On the evening of April 4, 1968, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., America's most influential civil rights leader, was shot and killed on the balcony outside his room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn., where he had traveled to support the local Memphis sanitation workers' strike. Fifty years on, Dr. King remains—in both the public consciousness and memory—the talismanic leader and a martyred hero of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. As those years pass from living memory into history, there remains a strong public and media interest in King and the movement. King's legacy has been understood differently by his contemporaries and by historians. To the Rev. Hosea Williams, one of his chief lieutenants, Dr. King was "the militant of the [20th] century." To King biographer Taylor Branch, MLK was a "new [American] founding father." And to journalist and historian Jon Meacham, he was an "architect of the 21st century." This series of lectures explores Dr. King and his role in the movement as part of a much longer (and still ongoing) struggle for African-American freedom and equality. Approaching King from a variety of perspectives, it seeks to give participants a broader and deeper understanding of Dr. King's local and national leadership in the civil rights movement and a sense of his continuing relevance for the 21st century.
For titles of the individual lectures, see the Odyssey spring catalog.
910.801.01 Homewood campus
Mondays, Feb. 19 to March 26, 6:45 to 8:15 p.m.
Cost: $138
JHU full-time faculty staff are eligible for tuition remission. You will be unable to register online and receive a discount. Contact 410-516-8516, for more information.
