Fifty years ago this week, at the age of 39, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. died as a result of an assassin’s bullet. The murder of this great American, who sought to have America live up to its founding promises and creeds for all, was one of the most traumatic events in the history of the United States and still reverberates within American society.
Consider that the Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, the Black Greek-letter organization King belonged to, spearheaded a Washington, D.C. memorial that opened in 2011. Most Americans and organizations honor and remember King by not only reflecting on his commitment to humanity, but how they can contribute to make America what it ought to be.
Our reflections usually come on King’s birthday, a federal holiday, and probably during Black History Month. There are, however, other times when we seek to gain insight, knowledge, and wisdom from this soldier for freedom. Civil rights icon and Congressman John Lewis, who marched alongside King, opined “What Would Martin Luther Jr. Say to President Obama” in a 2011 opinion article in The Washington Post.
In 2013, The New York Times ran a piece titled “The Lasting Power of Dr. King’s Dream Speech” commemorating the March on Washington.
Even in death, King has relevance. We might wonder what else one can offer on King. This remembrance takes a road rarely traveled by looking at his perspective on educational matters.
To do so, framing King’s educational background is appropriate. He earned a Ph.D. in theology at Boston University and a bachelor’s degree in divinity at Crozer Theological Seminary, but his alumnus status with Morehouse College is probably the most well-known fact about his education. So, Morehouse seems an appropriate place to begin.
King entered the private, Baptist-based liberal arts college in Atlanta at the age of 15 and graduated at 19 with a bachelor’s degree in sociology. While an undergraduate at the nation’s only college or university exclusively for Black men, King wrote a piece titled, “The Purpose Of Education” for the Maroon Tiger, the school newspaper. The young King, who would receive his Ph.D. at age 26, wrote: “It seems to me that education has a two-fold function to perform in the life of man and in society: the one is utility, and the other is culture.” He added that the “function of education, therefore, is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. But…[t]he most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reason, but with no morals.” Education must entail integrity, ethical concern and empowerment “all for the common good,” as the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota says in its institutional mission statement.
