does martin luther king have a phd

In What Field Was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. a Doctor?

Martin Luther King Jr. earned a doctorate in systematic theology from Boston University in 1955. He’d previously earned a Bachelor of Arts from Morehouse College and a Bachelor of Divinity from Crozer Theological Seminary. His dissertation , “A Comparison of the Conception of God in the Thinking of Paul Tillich and Henry Nelson Wieman,” examined the two religious philosophers’ views of God in comparison to each other, and to King’s own concept of a "knowable and personal" God.

In 1989, some three decades after King had earned his doctorate, archivists working with The Martin Luther King Papers Project discovered that King’s dissertation suffered from what they called a “problematic use of sources.” King, they learned, had taken a large amount of material verbatim from other scholars and sources and used it in his work without full or proper attribution, and sometimes no attribution at all.

In 1991, a Boston University investigatory committee concluded that King had indeed plagiarized parts of his dissertation, but found that it was “impractical to reach, on the available evidence, any conclusions about Dr. King's reasons for failing to attribute some, but not all, of his sources.” That is, it could have been anything from malicious intent to simple forgetfulness—no one can determine for sure today. They did not recommend a posthumous revocation of his degree, but instead suggested that a letter be attached to the dissertation in the university library noting the passages lacked quotations and citations.

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What Was Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. a Doctor of?

Early Education

Martin Luther King, Jr., born January 15, 1929, began his schooling in Atlanta, Georgia, at the Yonge Street Elementary School and later attended the David T. Howard Elementary School. As a young man, he went to the Atlanta University Laboratory School and finished his secondary education at Booker T. Washington High School.

Skipping both the 9th and 12th grades, Dr. King never formally graduated high school, instead enrolling in Morehouse College in Atlanta after his junior year of high school.

King graduated from Morehouse in 1948 with a B.A. in Sociology. He later attended and graduated from Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania, where he not only earned a Bachelor of Divinity in 1951, but was also awarded a graduate fellowship that allowed him to pursue his doctorate.

Doctoral Education

King enrolled in Boston University’s School of Theology and began his doctoral studies which were: “ Influenced by his increasing interest in personalism, a philosophy that emphasizes the necessity of personal religious experience in understanding God.”

Under the tutelage of several notable theologians including Edgar S. Brightman, L. Harold DeWolf and Jannette E. Newhall, King expanded his studies to include :

Several classes on the history of philosophy that examined the works of Reinhold Niebuhr, Alfred North Whitehead, Plate, and Hegel [and] . . . culminated with the completion of his dissertation, entitled “A Comparison of the Conceptions of God in the Thinking of Paul Tillich and Henry Nelson Weiman.”

Although later (1991) a committee would determine that King had “plagiarized” portions of his dissertation, other scholars characterized these as “ faulty citation practices [that] were rooted in the notecards he created while conducting research . . . . ” Nonetheless, even the committee found the sloppy citations justified no real penalty, and rather felt that “ no thought should be given to the revocation of Dr. King’s doctoral degree .”

In any event, while at BU, King relied on the mentorship and spiritual guidance of the Marsh Chapel’s dean, Howard Thurman, who introduced King to, among other things Mohandas Gandhi and the effectiveness of non-violent protest.

Systematic Theology

In this discipline, theological topics are addressed “one by one” and the student “ attempts to summarize all the biblical teaching ” on that subject into one work: “ The goal is to present the major themes (i.e. doctrines) of the Christian faith in an organized and ordered overview that remains faithful to the biblical witness.”

In addition to relying on the Bible, the field also investigates “ the development of Christian doctrine over the course of history, particularly through philosophy, science and ethics .”

By applying the discipline of orderly reasoning to his studies, King developed his personal theology which included his view that:

Without immortality the universe would be somewhat irrational. But by having faith in the immortal life we are assured that God will vindicate the righteous. . . . The Christian faith in its emphasis on immortality assures us that the ambiguities of this life will be meaningful in the life to come. . . . [But yet] the solution to the problem surrounding any tragedy is ultimately practical, not theoretical.

Practical Application

Shortly after graduating the Reverend Doctor began his civil rights work with the Montgomery Bus Boycott (December 5, 1955 – December 20, 1956), where African Americans, taking a page out of Gandhi’s book, peacefully refused to ride the Alabama city’s buses until they were integrated.

The Reverend Doctor organized and participated in other acts of nonviolent protests over the next decade, but perhaps his greatest contribution to the cause of civil rights came through his fiery rhetoric that stirred action, something he saw as a minister’s noble duty :

Who is it that is supposed to articulate the longings and aspirations of the people more than the preacher? Somewhere the preacher must have a kind of fire shut up in his bones, and whenever injustice is around he must tell it. Somehow the preacher must be an Amos, who said, “When God Speaks, who can but prophesy?”

I Have a Dream…

More than 200,000 people attended the March on Washington on August 28, 1963, where the Reverend Doctor’s oratory on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial served as the rally’s grand finale :

In spite of the difficulties of the moment, I still have a dream . . . deeply rooted in the American 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.” . . . That one day . . . the sweltering heat of injustice and oppression will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice [and that] . . . my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

• I’ve Been to the Mountaintop

On April 3, 1968, the Reverend Doctor gave his final, and one of his most memorable , speeches:

The nation is sick, trouble is in the land, confusion all around. . . . But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars. And I see God working in this period of the twentieth century . . . . I’ve been to the mountaintop . . . . And I’ve looked over and I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know . . . I’m happy tonight; I’m not worried about anything; I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

The next day, the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated, shot while standing on the balcony of his motel in Memphis, Tennessee. Some in attendance at his final speech believe that he had a premonition of his upcoming demise :

[He] knew he wouldn’t get there, but he wouldn’t tell us that. That would have been too heavy for us, so he softened it. . . . He preached himself through the fear of death. He just got it out of him. He just . . . dealt with it. And . . . it was like, what did he know that we didn’t know?

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• In the second half of the 20th century, the United States passed a variety of laws, including affirmative action to address historical wrongs, to ensure that all Americans enjoyed the rights and freedoms promised by the Constitution. These included the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Civil Rights Act of 1968.
• Sadly, the effects of centuries of discrimination and racism continue to plague African Americans. Only “ 54% of African Americans graduate from high school, compared to more than three quarters of white and Asian students. ” In addition, African American 12th graders read, on average, at the same level as white 8th graders, and only 14% of African American 8th graders read at proficient levels. Furthermore, African American boys were 2.5 times more likely to be suspended from school as white students, and according to a recent report, one out of every three black men will spend time in prison (compared to 1 of 17 white men).
• In recent years state legislatures have passed laws that limit early voting and same-day registration, and require photo I.D.s. Why is this significant? According to the NAACP, “ 25 percent of African-American voting age citizens (more than six million people) and 16 percent of Latino voting age citizens (nearly three million people) do not possess valid identification .”
• In October 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, gutted the voting rights act , allowing lawmakers in states with a history of discriminating against voters to change their voting rules without first getting permission from Uncle Sam. Since then, eight of the 15 states with a history of discrimination, “ passed or implemented voting restrictions ” that have the effect of making it hard for “low-income voters, young people, and minorities” to vote.
• 1 in 3 Black Males Will Go to Prison
• “A Comparison of the Conceptions of God in the Thinking of Paul Tillich and Henry Nelson Wieman”
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• The Supreme Court Gutted the Voting Rights Act
• Systematic theology (Theopedia)
• Systematic theology (Wikipedia)

13 comments

Why do you say 1 in 3 black males will go to prison and 54% graduated HS because of racism? What evidence do you have to show that most of those arrests and dropouts are related to racism and not poor choices of the black community in general?

