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• View a selection of primary source documents about the African American Freedom Struggle chosen from the King Papers collection. 
• Search for documents published in the print editions of  The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr . 

Online King Records Access (OKRA) Database

The Online King Records Access (OKRA) database provides archival locations for thousands of speeches, sermons, letters, and other documents by and about Martin Luther King, Jr. Go to OKRA

Martin Luther King, Jr. Digital Project

The mission of the Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute is to preserve and promote the work and legacy of MLK. We are currently working on a unique project: making our archival holdings of MLK, one of the most iconic individuals of the 20th century, accessible online to a 21st century public. The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr. project began in 1985, It is a comprehensive collection of King's most significant correspondence, sermons, speeches, published writings, and unpublished manuscripts. Seven volumes (documented 1929 to 1962) have been published with some content available online and the 8th is in the works. Each volume contains approximately 180 documents. They have become essential reference works for researchers and have influenced scholarship about King and the movements he inspired. However, these large books are pricey and not accessible to all. We intend to build a searchable database and accompanying website that would enable scholars and the public to access, analyze, and learn from the published and unpublished works, writings, and wisdom of Martin Luther King, Jr.

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Dr. martin luther king, jr. archive, finding aid and content.

View contents of this collection in Boston University ArchivesSpace

Download the Dr. King Collection finding aid and inventory [PDF]

About the Collection – Scope & Content Notes

The Martin Luther King, Jr. collection, donated in 1964, consists of manuscripts, notebooks, correspondence, printed material, financial and legal papers, a small number of photographs and other items dating from 1947 to 1963.

Manuscripts include class notes, examinations and papers written by Dr. King while a student at Morehouse College (1944-1948), Crozer Theological Seminary (1948-1951) and Boston University (1951-1953). Among the notable documents are: a paper entitled Ritual (1947), composed at Morehouse; An Autobiography of Religious Development (1950), an assignment for the “Religious Development of Personality” class at Crozer taught by one of King’s mentors, George W. Davis; and notes and drafts of his doctoral dissertation, A Comparison of the Conceptions of God in the Thinking of Paul Tillich and Henry Nelson Wieman (1955). Additional manuscripts in the collection include drafts of speeches, sermons and three books: Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story (Harper, 1958), about the 1955-1956 bus boycott; Strength to Love (Harper & Row, 1963), a collection of several of his best-known sermons including “A Knock at Midnight,” “Shattered Dreams,” “The Death of Evil Upon the Seashore,” and “The Three Dimensions of a Complete Life;” and Why We Can’t Wait (Harper & Row, 1964), which includes the famed “Letter from Birmingham Jail.”

Dr. King’s office files, which date from 1955 to 1963, make up the bulk of the collection and consist primarily of letters, but also include itineraries, financial and legal documents, printed items, news clippings, and similar documents. There is material related to both the Dexter Avenue Church in Montgomery, Alabama, and the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia. Additionally, there are extensive files related to the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Other organizations which prominently figure include the American Friends Service Committee, which helped to finance Dr. King’s 1959 trip to India; the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE); the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP); and the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA).

Notable correspondence from figures in the Civil Rights movement includes letters from Bayard Rustin, Malcolm X, Adam Clayton Powell, Ella J. Baker, Medgar Evers, Roy Wilkins, Rosa Parks, Maya Angelou, William Sloane Coffin, Allan Knight Chalmers, Sidney Poitier, Jackie Robinson, A. Philip Randolph, Harry Belafonte, and Ralph Abernathy. Distinguished U.S. Government correspondents include Alabama Gov. John Patterson, Robert F. Kennedy, Sargent Shriver, Paul Douglas, Prescott Bush, Ralph Bunche, Eleanor Roosevelt, Hubert Humphrey, Richard M. Nixon, Dean Rusk, Walter Reuther, Adlai Stevenson, Earl Warren, Harry S. Truman, and Lyndon B. Johnson. Other eminent correspondents include James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, Jawaharlal Nehru, Linus Pauling, Nat King Cole, Cass Canfield, Ralph Ginzburg, Julian Huxley, Paul Tillich, and Stanley Levison.

Photographs in the collection include images of King with his family and congregation, a formal portrait, a photograph of the knife with which he was stabbed in 1958, and his coffin being transported by airplane.

Awards for King in the collection include an honorary Doctor of Divinity diploma from the Chicago Theological Seminary (1957); a certificate from the Alabama Association of Women’s Clubs (1957); Man of the Year Award from the Capital Press Club (1957); the Social Justice Award from the Religion and Labor Foundation (1957); the New York City proclamation of May 16, 1961 as “Desegregation Day” in honor of King, by Mayor Robert Wagner (1961); a citation from Americans for Democratic Action (1961); a certificate from the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (1963); an award from the Institute of Adult Education, Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, Bayonne, New Jersey (1964); and King’s certificate of membership in the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity at Boston University.

Audio in the collection includes recordings of King delivering a speech at Bennett College in Greensboro, North Carolina (1958); an interview with Bayard Rustin (1963); King’s visit to Boston University in 1964 to donate his papers; King giving a speech at the Golden Jubilee Convention of the United Synagogues of America (Nov. 19, 1964); King speaking to District 65 DWA; and King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.

Other items in the collection include telephone log books (1961–1963); King’s diary regarding his arrest on July 27, 1962; numerous clippings, pamphlets, flyers, articles, and other printed items; and a monogrammed leather briefcase owned by King. An addendum to the collection includes correspondence pertaining to the Joan Daves Agency’s dealings with King and the King Estate. These letters date from 1958 to 1993 and cover advertising and promotion, King’s Massey Lectures (1967), publishing rights, permissions, and other subjects.

Facsimiles of select materials are available on permanent display in the Martin Luther King Jr. Reading Room on the 3rd floor of the Mugar Memorial Library .

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The Theses of Martin Luther King, Jr.

N ews stories of recent months underscore the fact that the place of Martin Luther King, Jr. in our national mythology is still not secure. Perhaps that should not surprise us. Myth-making in a nation so large and various as ours takes time. In that light, the twenty-three years since Dr. King’s death is not a long time. It may not be bad that we are slow to elevate a historical figure to the status of national exemplar. When we so elevate a figure, we are saying something not only about that person but about ourselves. Among the many things that make us who we are, we are whom we admire and teach our children to emulate.

In 1983, Congress declared Martin Luther King Day to be a national holiday. Aside from the immediate effect of closing federal offices for a day, such an act of Congress is a recommendation, a statement of hope that people will agree that we recognize our better angels in the person and work of Dr. King. As with other national holidays, the observance of Dr. King Day is spotty. It has been a long time since national holidays were observed with any hint that they might be civil holy days. Just as well, some say, arguing that “civil religion” is a very dubious enterprise. Yes, but a society needs something like public piety—common symbols, stories, and rites that evoke respect, even reverence (although never worship).

Congress was right in what it did. It was not, as some claim, throwing a sop to black Americans; it was raising a sign for all Americans. Martin Luther King, Jr. advanced a thesis about America. A thesis is, first of all, a proposition. Dr. King proposed that legalized racial discrimination contradicted fundamental propositions of the American experiment. Of course he was not the first to say that. But he said it with an almost singular power of persuasion. And, beginning with the Montgomery bus boycott of 1956, he acted on it in a manner that would, in time, catch the conscience of the citizenry.

