his being treated like an outcast, being arrested, having his house bombed and ultimately being assassinated, he worked to make the world a better place and to change the minds of society about persons of other races and ethnicities and cultures and his sole goal in life was to create peace and harmony within the bounds of unity. Martin Luther King attended Morehouse College in Atlanta in a program for gifted students and received his Bachelors of Science for Sociology in 1948. As an undergraduate he wanted to study fields such as law or medicine but in turn decided by his senior year that he would enter the world of ministry and continue his family’s level of the church. He then went on to Crozer Theological Seminary to receive...
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...Professor D. P. Dash | Assignment Title | #2 Group AssignmentMartin Luther King Jr. - I Have A Dream | Due Date | Week 8 | Date Received | | DECLARATION | To be completed if this is an individual assignment: I declare that this assignment is my individual work. I have not worked collaboratively nor have I copied from any other student’s work or from any other source except where due acknowledgment is made explicitly in the text, nor has any part been written for me by another person. | Student ID | Student Name | Student Signature | Student 1 | | | | To be completed if this is a group assignment: We declare that this is a group assignment and that no part of this submission has been copied from any other student's work or from any other source except where due acknowledgment is made explicitly in the text, nor has any part been written for us by another person. | Student ID | Student Name | Student Signature | Student 1 | 4240138 | Danushka Nirmal De Silva | | Student 2 | 4235150 | Ngu Ing Sung | | Student 3 | 4237293 | Dashilla Ladaey | | Student 4 | 4237323 | Ahmad Akmal Afiq | | Student 5 | 100070566 | Lasse Svenning Jensen | | MARKER’S COMME Total Mark | | Marker’s Signature | | Date | | EXTENSION CERTIFICATE | This assignment has been given an extension by Unit Convenor | | Extended due date: | | Date Received | | Martin Luther King Jr. – I Have a Dream An analysis of a historically important leadership...
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...They were black men who had a dream, but never lived to see it fulfilled. One was a man who spoke out to all humanity, but the world was not yet ready for his peaceful words. "I have a dream, a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed... that all men are created equal." (Martin Luther King) The other, a man who spoke of a violent revolution, which would bring about radical change for the black race. "Anything you can think of that you want to change right now, the only way you can do it is with a ballot or a bullet. And if you're not ready to get involved with either one of those, you are satisfied with the status quo. That means we'll have to change you." (Malcolm X) While Martin Luther King promoted non-violence, civil rights, and the end to racial segregation, a man of the name of Malcolm X dreamed of a separate nation. Martin Luther King, Jr. was the conscience of his generation. A Southerner, a black man, he gazed upon the great wall of segregation and saw that the power of love could bring it down. From the pain and exhaustion of his fight to free all people from the bondage of separation and injustice, he wrung his eloquent statement of what America could be. (Ansboro, pg.1) An American clergyman and a Nobel Peace Prize winner, he was one of the principle leaders of the American Civil Rights Movement and a prominent advocate of nonviolent protest. King's challenges to segregation and racial discrimination in the 1950's and...
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...The Drum Major Instinct. Martin Luther King, Jr. remains arguably the most recognizable African American figure in world history. First thrust into the international spotlight courtesy of his leadership of a boycott of the public bus system in Montgomery, Alabama, where he was pastor of a local church, King became the lightning rod for the civil rights movement that emerged in the wake of the successful boycott. During the 1960s he gave innumerable speeches characterized by oratorical genius, led a succession of mass marches in the heart of segregated America and helped to reconstruct American race relations before his assassination in 1968. Ever since Montgomery he has attracted the attention of biographers and historians keen to understand what made him such a magnetic and inspirational leader and what made the story of the civil rights movement so compelling. Martin Luther King is most remembered for a speech given during one of the finest hours of the civil rights movement -- a sermon that set the moral tone for the movement. But while the Aug. 28, 1963, sermon "I Have A Dream," delivered during the March on Washington, framed much of Martin Luther King Jr’s notions of a free America, it was not the speech that defined his legacy. One of the world's best known advocates of non-violent social change strategies, Martin Luther King Jr., synthesized ideals drawn from many different cultural traditions. Recent studies of him emphasize the extent to which his ideals were rooted...
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...There appears to be a particular trend in research on charismatic leadership. Most of it subsumes vision within charisma. Some scholars even suggest that it is the vision that leads to the attribution of charisma to the leaders in the first place. However, we think that charisma and vision are two distinct concepts and as such a leader may be charismatic but not visionary, or visionary but not charismatic, both charismatic and visionary, or neither. To us, charisma is an emotion-based construct or a ‘heart’ thing and charismatic leaders understand their social environment very well and are masters of social skills. Vision, on the other hand, is a competence-based construct, a combination of intellectual ability and experience, largely a ‘head’ thing. A charismatic leader is an enthusiastic, self-confident leader whose personality and actions influence people to behave in certain ways. The five common traits of such leaders are: * They have a vision * They are able to articulate that vision * They are willing to take risks to achieve that vision * They are sensitive to both environmental constraints and follower needs * They exhibit behaviours that are out of ordinary Charismatic leadership is more likely to be in politics, religion, wartime or when a business firm is starting up or facing crisis. Example of charismatic leaders include: Jeff Bezos, Martin Luther King Jr, Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison. Charismatic Leadership Quoting from the World...
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...disobedience is when “Men such as Martin Luther King, Jr. violated unjust laws but willingly accepted the punishment that came with violating the law… often confused with simply violating laws that you do not like…Civil disobedience demands to accept the punishment otherwise, there would be no principled distinction between civil disobedience and mere lawlessness” (“The Documents of Freedom”). Peaceful resistance does positively impact a free society. Take Gandhi for example, he non-violently protested the registration law, through non-violent marches and labor strikes, all harmless, and in support of those who were treated unequally by the registration law, “The Boer government then agreed to end the most objectionable parts of the...
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...Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. James H. Cone, an advocate affectionately known for black liberation theology, a theology grounded in the experience of African Americans, and related to other Christian liberation theologies. James H. Cone approach provided a realistic snap shot of a new way to articulate the distinctiveness of theology in the Black Church. Frustrated and outraged at the White Church of playing a significant role in the oppression and racism of black people. Cone believed that the Black Church is a powerful force [in his life] and did not do enough in regard to racism among African Americans. Cone exploited scriptures, slave spirituals, blues, and other prominent African American thinkers such as David Walker, Henry McNeal Turner, and W.E.B. DuBois to help shape his theology. Malcolm X and the Black Power Movement and Dr. Martin Luther King also influenced his theology. Cone formulates a theology of liberation from within the context of the Black experience of oppression, interpreting the central kernel of the Gospels as Jesus' identification with the poor, oppressed, and the resurrection as the ultimate act of liberation. This theology cited as attempts to understand the meaning of faith, the meaning of God, in a world that is broken. Cone devoted his professional life to the study of religion from an African perspective. This groundbreaking influential work links the study of Jesus Christ life with the African American experience. Reverend Dr. Martin Luther...
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