This is the 21st Century, not the 19th Century. All Americans now have equal opportunity, but must take advantage of our free education starting from kindergarten up through the 12th grade. This is the job of the students: to learn in order to be a productive member of society; in order to earn a decent living and to provide guidance for THEIR future generations. The job of parents is to see that the students avail themselves of the opportunities of the public education system and take full advantage of it. If those students do not choose to take advantage of this free public education which is available to ALL races, so be it. Do not then cry later on that you cannot get a job, or that your poor language skills inhibit you from mainstream society’s occupational opportunities.

MLK was a hero to many, especially for the Negro. However, that does not excuse him, nor Boston College from allowing him to keep the awarded “doctorate” degree because it was obtained under false premises. Had he been any other race than Negro, the doctorate would have been rescinded.

As far as the constant charge of restricting voting rights for Negroes, if the biggest problem MLK had had to confront was to simply apply, and obtain, a photo identification card in order to vote….which is, or at least should be, the case today..yet liberal democrats continue to oppose for their dishonest purposes….then he would have had a much easier road to walk.

Americans “bend over backward” to continually show that they are not racist by giving, and allowing, Negroes advantages and constant “help” to meet, or simply bypass, requirements for jobs, schools, etc, that other races have to meet…yet Negroes still lag far behind all other races in all fields tested.

Most Negroes won’t admit it, and white liberals dishonestly deny it, but today, as per MLKs “hope,” people, including Negroes, are “…not (be) judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”…and they are found sorely lacking.

That fact is no one’s fault but their own.

I am getting sick & tired of hearing about this guy exspecially the DR. part , I’d like to know if he really was a “dr.” then what part of the body did he work on ? Was he a dentist? a foot dr. ? a ear nose & throat dr. ? I could go on & on & on .

I honestly can not believe how hateful and ignorant the comments are in this thread.

@Stacy Thomas You’re so “sick and tired of hearing about this guy”, that you actually took the time to click on an article about the guy. The other half of your comment is just too dumb to address.

14% of Americans are black, 38% of the people locked up are black. MLK didn’t graduate high school. Today if you don’t graduate high school you cannot enter college. MLK stole college work from others .They are the worst at school because they don’t care and complain it’s the white people are to blame. They should look in the mirror and blame the person they see.

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Losing King: Shock, sorrow, anger, and a voice time hasn’t silenced

Five decades after assassination, views from Gates, Gordon-Reed, others on the nation then and now

Colleen Walsh

Harvard Staff Writer

Fifty years ago the murder of a Baptist minister turned Civil Rights giant shook the nation. Just after 6 p.m. on April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was gunned down on the second-floor balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn. There to support the city’s striking sanitation workers, King was about to head to dinner when he was struck in the jaw by a single bullet. In a country already roiled by racial violence and civil unrest, the killing set off a wave of deadly riots from coast to coast.

We asked a group of Harvard scholars to reflect on King’s life, death, and legacy. Historians Annette Gordon-Reed and Henry Louis Gates Jr . recalled where they were when they heard about the assassination. Philosopher Tommie Shelby remembered his earliest impressions of King’s language and rhetoric. All three shared thoughts on how the Civil Rights leader would view today’s America. Political theorist Danielle Allen , set to deliver the keynote at a King-focused conference on Friday, said that 50 years on, his work remains unfinished.

Annette Gordon-Reed (from left), Danielle Allen, Henry Louis Gates Jr., and Tommie Shelby.

File photos by Stephanie Mitchell and Rose Lincoln/Harvard Staff

‘It’s a shock that I’ve never gotten over’

A senior in high school, Gates was at home in Piedmont, Va., watching TV when an announcement interrupted the news.

“I had three best friends that were black and they came over and we were just shocked — we were stunned,” said Gates, the Alphonse Fletcher Jr. University Professor and director of the Hutchins Center . “There was nothing that we could do.

“Basically it’s a shock that I’ve never gotten over, really. I mean, I still can’t believe it when I watch the footage.”

The shock lingered in Gates’ voice as he considered King’s relative youth.

“He seemed like such an old man but he was 39 years old. He did all of that when he was 39, and I definitely believe — I am one of the black people who thinks there was some kind of conspiracy to kill him. I think he could have been the first black president and I don’t think America was ready for that.”

King, Gates added, was “moving toward an amalgamation of race and class and that was threatening to the system.”

What would he think of the U.S. today?

Gates said King would be surprised by how much the country has moved the dial, and stunned by the numbers of upper- and middle-class African-Americans. “But he would be equally shocked that the percentage of black children living at or beneath the poverty line is roughly the same as it was in 1970, roughly the same as it was when he died.”

And while King would be pleased by the progress made since 1968, and “astonished and delighted” that the country was led by an African-American president for eight years, he would also be dismayed “at mass incarceration” and at “deindustrialization which interrupted the cycle of moving from the working class to the middle class and the middle class to the upper-middle class.”

‘ It was clear that he was making lots of people angry ’

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When King came to Harvard

Beyond ‘I Have a Dream’

Gordon-Reed, 9 years old in 1968, was with her mother at the home of one her friends “when her son came into the room and told us that King had been assassinated.”

Her Texas community’s reaction was one of “great sadness,” said Gordon-Reed, Harvard Law School ’s Charles Warren Professor of American Legal History, a professor of history in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences , and a Pulitzer Prize winner for “The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family.”

“But this was a small town with a small black population,” she said. “More open anger was expressed in urban communities.”

Gordon-Reed said her mother and father “were not surprised” by King’s murder. “It was clear that he was making lots of people angry. The possibility of violence was always present given all that was at stake.”

Her parents’ reaction was likely shared by countless Americans. King had endured repeated physical attacks during his years of nonviolent protests, and death threats against him were common. In his last public address, delivered at Memphis’ Mason Temple the day before his death, King alluded to his own mortality.

“Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. 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. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land.”

Turning to today, Gordon-Reed said King would have been amazed by the Obama presidency, though unsurprised by the backlash against it.

“I would imagine he may also be surprised at how he has been embraced by so many different segments of society, for their own purposes,” she added, and “by the pace of social changes — the women’s movement, the movement for LGBTQ rights. And [that] the issue of race is not just a matter of black and white anymore.”