With remarkable, although not unfailing, consistency, he channeled anger into the ways of peaceful protest within the context of democratic deliberation. He made clear that his dream was a dream of and for America, not against America. He called us to be the people we professed to be. Most Americans listened to his thesis, and knew he was right. Some of those who view history in the light of providential purpose did not hesitate to acclaim him as God’s instrument. Not since the Civil War had Americans been so compelled to face the most abiding sin of their corporate history. If one can speak of countries having souls. Dr. King led this country to something like repentance and amendment of life, or at least to nobler resolve.

Yet Dr. King and the day set aside to honor his memory remain, as they say, controversial. The reasons are not hard to find. We reject the claim that it is the only reason while readily acknowledging that one reason is racism. It is not only in the recognized fever swamps of extremism that one encounters Americans who never listened to Dr. King, or listened to him and strongly disagreed. They believe that blacks are inherently inferior and constitute a population basically alien to this society. In their view, laws of racial segregation were neither irrational nor unjust. Even if no other questions had subsequently been raised about Dr. King, these Americans would not honor his memory or celebrate his day. Racism may not be the main reason, but it is surely one reason, and it can in devious ways infect other reasons.

M any Americans are no doubt ambivalent about Dr. King because they are ambivalent about the current form of the civil rights movement that is associated with his name. Already in his lifetime, advocates of “black power” countered white racism with black racism, contending that blacks are indeed alien to an inherently oppressive “Amerika.” Today, with significant gradations of stridency, many black leaders who claim the mantle of Dr. King perpetuate that poisonous line of unreason.

The very term “civil rights” has come to be understood not as a cause opening America to a larger and more generous sense of community but as a militantly fraudulent form of special pleading. Thus, for example, in the last Congress the Civil Rights Restoration Act was roundly, and rightly, criticized as the Racial Preference Act. The thesis of Dr. King has been turned into its antithesis. Most Americans do not take well to quotas and reverse discriminations designed to give additional advantage to those blacks who are already doing well. They are disgusted with racialist leaders who adamantly press for such measures while ignoring, denying, or excusing the desperate plight of an isolated black underclass, especially in our urban centers.

The racism of the right, against which Dr. King contended, is familiar. Not so readily recognized are the more recent manifestations of the racism of the left. Much pro-abortion agitation about the “crisis” of teenage pregnancy thinly veils a desire to control and, if possible, reduce the black population—especially the lower part of the population that may turn out to be a “drain” on society. The leaders of the public school establishment are determined to perpetuate a destructive educational system to which they would not subject their own children but which is good enough for “them.” “Progressive” hiring and tenure policies in universities are based on the assumption that “they” cannot meet “our” standards, and therefore compromises must be made in the name of affirmative action.

These and other measures are advanced under the vague rubric of “civil rights.” The result is the opposite of Dr. King’s thesis that people should be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. The result is that many whites, and not a few blacks, are ambivalent about celebrating Dr. King because they, wrongly, identify him with a civil rights ideology that has made a mockery of the movement that he led.

Powerfully reinforcing these reservations are the questions raised about Dr. King’s own character. That he was a philanderer, indulging himself in frequent adulterous relationships, now seems to be established beyond reasonable doubt. This aspect of his character was apparently well known to some who worked closely with him, and has become quite public in recent years. Now another thesis of Dr. King is being widely discussed, his doctoral thesis written at the School of Theology at Boston University. It seems that large sections of the thesis, and much of King’s earlier and later writings, were “borrowed” from others without attribution. The unavoidable word for that is plagiarism.

The revelations about Dr. King’s doctoral thesis do not touch his claim to historical greatness. While a few writers have contended that Dr. King was a scholar and theologian of note, this was generally recognized as hagiographical excess. Strangely enough, however, some among his more distinguished biographers have said that they are shaken by the finding of plagiarism. They were not similarly shaken by his sexual behavior. After all, many great men have been philanderers, but plagiarism is something else. Plagiarism is much more serious than adultery, that is, if your primary universe of discourse is the academy. Plagiarism is a knowledge-class sin. To understand this is to understand why Dr. King’s plagiarism was so prominently featured in the prestige media in a way that his adulteries were not.

S ome commentators took a different tack in response to the most recent findings. The Wall Street Journal, for instance, editorially opined that journalistic explorations into the private lives of public figures have gotten out of hand. The editors compared the attention paid the King disclosures with the exposes that undid Gary Hart, John Tower, and others in recent years. The comparison does not hold. At stake with Hart was his aspiration to be president, and the Tower question was whether he was qualified to be secretary of defense. At stake with Dr. King is whether he should be enshrined and celebrated as an exemplary figure in the telling of the American story. Moreover, the comparison does not hold because a doctoral thesis is not a private act. Perhaps most important, the comparison does not hold because Dr. King was a minister of the gospel.

The significance of the last point generally escapes those who have crafted the public telling of the King legend. A few days following his death in April 1968, a memorial service was held in New York at a large Harlem church. On network news, a reporter standing in front of the church concluded his report with this: “It was a religious service, and fittingly so, for, after all. Dr. King was the son of a minister.” The son of a minister? Dr. King never left any doubt that he understood himself and his movement in terms of Christian teaching and ministry. The public secularization of the King legend has everything to do with the secularistic propensities of our cultural elites. Yet another factor is at work, however.

Even some of those who recognize that Dr. King cannot be explained apart from his religious milieu and self-understanding seem to think that the usual standards for clerical behavior do not apply to the black church. Compare, for instance, the sensationalistic media treatment of white televangelists caught in sexual dalliance. Long and lasciviously, the media slaver over the manifest “hypocrisy” of a Jimmy Swaggart. Dr. King’s sexual derelictions, on the other hand, are discreetly ignored, or even welcomed as evidence that he was not one of those awkward types derisively referred to as “saints.” (The last was the relieved observation of The Nation in response to the King exposures.)

Why this nonchalance toward Dr. King’s moral transgressions? One answer is that Dr. King was on the right side of a great and just cause. Another and less attractive answer is the supposition that we shouldn’t expect as much of blacks. The people who are accepting of Dr. King’s moral failings are, as often as not, the same people who tell us that black rap groups that draw their language from the sewer are “representative of authentic black culture.” The “acceptance” professed by so many of a progressive bent is, in fact, a condescension riddled through and through with racialist stereotypes.

The truth is that for millions of Christians, black and white, there is the perception that Dr. King betrayed their trust. If he is to be accused of hypocrisy, however, it was the hypocrisy defined as the homage that vice pays to virtue. Unlike so many others in the sixties, he did not commend his failings as an “alternative lifestyle.” He knew that he was a sinner, and we can hope that he knew he was a forgiven sinner.

Martin Luther King, Jr. is rightly honored as a hero in the telling of the American story—not because of his personal virtue but because he was the chosen instrument to advance a morally imperative change in our common life. His character was grievously flawed. He was, to borrow from Saint Paul, an “earthen vessel”—a very earthen vessel. For believers this only underscores the truth that, as the Apostle says, “the transcendent power belongs to God and not to us.” We have little doubt that Dr. King would agree with that. And we have little doubt that he would further agree that the thesis he sought to advance needs still to be championed today—against those who opposed him then, as well as against those who fraudulently claim his legacy now. Dr. King, we expect, would not be at all surprised that he and his thesis continue to be cause for controversy.

