• Latest
  • Trending

The Interesting History of Martin Luther King Jr.’s Real Name – and Why It Was Changed

17.01.2022
UK workers stage biggest strike in health service history – Reuters

UK workers stage biggest strike in health service history – Reuters

06.02.2023
The Bitcoin Masterclasses with Craig Wright Day 2 Session 2… – CoinGeek

The Bitcoin Masterclasses with Craig Wright Day 2 Session 2… – CoinGeek

06.02.2023
Latest Microsoft news: Smarter Bing, EU warning, ad-filled ecosystem, new Windows features, and more.

Latest Microsoft news: Smarter Bing, EU warning, ad-filled ecosystem, new Windows features, and more.

06.02.2023
Grammys 2023 Snubs and Surprises – Billboard

Grammys 2023 Snubs and Surprises – Billboard

06.02.2023
Megan Fox Just Wore a Dazzling Sheer Corset Dress to the Grammys – Yahoo Lifestyle UK

Megan Fox Just Wore a Dazzling Sheer Corset Dress to the Grammys – Yahoo Lifestyle UK

06.02.2023
Chiefs and Eagles land in Arizona a week before Super Bowl

Chiefs and Eagles land in Arizona a week before Super Bowl

06.02.2023
EU embargo on Russian petroleum products takes effect – OilPrice.com

EU embargo on Russian petroleum products takes effect – OilPrice.com

06.02.2023
Apple needs to stop being so dependent on the menu bar – MacRumors

Apple needs to stop being so dependent on the menu bar for non-pro apps – MacRumors

06.02.2023
Porsche 911 GT3 Drag Races Itself in Manual Duel Against PDK

Porsche’s big electric SUV will cost three times as much as a Cayenne: report

06.02.2023
NBA investigating incident at Pacers-Grizzlies game – CBS 4 Indianapolis

NBA investigating incident at Pacers-Grizzlies game – CBS 4 Indianapolis

06.02.2023
Kimora Lee Simmons buys Beverly Hills mansion for $25 million

Kimora Lee Simmons buys Beverly Hills mansion for $25 million

06.02.2023
‘He married a mad king, that’s why’: Angelina Jolie blamed for… – FandomWire

‘He married a mad king, that’s why’: Angelina Jolie blamed for… – FandomWire

06.02.2023
Monday, February 6, 2023
  • World
  • Economics
  • Sport
    • Basketball
    • Football
    • Nfl
    • Golf
    • F1
    • UFC
  • Technology
  • Culture
    • Arts
  • Media
    • Film
    • Celebs
    • TV
  • LifeStyle
    • Auto
  • Travel
OLTNEWS
  • World
  • Economics
  • Sport
    • Basketball
    • Football
    • Nfl
    • Golf
    • F1
    • UFC
  • Technology
  • Culture
    • Arts
  • Media
    • Film
    • Celebs
    • TV
  • LifeStyle
    • Auto
  • Travel
OLTNEWS
No Result
View All Result

Home » TV » The Interesting History of Martin Luther King Jr.’s Real Name – and Why It Was Changed

The Interesting History of Martin Luther King Jr.’s Real Name – and Why It Was Changed

17/01/2022 13:00:29
in TV
0
0
SHARES
Share on WhatsappShare on Facebook

Related posts

Brutally honest reviews of every 2022 Grammys performance, including BTS and Billie Eilish

04.04.2022

The NCAA called Kansas coach Bill Self a cheat nearly 1,000 days ago. His power only grew. | Opinion

02.04.2022


“Michael King Day.”

Doesn’t have quite the same ring, does it?

Big names go with big actions. So maybe Michael King Sr. knew what he was doing when – in 1934 – he made a momentous change. Or rather two.

He would thereafter be known as the Reverend Martin Luther King Sr. His 5-year-old son – also a Michael – would be Martin Luther King Jr.

What? Didn’t you know “Martin” wasn’t MLK’s first name?

“(King Sr.’s) mother insisted that she name him Michael, after the Archangel Michael,” said King scholar Patrick Parr, author of “The Seminarian: Martin Luther King Jr. Comes of Age”.

That MLK was not born MLK might be news to some – as we prepare to celebrate the 36th Federal Martin Luther King Day on Monday.

But the name change is worth considering. It says a lot about the man, his family values ​​and the larger significance of what he has done.

“Symbolically it’s significant, and it adds a certain historical gravity to its name,” Parr said.