While much has changed for the better, Gordon-Reed said the economic advances King pressed for at the end of this life “have not come to fruition.”

“All available evidence indicates that communities of color still lag behind in terms of wealth,” she said. “The legacies of slavery, segregation, and the commitment to white supremacy have not yet been overcome. In fact, the issue of inequality is not just about race. The situation of organized labor — the weakening of unions overall — would have surprised him, I think. He thought that unions, along with working-class people of all colors, could cooperate to strike a blow on behalf of all marginalized people. That does not seem to be on the horizon.”

‘Leaders should not seek riches, fame, or even recognition for their efforts’

One of Shelby’s most powerful King moments was the first time he read “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.”

“It has so many important ethical lessons,” said the Caldwell Titcomb Professor of African and African American Studies and of Philosophy. “For instance, King argued that it is wrong to counsel the oppressed not to fight for their rights because this might provoke others to engage in violence or might create social strife. ‘Law and order’ and civil peace are not ends in themselves. They are means for establishing and maintaining just social conditions.”

Which of King’s beliefs would most surprise people today? Reparations are high on Shelby’s list.

In “Why We Can’t Wait” (1964), King wrote that while the cost made it “impossible to fully pay reparations to blacks for all the wrongs of slavery … compensation was due to the descendants of slaves for the unpaid toil of their ancestors.”

And King’s life still contains crucial lessons for those in charge today, said Shelby, co-editor of “To Shape a New World: Essays on the Political Philosophy of Martin Luther King Jr.”

“Leaders should not seek riches, fame, or even recognition for their efforts,” Shelby said. “They should see their vocation as one of service and sacrifice and should lead by example. This kind of leadership requires integrity, resilience, a willingness to speak hard truths in public, and most of all hope — the conviction that, through our determined efforts, we can make our world more peaceful and just.”

‘C ourage, endurance, moral clarity, and love’

With Harvard students on spring break the week of the assassination, King was remembered on Palm Sunday at Memorial Church. The Harvard Crimson’s Monday, April 8, edition ran a picture of the slain icon accompanied by an article headlined “Funeral, Sympathy March Draw Thousands to South.” The following day, President Nathan M. Pusey canceled morning and early afternoon classes to allow students to attend a special service in Memorial Church. The Harvard leader addressed the crowd during the somber ceremony.

“I do not know when the death of a private citizen has quickened such a universal response of grief and deprivation — nationwide and worldwide,” said Pusey. “Our grief is for the man and for the many unaccomplished things for which he worked and died.”

The impact of King’s death rippled through Commencement events. In March 1968, students had broken from tradition and directly invited the Class Day speaker. They selected King, whose speech, set for June 12, was expected to address the Vietnam War .

A year earlier King had registered his opposition to the conflict in a blistering New York speech that connected war, racism, and poverty. Congressman John Lewis of Georgia was in the audience that day. “I heard him speak so many times,” Lewis told The New Yorker in 2017 . “I still think this is probably the best.” (In a fitting turn, Lewis will be the principal speaker at the Afternoon Program of Harvard’s 367th Commencement on May 24. )

Her husband’s death still raw, Coretta Scott King agreed to speak in his place on Class Day. By then the nation was mourning another loss. Six days earlier Civil Rights advocate and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy had been shot to death in Los Angeles.

“These two men addressed themselves to the burning issues of our times: They spoke out against great evils in our society: racism, poverty, and war,” King told seniors at Sanders Theatre. “They were great and effective actors on the stage of history. They played their parts exceedingly well, thus inspiring millions. They are a part of that creative minority which helped to move society forward.

“As young people, as students, your lives have been greatly affected by the loss of these champions of freedom, of justice, of human dignity and peace. In a power-drunk world, where means become ends, and violence becomes a favorite pastime, we are swiftly moving toward self-annihilation. Your generation must speak out with righteous indignation against the forces which are seeking to destroy us.”

Five decades removed from the grieving widow’s show of courage and resolve, Allen, the James Bryant Conant University Professor, will focus her address at Friday’s symposium on urging the same qualities upon a nation still struggling to live up to Martin Luther King Jr.’s highest hopes.

“The Civil Rights movement is far from done; the onward march of freedom still requires courage, endurance, moral clarity, and love,” Allen said. “I think we can best memorialize the men and women who worked with King, and King himself, by finding the courage to insist, over and over again and lovingly, on the ethical demands of full integration.”

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King’s Doctorate Upheld Despite Plagiarisms

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A panel of scholars at Boston University has decided that the doctorate earned there by the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1956 should not be revoked even though his dissertation contains plagiarisms that were revealed last year, shocking admirers of the slain civil rights leader.

Instead, the Boston University committee, in a report released Thursday, recommended that a disciplinary letter noting the scholarly improprieties be attached to the official copy of King’s theology dissertation in the school’s library.

The move seems to end an awkward episode in historical research that inadvertently fed the nation’s appetite for knocking heroes.

The controversy began last November when Stanford University history Prof. Clayborne Carson, who was appointed by King’s widow to edit his papers, disclosed the plagiarism. The Boston University report strongly supports Carson, whose findings triggered recriminations against him from within the civil rights movement and glee from some King opponents.

“There is no question but that Dr. King plagiarized in the dissertation,” the Boston University report declared, also stressing that the dissertation had enough original material to uphold the degree from the graduate school’s Division of Religious Studies. The four-man panel said that revoking the degree of a dead man, with no opportunity for him to defend himself, “would have no basis in accepted academic or scholarly practice.”

Prof. John H. Cartwright, who holds the Martin Luther King Jr. chair in social ethics at Boston University and was on the review panel, said the group was aware that its inquiry was politically sensitive. But he maintained that it resisted outside pressures and would have made the same decision if someone other than King had been the subject.

The committee declared that King’s failure “to cite sources accurately and fully in many parts of the dissertation . . . does not detract from his enormous contributions as a leader in the civil rights movement and as a symbol of accomplishment and vision for all people.”

King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 for leading the integration movement. His admirers said the plagiarism should not detract from King’s place in history any more than reports of his alleged marital infidelity.

Speaking from Stanford, Carson said the Boston decision “is what anyone familiar with the evidence and familiar with normal academic procedures would have expected.” Asked if he felt vindicated, Carson said: “I don’t know if it’s a matter of vindication. We weren’t interpreting evidence, we were simply reporting evidence.”

Carson said he and his researchers have felt pressure from “people who just assumed my motive might have been to harm the reputation of King, which was certainly not the case. And we heard from the other side, people who have an ax to grind against King and (the King birthday) holiday and who, if anything, said we were not doing enough.” He stressed that Coretta Scott King, King’s widow, never asked him to suppress the material.

According to Carson, King’s dissertation, entitled “A Comparison of the Conceptions of God in the Thinking of Paul Tillich and Henry Nelson Wieman,” presented some of Tillich’s ideas in some passages nearly identical to Tillich’s writings and did not attribute them in footnotes.