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Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis: The Mind Of Martin Luther King, Jr.

When you live in Atlanta, the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday celebration is not just a one day affair. Here we have King Week activities, galas and marches for days. Morehouse College, Dr. King’s alma mater, puts on several commemorative programs honoring the famed civil rights leader. On Auburn Avenue, the King Center , a local non-profit organization that houses the internationally renowned Center for Nonviolent Social Change, is thronged by crowds visiting the gravesite of Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife Coretta Scott King. The King Museum, an interactive exhibit run by the National Park Service, sits across the street. A block west is Ebenezer Baptist Church, where both King Jr. and King Sr. preached. But the most profound moments I have experienced in the presence of King memorabilia has been at a display of the King papers, when I realized just how important Martin Luther King Jr.’s academic training and intellectual development were to the success of the civil rights movement.    

The King artifacts were purchased in 2006 by a group of concerned Atlanta citizens from Martin Luther King Jr.’s estate and were subsequently donated to Morehouse College . According to the Atlanta Journal & Constitution , by February 2010, the writings of Dr. King will be fully available to the public at the Robert W. Woodruff Library of the Atlanta University Center. The papers have been under lock and key since the purchase, with one exception — a 5 month exhibition in 2007 of 600 documents from the collection.

It was just after the opening of the I Have A Dream: The Morehouse College Martin Luther King Jr. Collection exhibition at the Atlanta History Center that I had a chance late one weekday morning back in 2007 to check it out. With no opening day or weekend crowds to contend with, I took a leisurely stroll through the wing of the History Center dedicated to the display. Looking through the glass of the first display case at the tattered remains of King’s report cards, my eyebrows raised — “they paid thirty two million dollars for this ?”, I said to myself. It didn’t take long, though, for a wave of nostalgia to set in as I peered at the scrawling handwriting that covered page after page of notes and rough drafts from King’s undergraduate years.

The books, some of them battered and discolored, stopped me in my tracks. Not only could I could see his young mind grappling with the ideas men the world over had wrestled with for centuries — the exhibit, organized so that King’s writings were displayed in a chronological order, often showed how these great thinkers had influenced him.

It wasn’t until I got to the telegrams and the notes from movement organizing meetings that I began to get a lump in my throat.

Since that visit, I’ve read a couple of books about King and the civil rights movement, but none of them dovetailed with the experience I had that day in the Atlanta History Center the way David Garrow’s book Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference did. The account Garrow produced turned the stacks of books I’d seen from King’s college and graduate school days, as well as the books he received from leaders around the world, including Mohandas Ghandi, into a narrative that showed just how much King’s scholarship impacted his thinking, and in turn, the practices and policies of the southern civil rights movement.

King entered Crozer Theological Institute Seminary in 1948 as a student who had earned the proverbial “gentleman’s C’s” at Morehouse College.  He left three years later as the class valedictorian. Somewhere during the early part of his tenure at Crozer, King’s intellectual curiosity caught fire, and he spent the balance of his time at the seminary exploring the work of some of the world’s most noted thinkers, including Karl Marx, Walter Rauschenbusch and Reinhold Niebuhr. The questions his exposure to these influences raised stayed with him when he matriculated at Boston University.

“Regardless of subject matter, King never tired of moving from a one-sided thesis to a corrective, but also one-sided antithesis and finally to a more coherent synthesis beyond both.” L. Harold DeWolf — professor of King at Boston University Bearing The Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference

King’s professors at Boston University were impressed with his scholarship, according to Garrow — so much so that they encouraged him to consider a life in academia. But King longed to return to the pulpit, where he could interact with people instead of books. Indeed, if it were not for internal dissension among the members of the Montgomery Improvement Association, King might never have ascended to the forefront of the south’s civil rights movement.

There is no way to measure how much of King’s success in formulating strategies of engagement with the White House, the Attorney General, and the state and local administrations with which he and his followers clashed were the result of a “thesis, antithesis, synthesis” approach. But I am certain his ability to understand on an intellectual level where the divergent interests of the segregationists and the civil rights advocates intersected, and his ability to articulate how these interests could both gain something by moving forward from this crossroad are the direct result of his time spent wrestling with philosophical abstractions in graduate school. 

2024-2025 Academic Calendar

Autumn quarter 2024.

(Term 1252; MD/MSPA: P4-P6)

