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Martin Luther King Jr – Civil Rights Leader and Peace Advocate
Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his life for the poor of the world, the garbage workers of Memphis and the peasants of Vietnam. The day that Negro people and others in bondage are truly free, on the day want is abolished, on the day wars are no more, on that day I know my husband will rest in a long-deserved peace. —Coretta King This article is part of a series on human rights forebears. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. lived a life beyond the ordinary and writing about him is challenging. His life made the world that came after him better. This article will not do justice to…
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The Peace Advocacy of Martin Luther King (Part 4 of 4)
To appreciate Martin Luther King’s thoughts on peace, we must understand his thoughts about the relationship between human beings. He saw all human beings as caught “in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.” He expands on this thought in his 1964 speech, “The American Dream”. All I’m saying is simply this, that all life is interrelated. And we are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny — whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. For some strange reason I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you…
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Martin Luther King and Non-violence (Part 3 of 4)
Martin Luther King thought deeply about the best methods to use to overcome the injustices facing African Americans. This in itself is an important observation. It is appropriate for us in the 21st century to also think deeply about questions of method. His speeches frequently describe and defend nonviolence as the method he felt was both effective and moral for the issues on which he worked. Sometimes the description was in response to criticism of the method as “too extreme”, at other times it was to reject the violence advocated by some. His explanations were patient and detailed. The basic steps of the method are outlined to his fellow ministers…
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Martin Luther King Jr. – What role did Christianity play in his civil rights advocacy? (Part 2 of 4)
Martin Luther King Jr. was born in Atlanta Georgia, the second son of Martin Luther King Sr. and Alberta Williams King. Martin Luther King Jr. was by vocation a Baptist minister. He was in the fourth generation of his family to take up this vocation. It is impossible to fully appreciate Martin Luther King’s work without understanding the role that Christian thought and inspiration played in his advocacy of human rights. Martin Luther King’s letter from a Birmingham prison to fellow Christian clergymen gives insight to the role his religious commitment played in generating and sustaining his commitment to work for justice. Further, the people from whom he came, the…
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Martin Luther King Civil Rights Leader and Peace Advocate (Part 1 of 4)
Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his life for the poor of the world, the garbage workers of Memphis and the peasants of Vietnam. The day that Negro people and others in bondage are truly free, on the day want is abolished, on the day wars are no more, on that day I know my husband will rest in a long-deserved peace. —Coretta King This article is part of a series on human rights forebears. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr lived a life beyond the ordinary and writing about him is challenging. His life made the world that came after him better. This article will not do justice to…
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Belle
Humans are complex beings. The movie “Belle” (director Amma Assante) explores human complexity, particularly as it manifests in everyday human relationships. The movie is set in the late eighteenth century at the height of the transatlantic slave trade. Dido Elizabeth Belle (played by Gugu Mbatha-Raw) is the central character of the movie. She was born into slavery, but her father, Captain John Lindsay, was the nephew of the Lord Chief Justice William Murray (Earl of Mansfield). By this chance of fate, Dido escaped a life of slavery and was brought up instead in British high society – as part of the Lord Chief Justice’s household. The movie explores what life may…
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Would you have me argue that all human beings are equal?
Frederick Douglass was a remarkable worker for human rights. Although he lived more than a century ago, his thoughts remain pressingly relevant. He began life as a slave, but winning his own freedom, he fought not only for abolition of slavery but also gave his support to other human rights causes, such as the emancipation of women. Born in 1818 in Talbot County, Maryland, he was separated from his mother at an early age, he writes, as was typically done with slave children. His father, he believed, was his mother’s master. Even though it was against the law for slave children to be taught to read and write, Sophia Auld the…
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Bartolome de las Casas: An early human rights worker
Bartolome de las Casas is one of those remarkable people in history who arose at the very beginning of the modern human rights movement. A great humanitarian; he learnt human rights in his encounter with the people of Central and South America during the sixteenth century European invasion of the Americas. He used his office as Dominican friar and later Bishop to uphold the human rights of the indigenous peoples of the Americas. Las Casas came to the America’s as part of the colonial expeditions from Spain, arriving in 1502 in Hispaniola (now Haiti and the Dominican Republic), at the very beginning of the encounter between the Europeans and the people of the Americas.…
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Abolish Foreignness
Eight million children under the age of five die each year from largely preventable causes. One billion people live in abject poverty. Thousands die crossing international borders while fleeing poverty, war or persecution. Rich countries reinforce barriers, laws and measures to prevent people crossing their borders. Hundreds of thousands are held in migration prisons as if they were criminals. 67 million people live as refugees or are internally displaced as a result of persecution, war, poverty or other causes. Believing that human beings are “foreigners” makes such profound human rights violations possible.