Worse, in the view of most academic standards, was King’s appropriation of works by other writers about Tillich, including a 1952 doctoral dissertation by another Boston University student. In the general bibliography of his thesis, King referred to the other student’s dissertation but did not cite particular passages.

The Boston University panel was established right after Carson’s revelation last November. The report has been accepted by the university’s provost and is expected to be approved soon by the school’s president, a spokesman said. Among other sources, members talked to Carson and Prof. S. Paul Schilling, the only survivor of the two faculty members who reviewed King’s work in 1956. In a letter last year to Carson, Schilling denied that King was given any special treatment as a Southern black. Schilling said his own inexperience at the time may have allowed “shoddy scholarship” to go undetected and that King may have made mistakes because he was extremely busy as the pastor of a Baptist church while writing the thesis.

The committee suggested: “Perhaps a better explanation is that no one had reason to be suspicious, especially in light of Dr. King’s obvious talents.” While King did not properly attribute some material and breached “academic norms,” the heart of his dissertation still “makes an intelligent contribution to scholarship,” the panel said.

The committee cited a computer study in which Carson and his researchers determined that improper borrowings in the dissertation ranged from almost none in one chapter to more than half of the sentences in another.

King donated many of his writings to Boston University six years before his 1968 assassination. In a case that began before the plagiarism controversy and remains unresolved, his widow has sued to recover them. The first volume of the edited papers is expected to be published by the University of California Press early in 1992, a project of the Martin Luther King Center for Nonviolent Social Change in conjunction with Emory University and Stanford. The second volume, which points out the plagiarism, is to follow later in the year.

Steve Klein, spokesman for King Center in Atlanta, said that neither he nor King’s widow had seen the Boston University report. But he said that a summary announcement from the university “seems fairly positive.”

“Dr. King got the Nobel Prize for Peace for his courageous leadership in the civil rights movement. It seems pretty obvious that his place in history will neither rise nor fall on the quality of a couple of footnotes,” Klein said.

In addition to Cartwright, the other committee members were Robert C. Neville, dean of Boston University’s School of Theology; Ray L. Hart, chairman of the the religion department at Boston University, and Charley D. Hardwick, religious studies professor at American University in Washington.

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Larry Gordon was a higher education writer for the Los Angeles Times and covered issues affecting colleges and universities in California and around the nation. He has been an assistant city editor and an urban affairs writer at The Times. He previously worked at the Bergen Record and Hudson Dispatch in his native New Jersey. He won a mid-career Fulbright grant to teach journalism in Bulgaria. Gordon has a bachelor’s from Georgetown University and a master’s in journalism from Columbia University. He left The Times in 2015.

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• HISTORY & CULTURE

Who was Martin Luther King, Jr.?

A civil rights legend, Dr. King fought for justice through peaceful protest—and delivered some of the 20th century's most iconic speeches.

The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., is a civil rights legend. In the mid-1950s, King led the movement to end segregation and counter prejudice in the United States through the means of peaceful protest. His speeches—some of the most iconic of the 20th century—had a profound effect on the national consciousness. Through his leadership, the civil rights movement opened doors to education and employment that had long been closed to Black America.

In 1983, President Ronald Reagan signed a bill creating a federal holiday to honor King for his commitment to equal rights and justice for all. Observed for the first time on January 20, 1986, it’s called Martin Luther King Jr. Day. In January 2000, Martin Luther King Jr. Day was officially observed in all 50 U.S. states . Here’s what you need to know about King’s extraordinary life.

Though King's name is known worldwide, many may not realize that he was born Michael King, Jr. in Atlanta, Georgia on January 15, 1929. His father , Michael King, was a pastor at the   Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. During a trip to Germany, King, Sr. was so impressed by the history of Protestant Reformation leader Martin Luther that he changed not only his own name, but also five-year-old Michael’s.

( Read about Martin Luther King, Jr. with your kids .)

His brilliance was noted early, as he was accepted into Morehouse College , a historically Black school in Atlanta, at age 15. By the summer before his last year of college, King knew he was destined to continue the family profession of pastoral work and decided to enter the ministry. He received his Bachelor’s degree from Morehouse at age 19, and then enrolled in Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania, graduating with a Bachelor of Divinity degree in 1951. He earned a doctorate in systematic theology from Boston University in 1955.

King married Coretta Scott on June 18, 1953, on the lawn of her parents' house in her hometown of Heiberger, Alabama. They became the parents of four children : Yolanda King (1955–2007), Martin Luther King III (b. 1957), Dexter Scott King (b. 1961), and Bernice King (b. 1963).

Becoming a civil rights leader

In 1954, when he was 25 years old, Dr. King became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. In March 1955, Claudette Colvin—a 15-year-old Black schoolgirl in Montgomery—refused to give up her bus seat to a white man, which was a violation of Jim Crow laws, local laws in the southern United States that enforced racial segregation.  

( Jim Crow laws created 'slavery by another name. ')

King was on the committee from the Birmingham African-American community that looked into the case. The local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) briefly considered using Colvin's case to challenge the segregation laws, but decided that because she was so young—and had become pregnant—her case would attract too much negative attention.

Nine months later on December 1, 1955, a similar incident occurred when a seamstress named Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a city bus. The two incidents led to the Montgomery bus boycott , which was urged and planned by the President of the Alabama Chapter of the NAACP, E.D. Nixon, and led by King. The boycott lasted for 385 days.

King’s prominent and outspoken role in the boycott led to numerous threats against his life, and his house was firebombed. He was arrested during the campaign, which concluded with a United States District Court ruling in Browder v. Gayle   ( in which Colvin was a plaintiff ) that ended racial segregation on all Montgomery public buses. King's role in the bus boycott transformed him into a national figure and the best-known spokesman of the civil rights movement.

Fighting for change through nonviolent protest

From the early days of the Montgomery boycott, King had often referred to India’s Mahatma Gandhi as “the guiding light of our technique of nonviolent social change.”

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In 1957, King, Ralph Abernathy, Fred Shuttlesworth, Joseph Lowery, and other civil rights activists founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to harness the organizing power of Black churches to conduct nonviolent protests to ultimately achieve civil rights reform. The group was part of what was called “The Big Five” of civil rights organizations, which included the NAACP, the National Urban League, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and the Congress on Racial Equality.

Through his connections with the Big Five civil rights groups, overwhelming support from Black America and with the support of prominent individual well-wishers, King’s skill and effectiveness grew exponentially. He organized and led marches for Blacks' right to vote, desegregation, labor rights, and other basic civil rights.

( How the U.S. Voting Rights Act was won—and why it's under fire today .)

On August 28, 1963, The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom became the pinnacle of King’s national and international influence. Before a crowd of 250,000 people, he delivered the legendary “I Have A Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. That speech, along with many others that King delivered, has had a lasting influence on world rhetoric .

In 1964, King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his civil rights and social justice activism. Most of the rights King organized protests around were successfully enacted into law with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the 1965 Voting Rights Act .