The Democrats failed to deliver on the MLK Day Promise.What’s next for pushing for a voting rights bill?

Martin Luther – the original Martin Luther (1483-1546) – was, of course, the founder of the Protestant Church. The Baptist sect, one of its branches, was the denomination of King Sr. and Jr. – one of whom succeeded the other as pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church of Atlanta.

Luther was a rebel. “Here I stand, I can’t do anything else,” he said.

The very name – Protestant – contains “protest”. His church valued individual conscience, opposing oppressive authority – which in the 16th century was the Catholic Church.

In the MLK era, the oppressive structure was racism. And he fought it with marches, speeches, sit-ins. He was arrested, his supporters were beaten. But he refused to budge. “Here I stand.”

A fateful journey

It is likely that King Sr. – “Daddy King” – was introduced to the story of Martin Luther and his strong-willed personality during a 1934 pilgrimage to Germany, the country of Luther’s birth. It was a memorable trip. A game changer.

It was the year he and his son were renamed – unofficially, in the boy’s case – “Martin Luther”.

“After he went to Europe, he changed his name,” said Robert H. Robinson, deacon of Mount Olive Baptist Church in Hackensack, who has participated in the Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebrations in the United States for years. church. “He took this.”

The trip to Germany had other repercussions for both father and son.

MLK is more than just an American civil rights martyr. He is a universal hero like Gandhi: winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, a man who has been honored with statues in countries where he has never set foot.

Undated image of Martin Luther, German theologian and Augustinian monk, who started the Protestant Reformation with his "95 theses."

His program was global: in his life he addressed issues such as war, global poverty and class exploitation. “Dr. King fought for the people, for what was happening in the world,” Robinson said.

This idea – that injustice was a global problem, not confined to the streets of Atlanta and Birmingham – also has its roots in Daddy King’s 1934 trip to Europe. Which culminated, inevitably, at the Fifth Baptist World Congress in Berlin.

“They brought together all the international facets of the Baptist church,” said historian Clayborne Carson, director of Stanford University’s Martin Luther King Jr. Institute for Research and Education and author of “The Martin Luther King Jr. Encyclopaedia”.

“And, of course, a lot of black people in the United States were Baptists,” Carson said. “There was a delegation of black ministers who went.”

FOLLOWING:Martin Luther King Jr. Day became a federal holiday in 1983. But it really started much earlier.

An independent church

FILE - In this March 17, 1965, file photo, thousands of demonstrators march to the Montgomery, Alabama, courthouse behind Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to protest the treatment of protesters by police during a an attempt to walk.  In the center foreground in white shirt is Andrew Young.

There is a reason why African Americans, historically, have been drawn to the Baptist sect.

In most churches, Carson points out, ministers are appointed by superiors. But Baptists allowed each church to choose its own minister, regardless of background or background.

“If you think about it, for black people, just being assigned to a white minister wouldn’t have given them much independence as a church,” he said.

“In a Baptist church, you didn’t have to have formal seminary training, or have any degrees. You could be trained by another minister, like the father and grandfather of King. It was the only institution where a black person didn’t have to depend on a white person for a job.”

This policy had considerable effects. It was natural for the Baptist Church to be a center of free expression for black people. Protest too – because civil rights became an increasingly central issue in the 1930s, 40s and 50s.

Racism in America would hardly have been new to the Reverend Martin Luther King Sr. But when he went to Germany in 1934, he would have seen something else.

Dr. Martin Luther King Sr., the father of the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., speaks during a news conference March 9, 1975 at Nashville Municipal Airport.  King was in town to speak at Payne Chapel AME Church.

Adolf Hitler, the new chancellor, was inspired by the Alabama book. In “Mein Kampf”, he praised Americans for “excluding certain races from naturalization”. Now he proudly imitated politics in Germany.

In March 1933, Berlin suspended Jewish doctors from its payroll. In July, the Denaturalization Law revoked the citizenship of naturalized Jews and “undesirables.”

FOLLOWING:Martin Luther King Jr. in Sculpture: Which Statues Capture Him Best?

To take a position

So racism – not as an American problem, but as a global problem – was on everyone’s mind. It is in this spirit that the Fifth Baptist World Conference issued a resolution. It was a forceful position: their version of Martin Luther’s 95 Theses.