• August 12-16 2024 (Mon-Fri) Stanford Bulletin published with academic year 2024-2025 degree requirements and course offerings.
• August 12, 2024 (Mon) MD/MSPA - Axess opens for course enrollment (6 p.m.).
• August 16-20, 2024 (Fri-Tues) MD /MSPA - SWEAT activities.
• August 21-23, 2024 (Wed-Fri) MD/MSPA – New student orientation.
• August 26, 2024 (Mon) MD/MSPA – first and second-year students, first day of instruction. 
• August 26, 2024 (Mon) MD/MSPA – First day of clerkships for Period 3.
• August 26, 2024 (Mon) Early Clinical Engagement (2:30 - 4:30 p.m.).
• August 28, 2024 (Wed) MD pre-clerkship (MS1 and MS2) Deadline to submit Leave of Absence for full refund.
• September 2, 2024 (Mon) Deadline for departments to update course grading basis, unit, and/or component configuration for classes offered in Autumn.
• September 3, 2024 (Tues) Autumn course planning opens in Axess for undergraduate and graduate students.
• September 5, 2024 (Thurs) Application to Graduate opens for Autumn.
• September 5, 2024 (Thurs) Axess opens for course enrollment for undergraduates and graduate students. See Enrollment Groups for more information (6 p.m.).
• September 6, 2024 (Fri) Early Clinical Engagement (3-5 p.m.).
• September 9, 2024 (Mon) MD/MSPA – First day of clerkships for Period 4.
• September 12, 2024 (Thurs) Conferral of degrees, Summer Quarter 2023-24.
• September 13, 2024 (Fri) At-status enrollment deadline in order to receive stipend or financial aid refund within the first week of term (5 p.m.).
• September 15, 2024 (Sun) Autumn Quarter Cardinal Care Waiver Deadline; see the Cardinal Care website.
• September 16, 2024 (Mon) Early Clinical Engagement (2:30 - 4:30 p.m.)..
• September 23, 2024 (Mon) First day of quarter; instruction begins.
• September 23, 2024 (Mon) Preliminary Study List deadline . Students must be "at status"; i.e., students must have a study list with sufficient units to meet requirements for their status, whether full-time, 8-9-10 units (graduate students only), or have submitted a petition for Undergraduate Special Registration Status or Graduate Special Registration Status . The late study list fee is $200 (5:30 p.m.).
• September 23, 2024 (Mon) Deadline to submit Leave of Absence for full refund (see undergraduate leaves of absence and graduate leaves of absence ). See Tuition and Refund Schedule for a full refund schedule (5 p.m.).
• September 23, 2024 (Mon) MD/MSPA – First day of clerkships for Period 4.
• September 27, 2024 (Fri) MD – MS1 Doctor’s Roundtable (9:30 a.m.-12:20 p.m.).
• October 11, 2024 (Fri) Final Study List deadline , except GSB. Last day to add or drop a class; last day to adjust units on a variable-unit course. Last day for tuition reassessment for dropped courses or units. Students may withdraw from a course until the Course Withdrawal deadline and a 'W' notation will appear on the transcript (5 p.m.).
• October 11, 2024 (Fri) MD – INDE 297 session for clinical students (Period 4).
• October 21, 2024 (Mon) MD/MSPA – First day of clerkships for Period 5.
• October 24, 2024 (Thurs) MD pre-clerkship Term withdrawal deadline; last day for MD pre-clerkship students to submit Leave of Absence to withdraw from the University with a partial refund.
• November 4, 2024 (Mon) Term withdrawal deadline; last day to submit Leave of Absence to withdraw from the University with a partial refund (5 p.m.).
• November 5, 2024 (Tues) Democracy Day: day of civic service (no classes).
• November 15, 2024 (Fri) Application deadline for Autumn Quarter degree conferral (5 p.m.).
• November 15, 2024 (Fri) Change of grading basis deadline (5 p.m.).
• November 15, 2024 (Fri) Course withdrawal deadline, except GSB, Law, and MD courses (5 p.m.).
• November 18, 2024 (Mon) MD/MSPA – First day of clerkships for Period 6.
• November 20, 2024 (Wed) Grade rosters open for Autumn quarter.
• November 24, 2024 (Sun) UIT Extended Maintenance Window ; Axess and other ERP systems may be unavailable. 
• November 25-29, 2024 (Mon-Fri) Thanksgiving Recess (no classes).
• December 2-8, 2024 (Mon-Sun) End-Quarter Period.
• December 6, 2024 (Fri) Last day of classes (unless class meets on Sat).
• December 6, 2024 (Fri) Last opportunity to arrange Incomplete in a course, at last class.
• December 6, 2024 (Fri) Late application deadline for Autumn Quarter degree conferral ($50 fee) (5 p.m.).
• December 6, 2024 (Fri) University thesis, D.M.A. final project, or Ph.D. dissertation, last day to submit (noon).
• December 6, 2024 (Fri) MD – INDE 297 session for clinical students (Period 6).
• December 9-13, 2024 (Mon-Fri) End-Quarter examinations.
• December 15, 2024 (Sun) Autumn Quarter Cardinal Care Petition for Early Cancellation due to Degree Conferral deadline; see the Cardinal Care website and Student Health Matters for more information.
• December 17, 2024 (Tues) Grades due (11:59 p.m.).
• December 21, 2024 - January 5, 2025 (Sat-Sun) Winter Closure ; the University is closed. 
• January 6, 2025 (Mon) Final Recommending Lists due (noon).
• January 9, 2025 (Thurs) Conferral of degrees, Autumn Quarter. Graduates will have access to official degree certifications and transcripts the day after degrees are posted.

WINTER QUARTER 2025

(Term 1254; MD/MSPA: P7-P9)

• December 2, 2024 (Mon) Deadline for departments to update course grading basis, unit, and/or component configuration for classes offered in Winter.
• December 3, 2024 (Tues) Winter course planning opens in Axess for undergraduate and graduate students.
• December 5, 2024 (Thurs) Application to Graduate opens for Winter.
• December 5, 2024 (Thurs) Axess opens for course enrollment. See Enrollment Groups for more information (5:30 p.m.).
• December 15, 2024 (Thurs) Winter Quarter Cardinal Care Waiver Deadline; see the Cardinal Care website.
• December 27, 2024 (Fri) At-status enrollment deadline in order to receive stipend or financial aid refund within the first week of term (5 p.m.).
• January 6, 2024 (Mon) First day of quarter; instruction begins for all students.
• January 6, 2025 (Mon) Preliminary Study List deadline . Students must be "at status"; i.e., students must have a study list with sufficient units to meet requirements for their status, whether full-time, 8-9-10 units (graduate students only), or have submitted a petition for Undergraduate Special Registration Status or Graduate Special Registration Status . The late study list fee is $200 (5:30 p.m).
• January 6, 2025 (Mon) Deadline to submit Leave of Absence for full refund (see undergraduate leaves of absence and graduate leaves of absence ). See  Tuition and Refund Schedule for a full refund schedule (5 p.m.).
• January 6, 2025 (Mon) MD/MSPA – First day of clerkships for Period 7.
• January 20, 2025 (Mon) Martin Luther King, Jr., Day (holiday, no classes).
• January 24, 2025 (Fri) Final Study List deadline , except GSB. Last day to add or drop a class; last day to adjust units on a variable-unit course. Last day for tuition reassessment for dropped courses or units. Students may withdraw from a course until the Course Withdrawal deadline and a "W" notation will appear on the transcript (5 p.m.).
• February 3, 2025 (Mon) MD/MSPA - First day of clerkships for Period 8.
• February 17, 2025 (Mon) Presidents' Day (holiday, no classes).
• February 19, 2025 (Mon) Term withdrawal deadline; last day to submit Leave of Absence to withdraw from the University with a partial refund (5 p.m.).
• February 19, 2025 (Mon) Presidents’ Day (holiday; no classes).
• February 21, 2025 (Fri) MD – INDE 297 session for clinical students (Period 8).
• February 28, 2025 (Fri) Application deadline for Winter Quarter degree conferral (5 p.m.).
• February 28, 2025 (Fri) Change of grading basis deadline (5 p.m.).
• February 28, 2025 (Fri) Course withdrawal deadline for graduate students (5 p.m.).
• March 3, 2025 (Mon) Grade rosters open for Winter quarter.
• March 3, 2025 (Mon) MD/MSPA - First day of clerkships for Period 9. 
• March 10 - 16, 2025 (Mon-Sun) End-Quarter Period.
• March 12 - 20, 2025 (Wed-Thurs) MD- Mini-Clinical Performance Examination (CPX) (Required MS2 exam to be completed prior to clerkship entry
• March 14, 2025 (Fri) Last day of classes (unless class meets on Sat)
• March 14, 2025 (Fri) Last opportunity to arrange Incomplete in a course, at last class.
• March 14, 2025 (Fri) University thesis, D.M.A. final project, or Ph.D. dissertation, last day to submit (12 p.m.).
• March 14, 2025 (Fri) Late application deadline for Winter Quarter degree conferral ($50 fee) (5 p.m.).
• March 16, 2025 (Sun) UIT  Extended Maintenance Window ; Axess and other ERP systems may be unavailable.
• March 17-21, 2025 (Mon-Fri) End-Quarter examinations.
• March 21, 2025 (Fri) Match Day.
• March 25, 2025 (Tues) Grades due (11:59 p.m.).
• March 27, 2025 (Thurs) Final Recommending Lists due (5 p.m.)
• March 27, 2025 (Thurs) Conferral of degrees, Winter Quarter. Graduates will have access to official degree certifications and transcripts the day after degrees are posted.
• April 15, 2025 (Tues) Winter Quarter Cardinal Care Petition for Early Cancellation due to Degree Conferral deadline; see the Cardinal Care website and Student Health Matters for more information.