Economic justice and the Vietnam War

King’s opposition to the Vietnam War became a prominent part of his public persona. On April 4, 1967—exactly one year before his death—he gave a speech called “Beyond Vietnam” in New York City, in which he proposed a stop to the bombing of Vietnam. King also suggested that the United States declare a truce with the aim of achieving peace talks, and that the U.S. set a date for withdrawal.

( King's advocacy for human rights around the world still inspires today .)

Ultimately, King was driven to focus on social and economic justice in the United States. He had traveled to Memphis, Tennessee in early April 1968 to help organize a sanitation workers’ strike, and on the night of April 3, he delivered the legendary “I've Been to the Mountaintop" speech , in which he compared the strike to the long struggle for human freedom and the battle for economic justice, using the New Testament's Parable of the Good Samaritan to stress the need for people to get involved.

Assassination

But King would not live to realize that vision. The next day, April 4, 1968, King was gunned down on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis by James Earl Ray , a small-time criminal who had escaped the year before from a maximum-security prison. Ray was charged and convicted of the murder and sentenced to 99 years in prison on March 10, 1969. But Ray changed his mind after three days in jail, claiming he was not guilty and had been framed. He spent the rest of his life fighting unsuccessfully for a trial, despite the ultimate support of some members of the King family and the Reverend Jesse Jackson.

The turmoil that flowed from King’s assassination led many Black Americans to wonder if that dream he had spoken of so eloquently had died with him. But, today, young people around the world still learn about King's life and legacy—and his vision of equality and justice for all continue to resonate.

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Plagiarism Seen by Scholars In King's Ph.D. Dissertation

By Anthony de Palma

• Nov. 10, 1990

Torn between loyalty to his subject and to his discipline, the editor of the papers of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. reluctantly acknowledged yesterday that substantial parts of Dr. King's doctoral dissertation and other academic papers from his student years appeared to have been plagiarized.

The historian, Clayborne Carson, a professor of history at Stanford University who was chosen in 1985 by Dr. King's widow, Coretta Scott King, to head the King Papers Project, said that analysis of the papers by researchers working on the project had uncovered concepts, sentences and longer passages taken from other sources without attribution throughout Dr. King's writings as a theology student.

"We found that there was a pattern of appropriation, of textual appropriation," said the 46-year-old historian, who was active in the civil rights movement and has written extensively on black history. He spoke at a news conference at Stanford, called after an article in The Wall Street Journal yesterday disclosed details of the project's findings. "By the strictest definition of plagiarism -- that is, any appropriation of words or ideas -- there are instances of plagiarism in these papers." A Lack of Answers

Although he said that he believed Dr. King had acted unintentionally, Mr. Carson said that Dr. King had been sufficiently well acquainted with academic principles and procedures to have understood the need for extensive footnotes, and he was at a loss to explain why Dr. King had not used them.

Mr. Carson and other scholars who have seen the papers declined to say how great a percentage of the material had been plagiarized, but they said it was enough to indicate a serious violation of academic principles.

Officials at Boston University, which awarded Dr. King his doctorate in 1955, announced yesterday that a committee of four scholars had been formed to investigate the dissertation. But it is not likely, even if plagiarism is proved, that the Ph.D. degree in theology would be revoked, because neither Dr. King nor his dissertation adviser is alive to defend the work.

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The Ways Boston Helped Shape the Life of Martin Luther King, Jr. (GRS’55, Hon.’59)

The civil rights leader lived, studied, met his wife here, returned to give powerful speeches

A plaque on the outside of 397 Massachusetts Avenue in Boston, where Martin Luther King, Jr. (GRS’55, Hon.’59) lived in 1952 and 1953. Photo by Jackie Ricciardi

It might seem curious at first that Martin Luther King, Jr. (GRS’55, Hon.’59) is getting a memorial on Boston Common . He wasn’t born in Boston. He didn’t die here. He didn’t give a famous speech here. But Boston, in fact, may have influenced the life of the civil rights icon both personally and professionally as much as any city in America.

He lived here for three years, worked here, studied at, and graduated from, Boston University, and it was here he met and dated the woman he would go on to marry. It was also in Boston where he revisited his most famous speech, “I Have a Dream.” So yes, it makes sense why the Common will soon be home to a prominent memorial to MLK.

Where did he live?

During his time in Boston, King had several known addresses. One was 395-397 Massachusetts Avenue, a three-story brownstone in the South End where a plaque is attached to the red brick: “This home, built in 1884, was home to Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1952-53 while he was enrolled in the Graduate School of Boston University.” He also called 396 Northampton Street in the South End, just behind the Mass Ave MBTA station, home. He listed that apartment in a letter in 1954, which means that presumably it was the first place he lived with Coretta Scott after their 1953 marriage. He also spent a short time at 170 Saint Botolph Street, another South End brownstone.

When he needed a break from his graduate studies, King often wandered over to the William E. Carter Playground in the South End to play pickup basketball.

Where did he study?

After studying at Crozer Theological Seminary in Upland, Pa., King arrived in Boston in 1951 to study at BU, with a special interest in philosophy and ethics. It was the PhD in systematic theology he earned at BU that gave him the right to be called Dr. King for the remainder of his life. According to his transcript at BU, he also took courses at Harvard, including the Philosophy of Plato.

BU’s School of Theology says this about his studies: “During these years, Howard Thurman was named dean of the University’s Marsh Chapel. King not only attended sermons there but also turned to Thurman as his mentor and spiritual advisor. Among the lessons that inspired him most were Thurman’s accounts of a visit to Mohandas Gandhi in India years earlier. It was Thurman who educated King in the mahatma’s ideas of nonviolent protest. As the bridge between Gandhi and King, BU’s progressive dean helped sow the seeds of change in the US and beyond.” Thurman (Hon.’67) was Marsh Chapel dean from 1953 to 1965, the first black dean at a mostly white American university.

Approximately six months after graduating from BU, King led the bus boycott in Montgomery, Ala., where he first began to attract national recognition. He returned to Boston in 1964—the same year he received the Nobel Peace Prize—to donate his personal papers to BU;  the collection is among the most prominent held by the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center.

One final note on his BU years: King did not attend his BU graduation in 1955. He wrote the University that his wife was pregnant and financial hardships made it impossible for him to return for Commencement, so BU mailed his diploma. He did come to Boston to receive an honorary degree from BU in 1959.

Where did he meet his future wife?

Biographers have made no secret of King being something of a ladies’ man when he arrived in Boston. But it was a friend’s suggestion that he meet a young woman studying opera at the nearby New England Conservatory of Music, who was also earning money doing housework, that changed his life.

In his autobiography, he described how he met Coretta Scott:

“We met over the telephone: ‘This is M. L. King, Jr. A mutual friend of ours told me about you and gave me your telephone number. She said some very wonderful things about you, and I’d like very much to meet you and talk to you.’

