Leaders - Martin L. King

Martin Luther King is well known for his role in the African-American civil rights movement.

I admire Martin Luther King because he used non-violent resistance that helped abolish racial segregation in the USA. He could maintain a non-violent stance even though his opponents threatened him and tried to blackmail him. He did not use force even though he was provoked and segregation activists used violence against him (bombing his house et cetera). And even segregation activists respected him for this.

However, he had his weaknesses. Lyndon Johnson claimed that King was a “hypocritical preacher”. Ralph Abernathy, an associate of King, stated in And the Walls Came Tumbling Down (1989) autobiography that King had a “weakness for women” and that King was a womaniser. Biographer David Garrow said that King had numerous extramarital affairs, one with a woman he saw daily that “increasingly became the emotional centrepiece of King’s life”. King himself claimed that these affairs were “a form of anxiety reduction”. Apparently, these affairs were accompanied by depressions.
I find King interesting not because he managed to carry out great things but because he dared to try even though he faced a lot of opposition from segregation activists and from some of the white population of America. This just goes to show that we can accomplish anything as long as we have ourselves. We don’t really need anybody else (to a certain extent, of course). Another interesting thing is that even though many threatened him and used violence against him, he never attacked back. He just took whatever opponents gave him and used it to fuel his vision.

Hooray for King!