SPRING QUARTER 2025

(Term 1256; MD/MSPA: P10-P12)

• March 3, 2025 (Mon) Deadline for departments to update course grading basis, unit, and/or component configuration for classes offered in Spring.
• March 4, 2025 (Tues) Spring course planning opens in Axess for undergraduate and graduate students.
• March 6, 2025 (Thurs) Axess opens for course enrollment. See Enrollment Groups for more information (5:30 p.m.).
• March 6, 2025 (Thurs) Application to Graduate opens for Spring.
• March 15, 2025 (Sat) Spring Quarter Cardinal Care Waiver Deadline; see the Cardinal Care website.
• March 21, 2025 (Fri) At-status enrollment deadline in order to receive stipend or financial aid refund within the first week of term.
• March 31, 2025 (Mon) First day of quarter; instruction begins for all students.
• March 31, 2025 (Mon) Preliminary Study List deadline . Students must be "at status"; i.e., students must have a study list with sufficient units to meet requirements for their status, whether full-time, 8-9-10 units (graduate students only), or have submitted a petition for Undergraduate Special Registration Status or Graduate Special Registration Status . The late study list fee is $200 (5:30 p.m.).
• March 31, 2025 (Mon) Deadline to submit Leave of Absence for full refund (see undergraduate leaves of absence and graduate leaves of absence ). See Tuition and Refund Schedule for a full refund schedule (5 p.m.).
• March 31, 2025 (Mon) MD/MSPA - First day of clerkships for Period 10.
• March 31, 2025 (Mon) MD – First day of instruction Q6 POM.
• April 11, 2025 (Fri) Application deadline for Spring Quarter degree conferral (5 p.m.) .
• April 18, 2025 (Fri) Final Study List deadline , except GSB. Last day to add or drop a class; last day to adjust units on a variable-unit course. Last day for tuition reassessment for dropped courses or units. Students may withdraw from a course until the Course Withdrawal deadline and a 'W' notation will appear on the transcript (5 p.m.).
• April 18, 2025 (Fri) MD – Last day of instruction Q6 POM.
• April 18, 2025 (Fri) MD – INDE 297 session for clinical students (Period 10).
• April 28, 2025 (Mon) MD/MSPA - First day of clerkships for Period 11.
• May 12, 2025 (Mon) Term withdrawal deadline; last day to submit Leave of Absence to withdraw from the University with a partial refund (5 p.m.).
• May 13, 2025 (Tues) Early Clinical Engagement (3:00 p.m.-5:00 p.m.).
• May 18, 2025 (Sun) UIT Extended Maintenance Window ; Axess and other ERP systems may be unavailable.
• May 23, 2025 (Fri) Change of grading basis deadline (5 p.m.).
• May 23, 2025 (Fri) Course withdrawal deadline for graduate students (5 p.m.).
• May 26, 2025 (Mon) Memorial Day (holiday; no classes).
• May 26, 2025 (Mon) MD/MSPA - First day of clerkships for Period 12.
• May 27, 2025 (Tues) Grade rosters open for current quarter.
• May 30 - June 5, 2025 (Fri-Thurs) End-Quarter Period.
• June 4, 2025 (Wed) Last day of classes.
• June 4, 2025 (Wed) Last opportunity to arrange Incomplete in a course, at last class.
• June 5, 2025 (Thurs) Day before finals, no classes.
• June 6, 2025 (Fri) Late  application deadline for Spring Quarter degree conferral ($50 fee) (5 p.m.).
• June 6, 2025 (Fri) University thesis, D.M.A. final project, or Ph.D. dissertation, last day to submit (noon).
• June 6 - 11, 2025 (Fri - Wed) End-Quarter examinations. 
• June 13, 2025 (Fri) Grades for graduating students due (11:59 p.m.) - non-MD or MSPA.
• June 13, 2025 (Fri) MD – INDE 297 session for clinical students (Period 12). 
• June 14, 2025 (Sat) School of Medicine Graduation Ceremony.
• June 15, 2025 (Sun) Stanford University  Commencement. See the Commencement website for further details.
• June 16, 2025 (Mon) Posting of J.D. and M.D. degrees; degrees will be awarded with a conferral date of Commencement. Graduates will have access to official degree certifications and transcripts the day after degrees are posted.
• June 17, 2025 (Tues) Final Recommending Lists due (noon).
• June 17, 2025 (Tues) Grades for non-graduating students due (11:59 p.m.).
• June 19, 2025 (Thurs) Posting of degrees; degrees will be awarded with a conferral date of Commencement. Graduates will have access to official degree certifications and transcripts the day after degrees are posted.

SUMMER QUARTER 2025

(Term 1258; MD, MSPA: P1-P3)

• April 3, 2025 (Thurs) Deadline for departments to update course grading basis, unit, and/or component configuration for classes offered in Summer.
• April 4, 2025 (Fri) Summer quarter planning opens for enrollment.
• April 7, 2025 (Mon) Axess opens for course enrollment for all students (5:30 p.m.).
• June 7, 2025 (Sat) Application to Graduate opens for Summer.
• June 14, 2024 (Fri) At status enrollment deadline in order to receive stipend or financial aid refund by first week of term (5 p.m.).
• June 15, 2024 (Sun) Summer  Quarter Cardinal Care Waiver Deadline; see the Cardinal Care website.
• June 23, 2025 (Mon) First day of quarter; instruction begins.
• June 23, 2025 (Mon) Preliminary Study List deadline (5 p.m.).
• June 23, 2025 (Mon) Deadline to submit Leave of Absence for full refund (see undergraduate leaves of absence and graduate leaves of absence ). See Tuition and Refund Schedule for a full refund schedule (5 p.m.).
• June 30, 2025 (Mon) MD/MSPA – First day of clerkships for Period 1.
• July 4, 2024 (Fri) Independence Day (holiday, no classes).
• July 7, 2025 (Mon) Final Study List deadline , except GSB. Last day to add or drop a class; last day to adjust units on a variable-unit course. Last day for tuition reassessment for dropped courses or units. Students may withdraw from a course until the Course Withdrawal deadline and a 'W' notation will appear on the transcript (5 p.m.).
• July 14 - August 1, 2025 (Mon-Fri) MD – Clinical Performance Examination (CPX) (Graduation requirement for clinical students).
• July 25, 2025 (Fri) Term withdrawal deadline; last day to submit Leave of Absence to withdraw from the University with a partial refund (5 p.m.).
• July 28, 2025 (Mon) MD/MSPA – First day of clerkships for Period 2.
• August 1, 2025 (Fri) Change of grading basis deadline (5 p.m.).
• August 1, 2025 (Fri) Course withdrawal deadline for graduate students (5 p.m.).
• August 1, 2025 (Fri) Application deadline for Summer Quarter degree conferral (5 p.m.) .
• August 4, 2025 (Mon) Grade roster opens for current quarter. 
• August 9 - 14, 2025 (Sat-Thurs)  End-Quarter Period.
• August 14, 2025 (Thurs) Last day of classes.
• August 14, 2025 (Thurs) Last opportunity to arrange Incomplete in a course, at last class.
• August 15-16, 2025 (Fri - Sat) End-Quarter examinations.
• August 25, 2025 (Mon) MD/MSPA – First day of clerkships for Period 3.
• August 26, 2025 (Tues) Grades due (11:59 p.m.).
• August 29, 2025 (Fri) University thesis, D.M.A. final project, or Ph.D. dissertation, last day to submit (noon).
• August 29, 2025 (Fri) Late application deadline for Summer Quarter degree conferral ($50 fee) (5 p.m.).
• September 6, 2025 (Fri) Final Recommending Lists due (5 p.m.)
• September 11, 2025 (Thu) Conferral of degrees, Summer Quarter. Graduates will have access to official degree certifications and transcripts the day after degrees are posted.