“We talked awhile. ‘You know every Napoleon has his Waterloo. I’m like Napoleon. I’m at my Waterloo, and I’m on my knees. I’d like to meet you and talk some more. Perhaps we could have lunch tomorrow or something like that.’

“She agreed to see me. ‘I’ll come over and pick you up. I have a green Chevy that usually takes ten minutes to make the trip from B.U., but tomorrow I’ll do it in seven.’

“She talked about things other than music. I never will forget, the first discussion we had was about the question of racial and economic injustice and the question of peace.”

Their first date was at a chain restaurant called Sharaf’s on Mass Avenue.

Did he return to Boston on other occasions?

King would leave the city in 1954, as he wound down work on his PhD, but returned to deliver a forceful speech at the Massachusetts State House just months after he won the Nobel Peace Prize.

On April 22, 1965, he appeared before a joint legislative session at the Massachusetts State House. He closed his remarks by quoting his “I Have a Dream” speech, which he had famously made in Washington, D.C., on August 28, 1963.

The day after his Boston speech, King led a freedom march of more than 20,000 people from the South End to Boston Common, where the planned memorial will be constructed. “Now is the time,” he told the crowd, “to make real the promise of democracy. Now is the time to make brotherhood a reality. Now is the time.”

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Doug Most is a lifelong journalist and author whose career has spanned newspapers and magazines up and down the East Coast, with stops in Washington, D.C., South Carolina, New Jersey, and Boston. He was named Journalist of the Year while at The Record in Bergen County, N.J., for his coverage of a tragic story about two teens charged with killing their newborn. After a stint at Boston Magazine , he worked for more than a decade at the Boston Globe in various roles, including magazine editor and deputy managing editor/special projects. His 2014 nonfiction book, The Race Underground , tells the story of the birth of subways in America and was made into a PBS/American Experience documentary. He has a BA in political communication from George Washington University. Profile

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Boston University moderates comments to facilitate an informed, substantive, civil conversation. Abusive, profane, self-promotional, misleading, incoherent or off-topic comments will be rejected. Moderators are staffed during regular business hours (EST) and can only accept comments written in English. Statistics or facts must include a citation or a link to the citation.

There are 9 comments on The Ways Boston Helped Shape the Life of Martin Luther King, Jr. (GRS’55, Hon.’59)

Thank you Doug Most, for this insightful article. I loved reading about Dr King’s Boston history, especially having had spent my years in Boston during undergrad, and now post-grad at BU. What a beautiful contribution to his biography! I’m sure many have enjoyed your chronicles of his life and important markers of which we may not have been aware. I am a Howard Thurman fan, so it was also nice to have that confirmation in your story of his relationship with Dr. King. Bless you!

Thanks for the lovely article. MLK, Jr was such an inspiring leader and it is always good to learn more about him and his experience.

My dad walked across the same stage in 1955 when he got his degree in law and MLK got his theological decree.

Interesting and informative article. Just wondering, though, if the chain restaurant you referred to where they had their first date was Schrafft’s not Sharaf’s? It was very popular at that time. Thank you for the article.

I did not do the proper research in writing my previous comment so please disregard it. You are right Mr. Most – it was in fact Sharaf’s Cafeteria!

I attended Boston University in the ’60s. In 1965, I attended an outdoor Civil Rights gathering on Boston Common where King spoke. At the time, however, King’s attendance at BU was not given any special recognition.

Does anyone know if this really true?

https://www.nytimes.com/1991/10/11/us/boston-u-panel-finds-plagiarism-by-dr-king.html

Yes, it is true, sadly. See the extensive article in Wikipedia titled, “Martin Luther King Jr. authorship issues.” A university panel met, reviewed the accusations, and found him guilty of extensive plagiarism in his doctoral dissertation. Probably for purely political reasons, they decided not to repeal his doctorate, which they would have done for anyone else.

I met Dr. Martin Luther King twice, as a little kid and, then, as a teen, at a Dorchester-Roxbury neighborhood restaurant in the city of Boston. Years later, I learned, during those meetings, that Dr. King was living in Boston and at Boston University’s School of Theology.

My father, now deceased, told me after the first meeting that I’d “just met met one of America’s greatest,” and Dr. King asked me my name and where I lived. “Rick, Coretta and I are your neighbors,” he said, which prompted my father to leave the table, thinking I was bothering Dr. King and his wife while they were having dinner.

“I just wish everyone in Boston was as nice and friendly as Rick is,” Dr. King said. My father always told me that was “one of the proudest moments” of his life.

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The Martin Luther King, Jr. Scholars Program at NYU

“In your life’s blueprint... However young you are…You have a responsibility to seek to make life better for everybody. And so you must be involved in the struggle of freedom and justice.”- The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1967)

NYU’s MLK Scholars are members of a highly selective university leadership program dedicated to the legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The program engages, educates, and empowers scholars on social justice and advocacy, for building Dr. King's vision of a "beloved community." Centered around an immersive, cohort-based learning community, this program offers a rich and unique combination of faculty engagement, travel colloquia, undergraduate research, and service-learning. As a distinctive community of students and alumni, the MLK Scholars Program has developed some of NYU's best and brightest thought leaders for over 30 years.

The First Year

MLK Scholars are selected for the program at the time of admission and join a cohort of approximately 60 fellow student social and academic leaders. The first year experience includes:

• Program Seminar - All incoming MLK Scholars are enrolled in a fall seminar (SAHS-UE2). This Seminar introduces first-year Martin Luther King, Jr. Scholars to the study of social justice in the United States through the historical lens of the Civil Rights Movement and the contemporary exploration of human rights.
• Researching Social Justice -  Scholars will be introduced to research opportunities and resources, including the Program Faculty Associates. During the seminar, each student will identify a research topic in social justice of interest, furthering its development through travel colloquia.
• Travel Colloquia -  Unique domestic or international travel programs tied to the curriculum and learning in the first-year seminar course and fully funded by the MLK Scholars Program. International travel, in particular, is designed to work in tandem with New York University's commitment to global learning and cooperation. Over the years, travel colloquia to domestic locations have included Alabama, Atlanta, Georgia, the Gullah Islands, New Orleans, Louisiana, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and Washington D.C. International locations have included Australia, Brazil, Ghana, Greece, Israel, Morocco, Paris, Peru, Senegal, and Spain and Vietnam.

Sophomore - Senior Years

As MLK Scholars progress through their collegiate journey, they will continue to engage as a cohort, deepening their commitment to our values through regularly scheduled cohort meetings, continued civic engagement across local communities, and leadership development opportunities within and outside of the MLK Scholars program.

                    OUR VALUES

Academic excellence, civic engagement, leadership development, our evolution.

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This should be headline news.

Dr. Martin Luther King’s Impact on the Field of Science

Branch Director, Special Emphasis Programs

Photo Credit: STEPHEN F. SOMERSTEIN/GETTY

When we think about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the first thing that probably comes to mind for most of us is his "I Have a Dream" speech or the thought of giving and service. We all know that Dr. King was an instrumental leader in the Civil Rights movement, but what isn't commonly known is that he also affected change in the scientific field.