“This Congress deplores and condemns as a violation of the law of God the Heavenly Father, any racial animosity and any form of unjust oppression or discrimination toward Jews, colored people, or subject races in any part of the world”, it read.

Was King Sr. excited about all of this? Without a doubt, said Robinson. The point of a Baptist conference is at set you on fire.

“That’s what it’s designed for,” said Robinson, who has been to many events over the years: in Detroit, Atlanta, Philadelphia and many other places. Usually they last four or five days — classes in the afternoon, sermons in the evening.

“When you come out of these conventions, you’re set,” he said. “If you go to a conference and you don’t come back inspired to do the job, you’re in trouble. Some of these conventions are so powerful that they’ll change you.”

Like, for example, the name change to “Martin Luther King”. It was a gesture – to the larger global church of which he was a part, and also to issues of equality which, he would have seen firsthand, were global issues.

Following:Here are the lawyers behind MLK’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech

Bring back home

Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. addresses marchers during his "I have a dream" speech at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington on August 28, 1963.

In Berlin, Parr said, King Sr. saw Hitler’s growing threat. But he also saw, embodied in the conference, something else.

“He saw that parts of German culture sought to be the antithesis of what Hitler was portraying,” Parr said. “In short, he saw a minority do what they could to restore balance to their country. When he returned to the United States, King Sr. attempted to create social change in Atlanta, putting the emphasis on desegregation. All the while, a young and impressionable MLK looked on.”

In fact, King Sr. helped bring the sixth 1939 Baptist World Alliance Congress in Atlanta.

Later, King Jr. had mixed feelings about his namesake.

There was another side to Martin Luther. The German priest was himself a fanatic, who persecuted the Jews and favored the death of heretics. It wasn’t until 1957, long after he had risen to fame, that Martin Luther King Jr. finally decided to change the name “Michael” on his birth certificate.

“ML’s opinion was that although the German theologian was courageous in his rebellion against the Catholic Church, he did not care enough for the common people of his time,” Parr wrote in his book “The Seminarian.”

“ML avoided comparisons,” Parr said. “Instead of embracing all the similarities, he chose to focus on the differences.”

Jim Beckerman is an entertainment and culture reporter for NorthJersey.com.

Twitter: @jimbeckerman1



Related

Previous Post

Arabella Chi flaunts her peachy butt in a skimpy bikini as she soaks up the sun in Mexico

Next Post

February 2022 New Music Releases – Ultimate Classic Rock

Related Posts

TV

Brutally honest reviews of every 2022 Grammys performance, including BTS and Billie Eilish

04.04.2022
0

Let's take a page from Olivia Rodrigo and get brutal. The seven-time Grammy nominee is one of nearly two dozen...

Read more

The NCAA called Kansas coach Bill Self a cheat nearly 1,000 days ago. His power only grew. | Opinion

02.04.2022

Why Epsom Salt Should Be A Staple In Your Home Medicine Cabinet

01.04.2022

Best Dressed Oscars: Shirtless Timothée Chalamet and Brilliant Zendaya Stun on the Red Carpet

28.03.2022

Coach K earns record 13th trip to Final Four as Duke smothers Arkansas

27.03.2022

Adulting 101: These apps teach the life skills young adults need to survive in the real world

26.03.2022
Load More
Next Post

February 2022 New Music Releases - Ultimate Classic Rock

Recent Posts

  • UK workers stage biggest strike in health service history – Reuters
  • The Bitcoin Masterclasses with Craig Wright Day 2 Session 2… – CoinGeek
  • Latest Microsoft news: Smarter Bing, EU warning, ad-filled ecosystem, new Windows features, and more.
  • Grammys 2023 Snubs and Surprises – Billboard
  • Megan Fox Just Wore a Dazzling Sheer Corset Dress to the Grammys – Yahoo Lifestyle UK

Archives

  • February 2023
  • January 2023
  • December 2022
  • November 2022
  • October 2022
  • September 2022
  • August 2022
  • July 2022
  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • 0
  • EN

© 2020

No Result
View All Result
  • World
  • Economics
  • Sport
    • Basketball
    • Football
    • Nfl
    • Golf
    • F1
    • UFC
  • Technology
  • Culture
    • Arts
  • Media
    • Film
    • Celebs
    • TV
  • LifeStyle
    • Auto
  • Travel

© 2020

This website uses cookies. By continuing to use this website you are giving consent to cookies being used. Visit our Privacy and Cookie Policy.