Future Academic Dates

2025-26 First Day of Classes and End of Term

These dates are subject to change at the discretion of the University.

• Mini Quarter 2024:     MS1, MS2, and MSPA students start on August 25.
• Autumn 2025:   September 22 and December 12.
• Winter 2026:  January 5 and March 22.
• Spring 2026:   March 30 and June 10 (Commencement June 14). SOM graduation ceremony June 13. 
• Summer 2025:  June 22 and August 15.

Key Administrative Dates and Deadlines

The School of Medicine's Academic Calendar combines dates relevant to all our matriculating programs: MD, MSPA, MS, and PhD.

To view the PDF version of the Academic Calendar, click below.  

Other Resource Calendars

Clerkship period dates

Clerkship Fishbowl system

Dynamic academic calendar 

Stanford academic calendar

Introduction

Martin Luther King, Jr., made history, but he was also transformed by his deep family roots in the African-American Baptist church, his formative experiences in his hometown of Atlanta, his theological studies, his varied models of religious and political leadership, and his extensive network of contacts in the peace and social justice movements of his time. Although King was only 39 at the time of his death, his life was remarkable for the ways it reflected and inspired so many of the twentieth century’s major intellectual, cultural, and political developments.

The son, grandson, and great-grandson of Baptist ministers, Martin Luther King, Jr., named Michael King at birth, was born in Atlanta and spent his first 12 years in the Auburn Avenue home that his parents, the Reverend Michael King  and Alberta Williams King, shared with his maternal grandparents, the Reverend Adam Daniel (A. D.)  Williams  and Jeannie Celeste Williams. After Reverend Williams’ death in 1931, his son-in-law became  Ebenezer Baptist Church ’s new pastor and gradually established himself as a major figure in state and national Baptist groups. The elder King began referring to himself (and later to his son) as Martin Luther King.

King’s formative experiences not only immersed him in the affairs of Ebenezer but also introduced him to the African-American  social gospel  tradition exemplified by his father and grandfather, both of whom were leaders of the Atlanta branch of the  National Association for the Advancement of Colored People  (NAACP). Depression-era breadlines heightened King’s awareness of economic inequities, and his father’s leadership of campaigns against racial discrimination in voting and teachers’ salaries provided a model for the younger King’s own politically engaged ministry. He resisted religious emotionalism and as a teenager questioned some facets of Baptist doctrine, such as the bodily resurrection of Jesus.

During his undergraduate years at Atlanta’s  Morehouse College  from 1944 to 1948, King gradually overcame his initial reluctance to accept his inherited calling. Morehouse president Benjamin E.  Mays  influenced King’s spiritual development, encouraging him to view Christianity as a potential force for progressive social change. Religion professor George  Kelsey  exposed him to biblical criticism and, according to King’s autobiographical sketch, taught him “that behind the legends and myths of the Book were many profound truths which one could not escape” ( Papers  1:43 ). King admired both educators as deeply religious yet also learned men and, by the end of his junior year, such academic role models and the example of his father led King to enter the ministry. He described his decision as a response to an “inner urge” calling him to “serve humanity” ( Papers  1:363 ). He was ordained during his final semester at Morehouse, and by this time King had also taken his first steps toward political activism. He had responded to the postwar wave of anti-black violence by proclaiming in a letter to the editor of the  Atlanta Constitution  that African Americans were “entitled to the basic rights and opportunities of American citizens” ( Papers  1:121 ). During his senior year King joined the Intercollegiate Council, an interracial student discussion group that met monthly at Atlanta’s Emory University.

After leaving Morehouse, King increased his understanding of liberal Christian thought while attending  Crozer Theological Seminary  in Pennsylvania from 1948 to 1951. Initially uncritical of liberal theology, he gradually moved toward Reinhold  Niebuhr ’s neo-orthodoxy, which emphasized the intractability of social evil. Mentored by local minister and King family friend J. Pius  Barbour , he reacted skeptically to a presentation on pacifism by  Fellowship of Reconciliation  leader A. J.  Muste . Moreover, by the end of his seminary studies King had become increasingly dissatisfied with the abstract conceptions of God held by some modern theologians and identified himself instead with the theologians who affirmed  personalism , or a belief in the personality of God. Even as he continued to question and modify his own religious beliefs, he compiled an outstanding academic record and graduated at the top of his class.

In 1951, King began doctoral studies in systematic theology at  Boston University ’s School of Theology, which was dominated by personalist theologians such as Edgar  Brightman  and L. Harold  DeWolf . The papers (including his  dissertation ) that King wrote during his years at Boston University displayed little originality, and some contained extensive plagiarism; but his readings enabled him to formulate an eclectic yet coherent theological perspective. By the time he completed his doctoral studies in 1955, King had refined his exceptional ability to draw upon a wide range of theological and philosophical texts to express his views with force and precision. His capacity to infuse his oratory with borrowed theological insights became evident in his expanding preaching activities in Boston-area churches and at Ebenezer, where he assisted his father during school vacations.

During his stay in Boston, King also met and courted Coretta  Scott , an Alabama-born Antioch College graduate who was then a student at the New England Conservatory of Music. On 18 June 1953, the two students were married in Marion, Alabama, where Scott’s family lived.

Although he considered pursuing an academic career, King decided in 1954 to accept an offer to become the pastor of  Dexter Avenue Baptist Church  in Montgomery, Alabama. In December 1955, when Montgomery black leaders such as Jo Ann  Robinson , E. D.  Nixon , and Ralph  Abernathy  formed the  Montgomery Improvement Association  (MIA) to protest the arrest of NAACP official Rosa  Parks  for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man, they selected King to head the new group. In his role as the primary spokesman of the year-long  Montgomery bus boycott , King utilized the leadership abilities he had gained from his religious background and academic training to forge a distinctive protest strategy that involved the mobilization of black churches and skillful appeals for white support. With the encouragement of Bayard  Rustin , Glenn  Smiley , William Stuart  Nelson , and other veteran pacifists, King also became a firm advocate of Mohandas  Gandhi ’s precepts of  nonviolence , which he combined with Christian social gospel ideas.

After the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed Alabama bus segregation laws in  Browder v. Gayle  in late 1956, King sought to expand the nonviolent civil rights movement throughout the South. In 1957, he joined with C. K.  Steele , Fred  Shuttlesworth , and T. J.  Jemison  in founding the  Southern Christian Leadership Conference  (SCLC) with King as president to coordinate civil rights activities throughout the region. Publication of King’s memoir of the boycott,  Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story  (1958), further contributed to his rapid emergence as a national civil rights leader. Even as he expanded his influence, however, King acted cautiously. Rather than immediately seeking to stimulate mass desegregation protests in the South, King stressed the goal of achieving black voting rights when he addressed an audience at the 1957  Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom .

King’s rise to fame was not without personal consequences. In 1958, King was the victim of his first assassination attempt. Although his house had been bombed several times during the Montgomery bus boycott, it was while signing copies of  Stride Toward Freedom  that Izola Ware  Curry  stabbed him with a letter opener. Surgery to remove it was successful, but King had to recuperate for several months, giving up all protest activity.

One of the key aspects of King’s leadership was his ability to establish support from many types of organizations, including labor unions, peace organizations, southern reform organizations, and religious groups. As early as 1956, labor unions, such as the  United Packinghouse Workers of America  and the United Auto Workers, contributed to MIA, and peace activists such as Homer  Jack  alerted their associates to MIA activities. Activists from southern organizations, such as Myles Horton’s  Highlander Folk School  and Anne  Braden ’s Southern Conference Educational Fund, were in frequent contact with King. In addition, his extensive ties to the  National Baptist Convention  provided support from churches all over the nation; and his advisor, Stanley  Levison , ensured broad support from Jewish groups.

King’s recognition of the link between segregation and colonialism resulted in alliances with groups fighting oppression outside the United States, especially in Africa. In March 1957, King traveled to  Ghana  at the invitation of Kwame  Nkrumah  to attend the nation’s independence ceremony. Shortly after returning from Ghana, King joined the  American Committee on Africa , agreeing to serve as vice chairman of an International Sponsoring Committee for a day of protest against South Africa’s  apartheid  government. Later, at an SCLC-sponsored event honoring Kenyan labor leader Tom  Mboya , King further articulated the connections between the African American freedom struggle and those abroad: “We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality” ( Papers  5:204 ).

During 1959, he increased his understanding of Gandhian ideas during a month-long visit to  India  sponsored by the  American Friends Service Committee . With Coretta and MIA historian Lawrence D.  Reddick  in tow, King met with many Indian leaders, including Prime Minister Jawaharlal  Nehru . Writing after his return, King stated: “I left India more convinced than ever before that non-violent resistance is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom” ( Papers  5:233 ).

Early the following year, he moved his family, which now included two children— Yolanda King  and Martin Luther King, III —to Atlanta in order to be nearer to SCLC headquarters in that city and to become co-pastor, with his father, of Ebenezer Baptist Church. (The Kings’ third child, Dexter King , was born in 1961; their fourth, Bernice King , was born in 1963.) Soon after King’s arrival in Atlanta, the southern civil rights movement gained new impetus from the student-led lunch counter  sit-in  movement that spread throughout the region during 1960. The sit-ins brought into existence a new protest group, the  Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee  (SNCC), which would often push King toward greater militancy. King came in contact with students, especially those from Nashville such as John  Lewis , James  Bevel , and Diane  Nash , who had been trained in nonviolent tactics by James  Lawson . In October 1960, King’s arrest during a student-initiated protest in Atlanta became an issue in the national presidential campaign when Democratic candidate John F.  Kennedy  called Coretta King to express his concern. The successful efforts of Kennedy supporters to secure King’s release contributed to the Democratic candidate’s narrow victory over Republican candidate Richard  Nixon .

King’s decision to move to Atlanta was partly caused by SCLC’s lack of success during the late 1950s. Associate director Ella  Baker  had complained that SCLC’s Crusade for Citizenship suffered from lack of attention from King. SCLC leaders hoped that with King now in Atlanta, strategy would be improved. The hiring of Wyatt Tee  Walker  as executive director in 1960 was also seen as a step toward bringing efficiency to the organization, while the addition of Dorothy  Cotton  and Andrew  Young  to the staff infused new leadership after SCLC took over the administration of the Citizenship Education Program pioneered by Septima  Clark . Attorney Clarence  Jones  also began to assist King and SCLC with legal matters and to act as King’s advisor.

As the southern protest movement expanded during the early 1960s, King was often torn between the increasingly militant student activists, such as those who participated in the  Freedom Rides , and more cautious national civil rights leaders. During 1961 and 1962, his tactical differences with SNCC activists surfaced during a sustained protest movement in Albany, Georgia. King was arrested twice during demonstrations organized by the  Albany Movement , but when he left jail and ultimately left Albany without achieving a victory, some movement activists began to question his militancy and his dominant role within the southern protest movement.

As King encountered increasingly fierce white opposition, he continued his movement away from theological abstractions toward more reassuring conceptions, rooted in African-American religious culture, of God as a constant source of support. He later wrote in his book of sermons,  Strength to Love  (1963), that the travails of movement leadership caused him to abandon the notion of God as “theologically and philosophically satisfying” and caused him to view God as “a living reality that has been validated in the experiences of everyday life” ( Papers  5:424 ). 

During 1963, however, King reasserted his preeminence within the African-American freedom struggle through his leadership of the  Birmingham Campaign . Initiated by SCLC and its affiliate, the  Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights , the Birmingham demonstrations were the most massive civil rights protests that had yet occurred. With the assistance of Fred Shuttlesworth and other local black leaders, and with little competition from SNCC and other civil rights groups, SCLC officials were able to orchestrate the Birmingham protests to achieve maximum national impact. King’s decision to intentionally allow himself to be arrested for leading a demonstration on 12 April prodded the Kennedy administration to intervene in the escalating protests. The widely quoted “ Letter from Birmingham Jail ” displayed his distinctive ability to influence public opinion by appropriating ideas from the Bible, the Constitution, and other canonical texts. During May, televised pictures of police using dogs and fire hoses against young demonstrators generated a national outcry against white segregationist officials in Birmingham. The brutality of Birmingham officials and the refusal of Alabama’s governor George C.  Wallace  to allow the admission of black students at the University of Alabama prompted President Kennedy to introduce major civil rights legislation.

King’s speech  at the 28 August 1963  March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom , attended by more than 200,000 people, was the culmination of a wave of civil rights protest activity that extended even to northern cities. In his prepared remarks, King announced that African Americans wished to cash the “promissory note” signified in the egalitarian rhetoric of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. Closing his address with extemporaneous remarks, he insisted that he had not lost hope: “I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream ... that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’” He appropriated the familiar words of “My Country ’Tis of Thee,” before concluding, “When we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: ‘Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!’” (King, “I Have a Dream”).

Although there was much elation after the March on Washington, less than a month later, the movement was shocked by another act of senseless violence. On 15 September 1963, a dynamite blast at Birmingham’s Sixteenth Street Baptist Church killed four young school girls. King delivered the eulogy for three of the four girls, reflecting: “They say to us that we must be concerned not merely about who murdered them, but about the system, the way of life, the philosophy which produced the murderers” (King,  Eulogy for the Martyred Children ).

St. Augustine, Florida  became the site of the next major confrontation of the civil rights movement. Beginning in 1963, Robert B.  Hayling , of the local NAACP, had led sit-ins against segregated businesses. SCLC was called in to help in May 1964, suffering the arrest of King and Abernathy. After a few court victories, SCLC left when a biracial committee was formed; however, local residents continued to suffer violence.