In his series of sermons titled Strength to Love , Dr. King stated that "science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge, which is power; religion gives man wisdom, which is control. Science deals mainly with facts; religion deals mainly with values. The two are not rivals. They are complementary." Dr. King's thoughts about the balance between science and morality are the foundation of the ethical practices we invoke in the science fields today. Ethical principles in the science field, primarily in research, stresses the need to do good (known as beneficence) and do no harm (known as non-malfeasance).

More specifically, Dr. King was a strong advocate of the interconnectedness of life [1] . He said in his Christmas Sermon on Peace that "All life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. We are made to live together because of the interrelated structure of reality." Dr. King used the ideology of interconnectedness as the foundation for his activism. He highlighted how pollution and climate change are linked to racial injustices and poverty. Some describe Dr. King as an environmental justice activist and a socialist. Dr. King protested against poor housing conditions for Black people in Chicago and Black sanitation workers in Memphis, against hazardous and unsanitary work conditions [2] . Dr. King's actions influenced not only the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, but the Clean Air Act in 1963, the Clean Water Act of 1972, and the Endangered Species Act of 1973. His actions also line up with how several organizations, like the National Center for Environmental Health/Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (NCEH/ATSDR), work to make environmental health more equitable and decrease health disparities3.

As we remember Dr. King, we should understand that morality and science must coexist to create an inclusive environment for everyone. As public servants, we can find that balance of morality and science by recognizing that we are more than our occupation when we show up to work. We should acknowledge how our experiences in our personal lives outside of work, especially given the year that we have experienced as a country, affects the way we all show up to work. It requires that we're open-minded and empathetic.

1 Overcoming Our Interrelated Challenges – Together - United States Department of State 2 Department of Justice

Do you have a story idea for us? Do you want to submit a guest blog? If it's about equity, diversity, or inclusion, please submit to [email protected] .

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King earns doctorate from Boston University

May 31, 1955

The faculty of Boston University votes to confer the doctorate on King.

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10 Things You May Not Know About Martin Luther King Jr.

By: Christopher Klein

Updated: January 25, 2024 | Original: April 4, 2013

Baptist minister and social activist Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968) dedicated his life to the nonviolent struggle for justice in the United States. King's leadership played a pivotal role in ending entrenched segregation for Black Americans and to the creation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 . Read on to discover more facts about the life and legacy of the civil rights icon. 

1. King's Birth Name Was Michael, Not Martin

King was born Michael King Jr. on January 15, 1929. In 1934, however, his father, a pastor at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, traveled to Germany and became inspired by the Protestant Reformation leader Martin Luther . As a result, King Sr. changed his own name as well as that of his five-year-old son.

2. King Entered College At the Age of 15

King was such a gifted student that he skipped grades nine and 12 before enrolling in 1944 at Morehouse College, the alma mater of his father and maternal grandfather. Although he was the son, grandson and great-grandson of Baptist ministers, King did not intend to follow the family vocation until Morehouse president Benjamin E. Mays, a noted theologian, convinced him otherwise. King was ordained before graduating college with a degree in sociology.

3. King Received His Doctorate in Systematic Theology

After earning a divinity degree from Pennsylvania’s Crozer Theological Seminary, King attended graduate school at Boston University, where he received his Ph.D. degree in 1955. The title of his dissertation was “A Comparison of the Conceptions of God in the Thinking of Paul Tillich and Henry Nelson Wieman.”

4. King’s 'I Have a Dream' Speech Was Not His First at the Lincoln Memorial

Six years before his iconic oration at the March on Washington , King was among the civil rights leaders who spoke in the shadow of the Great Emancipator during the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom on May 17, 1957. Before a crowd estimated at between 15,000 and 30,000, King delivered his first national address on the topic of voting rights. His speech, in which he urged America to “give us the ballot,” drew strong reviews and positioned him at the forefront of the civil rights leadership.

5. King Was Imprisoned Nearly 30 Times

According to the King Center, the civil rights leader went to jail 29 times. He was arrested for acts of civil disobedience and on trumped-up charges, such as when he was jailed in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1956 for driving 30 miles per hour in a 25-mile-per-hour zone.

6. King Narrowly Escaped an Assassination Attempt a Decade Before His Death

On September 20, 1958, King was in Harlem signing copies of his new book, Stride Toward Freedom , in Blumstein’s department store when he was approached by Izola Ware Curry. The woman asked if he was Martin Luther King Jr. After he said yes, Curry said, “I’ve been looking for you for five years,” and she plunged a seven-inch letter opener into his chest . The tip of the blade came to rest alongside his aorta, and King underwent hours of delicate emergency surgery. Surgeons later told King that just one sneeze could have punctured the aorta and killed him. From his hospital bed where he convalesced for weeks, King issued a statement affirming his nonviolent principles and saying he felt no ill will toward his mentally ill attacker.

7. King's Last Public Speech Foretold His Death

King had come to Memphis in April 1968 to support the strike of the city’s Black garbage workers, and in a speech on the night before his assassination, he told an audience at Mason Temple Church: “Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now … I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land. And I’m happy tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”

8. Members of King's Family Did Not Believe James Earl Ray Acted Alone

Ray, a career criminal, pled guilty to King’s assassination but later recanted. King’s son Dexter met publicly with Ray in 1997 and argued for the case to be reopened. King’s widow, Coretta, believed the Mafia and local, state and federal government agencies were deeply involved in the murder. She praised the result of a 1999 civil trial in which a Memphis jury decided the assassination was the result of a conspiracy and that Ray was set up to take the blame. A U.S. Department of Justice investigation released in 2000 reported no evidence of a conspiracy.

9. King's Mother Was Also Slain by a Bullet

On June 30, 1974, as 69-year-old Alberta Williams King played the organ at a Sunday service inside Ebenezer Baptist Church, Marcus Wayne Chenault Jr. rose from the front pew, drew two pistols and began to fire shots. One of the bullets struck and killed King, who died steps from where her son had preached nonviolence. The deranged gunman said that Christians were his enemy and that although he had received divine instructions to kill King’s father, who was in the congregation, he killed King’s mother instead because she was closer. The shooting also left a church deacon dead. Chenault received a death penalty sentence that was later changed to life imprisonment, in part due to the King family’s opposition to capital punishment.

10. George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Cesar Chavez are the Only Other Americans to Have Had Their Birthdays Observed as a National Holiday

In 1983 President Ronald Reagan signed a bill that created a federal holiday to honor King. The holiday, first commemorated in 1986, is celebrated on the third Monday in January, close to the civil rights leader’s January 15 birthday.

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At the Jerusalem synagogue where Hersh Goldberg-Polin danced in life, grief and anger reign after his death

JERUSALEM — Three hundred and thirty-two days after Hersh Goldberg-Polin danced in the courtyard next to his Jerusalem synagogue on the holiday of Simchat Torah, more than a thousand people gathered there in grief and prayer to mourn his murder by Hamas terrorists in Gaza.

During the Sunday night vigil, the courtyard railings were lined with oversized yellow ribbons to symbolize advocacy for the hostages, Hapoel Jerusalem soccer flags — the 23-year-old’s favorite team — and posters that read, “We love you, stay strong, survive,” a mantra coined by his mother, Rachel Goldberg-Polin.

Just hours earlier, one of the posters had been hanging over the balcony of the home of Shira Ben-Sasson, a leader of Hakhel, the Goldberg-Polins’ egalitarian congregation in the Baka neighborhood of Jerusalem.

“We were sure we would take it down when he came home,” Ben-Sasson said.

The community wanted to unite while respecting the Goldberg-Polins’ desire for privacy, she said, prompting them to organize the prayer gathering.

“But it’s like a Band-Aid or giving first aid, it’s what you do in an emergency. I don’t know how we go on after this,” she said.

A covered courtyard at the Hakhel congregation was filled with mourners the day after Hersh Goldberg-Polin, whose family are prominent members, was found to have been killed in Gaza. Hundreds of other people crowded outside the gates, Sept. 1, 2024. (Deborah Danan)

She added that the community, which has a large contingent of English-speaking immigrants, was not prepared for the High Holidays, which begin in about a month. She said, “Seeing his empty seat is hard.”

For Ben-Sasson, who wore a T-shirt bearing the Talmudic dictum “There is no greater mitzvah than the redeeming of captives,” the tragedy is especially painful because, she said, it could have been avoided with a ceasefire agreement that freed hostages.

“Hersh was alive 48 hours ago. We think a deal could have saved him. There is no military solution to this,” she said.

That feeling of bereavement, often mixed with betrayal, pervaded gatherings across Israel on Sunday, as the country struggled with the news that six hostages who may have been freed in an agreement were now dead as negotiations continue to stall. Speakers at protests in Tel Aviv blamed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who himself apologized for not getting the hostages out alive but blamed Hamas for obstructing a deal. The country’s labor union, the Histadrut, has called a national strike on Monday to demand a deal.

A rare early September rain lashed parts of Israel on Sunday, leading to a widespread interpretation: God, too, was weeping.

Some at the Jerusalem gathering, including the relative of another former hostage, said Netanyahu had chosen defeating Hamas over freeing the captives.

Josef Avi Yair Engel’s grandson Ofir was released from Hamas captivity in November. He paid tribute to Hersh Goldberg-Polin, murdered in captivity, in Jerusalem, Sept. 1, 2024. (Deborah Danan)

Josef Avi Yair Engel, whose grandson Ofir, 18, was released from Hamas captivity in November during that month’s ceasefire deal, expressed shock over Hersh’s murder but said he was not surprised, given the wartime policies of Netanyahu’s government.

“We knew months ago this was going to happen. Bibi’s formula, to dismantle Hamas and return the hostages, wasn’t logical. It’s an either/or situation,” Engel said, referring to Netanyahu by his nickname. “He’s tearing the country apart. I’m afraid that in the coming months there won’t be a state at all.”

Engel said he felt a close bond with Hersh’s father Jon Polin, not only because of their joint activism in the hostage families’ tent outside the Prime Minister’s Residence, but also because of their shared identity as Jerusalemites.

“There aren’t many of us in the hostage circle,” he said. “We’re like family.”

Sarah Mann, who did not know the family personally, said the weekend’s tragedy reminded her of Oct. 7.

“This day has sparks of the seventh, which created numbness and an inability to talk. Just complete shock,” she said.

Mourners left notes at a gathering at Hersh Goldberg-Polin’s family synagogue in Jerusalem. Many of the messages used the Hebrew word for “sorry.” (Deborah Danan)

Part of the reason for that, Mann said, was Rachel, who she described as a “force of faith.” Goldberg-Polin’s mother emerged as the most prominent advocate for the hostages globally and became a symbol in her own right as she crisscrossed the world calling for her son’s freedom.

“Millions of people around the world held onto her. Once that was cut, people’s ability to hold onto faith was knocked out today. But even though this has shattered us, we need to keep holding onto God,” Mann said.

For Susi Döring Preston, the day called to mind was not Oct. 7 but Yom Kippur, and its communal solemnity.

She said she usually steers clear of similar war-related events because they are too overwhelming for her.

“Before I avoided stuff like this because I guess I still had hope. But now is the time to just give in to needing to be around people because you can’t hold your own self up any more,” she said, tears rolling down her face. “You need to feel the humanity and hang onto that.”

Like so many others, Döring Preston paid tribute to the Goldberg-Polins’ tireless activism. “They needed everyone else’s strength but we drew so much strength from them and their efforts, “she said. “You felt it could change the outcome. But war is more evil than good. I think that’s the crushing thing. You can do everything right, but the outcome is still devastating.”

Guy Gordon, with his daughter Maya, added a broken heart to the piece of tape he has worn daily to mark the number of days since the hostage crisis began, Sept. 1, 2024. (Deborah Danan)

Guy Gordon, a member of Hakhel who moved to Israel from Dublin, Ireland, in the mid-1990s, said the efforts towards ensuring Hersh’s safe return have been an anchor for the community during the war. The community knew him as the family described him in its announcement of his funeral on Tuesday, as “a child of light, love and peace” who enjoyed exploring the world and coming home to his family, including his parents and younger sisters, Leebie and Orly.

“It gave us something to hope for, and pray for and to demonstrate for,” he said. “We had no choice but to be unreasonably optimistic. Tragically it transpired that he survived until the very end.”

Gordon, like many others in the crowd, wore a piece of duct tape marked with the number of days since Oct. 7 — a gesture initiated by Goldberg-Polin’s mother. Unlike on previous days, though, his tape also featured a broken red heart beside the number.

Nadia Levene, a family friend, also reflected on the improbability of Hersh’s survival.

“He did exactly what his parents begged him to do. He was strong. He did survive. And look what happened,” Levene said.

She hailed Rachel Goldberg-Polin’s “unwavering strength and belief in God,” adding, “There were times I lost faith. I suppose I was angry with God. But she just kept inspiring us all to pray, pray, pray.”

Leah Silver of Jerusalem examined stickers showing Rachel Goldberg-Polin’s mantra for her son Hersh, who was murdered in captivity in Gaza, at a gathering after Hersh’s death, Sept. 1, 2024. (Deborah Danan)

Jerusalem resident Leah Silver rejected politicizing the hostages’ deaths.

“Everything turns political so quickly. I came here because I felt that before all the protests, we need to just mourn for a moment and to pray. And show respect for each other,” she said. “We’ve become confused about who the enemy is. It’s very sad.”

But not everyone at the gathering joined in to sing Israel’s national anthem at the closing of the prayer gathering.

“I’m sorry, I can’t sing ‘Hatikvah,'” Reza Green, a Baka resident who did not know the Goldberg-Polins personally, said. “I’m too angry. We shouldn’t be here.”

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