King’s ability to focus national attention on orchestrated confrontations with racist authorities, combined with his oration at the 1963 March on Washington, made him the most influential African-American spokesperson of the first half of the 1960s. He was named  Time  magazine’s “Man of the Year”  at the end of 1963, and was awarded the  Nobel Peace Prize  in December 1964. The acclaim King received strengthened his stature among civil rights leaders but also prompted  Federal Bureau of Investigation  (FBI) director J. Edgar Hoover to step up his effort to damage King’s reputation. Hoover, with the approval of President Kennedy and Attorney General Robert  Kennedy , established phone taps and bugs. Hoover and many other observers of the southern struggle saw King as controlling events, but he was actually a moderating force within an increasingly diverse black militancy of the mid-1960s. Although he was not personally involved in  Freedom Summer  (1964), he was called upon to attempt to persuade the  Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party  delegates to accept a compromise at the Democratic Party National Convention.

As the African-American struggle expanded from desegregation protests to mass movements seeking economic and political gains in the North as well as the South, King’s active involvement was limited to a few highly publicized civil rights campaigns, such as Birmingham and St. Augustine, which secured popular support for the passage of national civil rights legislation, particularly the  Civil Rights Act of 1964 .

The Alabama protests reached a turning point on 7 March 1965, when state police attacked a group of demonstrators at the start of a march from Selma to the state capitol in Montgomery. Carrying out Governor Wallace’s orders, the police used tear gas and clubs to turn back the marchers after they crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge on the outskirts of Selma. Unprepared for the violent confrontation, King alienated some activists when he decided to postpone the continuation of the  Selma to Montgomery March  until he had received court approval, but the march, which finally secured federal court approval, attracted several thousand civil rights sympathizers, black and white, from all regions of the nation. On 25 March, King addressed the arriving marchers from the steps of the capitol in Montgomery. The march and the subsequent killing of a white participant, Viola Liuzzo, as well as the earlier murder of James  Reeb  dramatized the denial of black voting rights and spurred passage during the following summer of the  Voting Rights Act of 1965 .

After the march in Alabama, King was unable to garner similar support for his effort to confront the problems of northern urban blacks. Early in 1966 he, together with local activist Al  Raby , launched a major campaign against poverty and other urban problems, and King moved his family into an apartment in Chicago’s black ghetto. As King shifted the focus of his activities to the North, however, he discovered that the tactics used in the South were not as effective elsewhere. He encountered formidable opposition from Mayor Richard Daley and was unable to mobilize Chicago’s economically and ideologically diverse black community. King was stoned by angry whites in the Chicago suburb of Cicero when he led a march against racial discrimination in housing. Despite numerous mass protests, the  Chicago Campaign  resulted in no significant gains and undermined King’s reputation as an effective civil rights leader.

King’s influence was damaged further by the increasingly caustic tone of black militancy in the period after 1965. Black radicals increasingly turned away from the Gandhian precepts of King toward the  black nationalism  of  Malcolm X , whose posthumously published autobiography and speeches reached large audiences after his assassination in February 1965. Unable to influence the black insurgencies that occurred in many urban areas, King refused to abandon his firmly rooted beliefs about racial integration and nonviolence. He was nevertheless unpersuaded by black nationalist calls for racial uplift and institutional development in black communities. 

In June 1966, James  Meredith  was shot while attempting a “March against Fear” in Mississippi. King, Floyd  McKissick  of the  Congress of Racial Equality , and Stokely  Carmichael  of SNCC decided to continue his march. During the march, the activists from SNCC decided to test a new slogan that they had been using,  Black Power . King objected to the use of the term, but the media took the opportunity to expose the disagreements among protesters and publicized the term.

In his last book,  Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?  (1967), King dismissed the claim of Black Power advocates “to be the most revolutionary wing of the social revolution taking place in the United States,” but he acknowledged that they responded to a psychological need among African Americans he had not previously addressed (King,  Where Do We Go , 45–46). “Psychological freedom, a firm sense of self-esteem, is the most powerful weapon against the long night of physical slavery,” King wrote. “The Negro will only be free when he reaches down to the inner depths of his own being and signs with the pen and ink of assertive manhood his own emancipation proclamation” (King, “Where Do We Go From Here?”).

Indeed, even as his popularity declined, King spoke out strongly against American involvement in the  Vietnam War , making his position public in an address, “ Beyond Vietnam ,” on 4 April 1967, at New York’s Riverside Church. King’s involvement in the anti-war movement reduced his ability to influence national racial policies and made him a target of further FBI investigations. Nevertheless, he became ever more insistent that his version of Gandhian nonviolence and social gospel Christianity was the most appropriate response to the problems of black Americans.

In December 1967, King announced the formation of the  Poor People’s Campaign , designed to prod the federal government to strengthen its antipoverty efforts. King and other SCLC workers began to recruit poor people and antipoverty activists to come to Washington, D.C., to lobby on behalf of improved antipoverty programs. This effort was in its early stages when King became involved in the  Memphis sanitation workers’ strike  in Tennessee. On 28 March 1968, as King led thousands of sanitation workers and sympathizers on a march through downtown Memphis, black youngsters began throwing rocks and looting stores. This outbreak of violence led to extensive press criticisms of King’s entire antipoverty strategy. King returned to Memphis for the last time in early April.  Addressing  an audience at Bishop Charles J. Mason Temple on 3 April, King affirmed his optimism despite the “difficult days” that lay ahead. “But it really doesn’t matter with me now,” he declared, “because I’ve been to the mountaintop.... and I’ve seen the Promised Land.” He continued, “I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land,” (King, “ I’ve Been to the Mountaintop ”). The following evening, the  assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. , took place as he stood on a balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. A white segregationist, James Earl Ray, was later convicted of the crime. The Poor People’s Campaign continued for a few months after King’s death, under the direction of Ralph Abernathy, the new SCLC president, but it did not achieve its objectives.

Until his death, King remained steadfast in his commitment to the transformation of American society through nonviolent activism. In his posthumously published essay, “A Testament of Hope” (1969), he urged African Americans to refrain from violence but also warned: “White America must recognize that justice for black people cannot be achieved without radical changes in the structure of our society.” The “black revolution” was more than a civil rights movement, he insisted. “It is forcing America to face all its interrelated flaws—racism, poverty, militarism, and materialism” (King, “Testament,” 194).

After her husband’s death, Coretta Scott King established the Atlanta-based Martin Luther King, Jr., Center for Nonviolent Social Change (also known as the  King Center ) to promote Gandhian-Kingian concepts of nonviolent struggle. She also led the successful effort to honor her husband with a federally mandated  King national holiday , which was first celebrated in 1986. 

Introduction, in  Papers  1:1–57 .

King, “An Autobiography of Religious Development,” 12 September 1950–22 November 1950, in  Papers  1:359–363 .

King, Eulogy for the Martyred Children, 18 September 1963, in  A Call to Conscience , ed. Carson and Shepard, 2001.

King, “I Have a Dream,” Address Delivered at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, 28 August 1963, in  A Call to Conscience , ed. Carson and Shepard, 2001.

King, “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop,” Address Delivered at Bishop Charles Mason Temple, 3 April 1968, in  A Call to Conscience , ed. Carson and Shepard, 2001.

King, “Kick Up Dust,” Letter to the Editor,  Atlanta Constitution , 6 August 1946, in  Papers  1:121 .

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King,  Strength to Love , 1963.

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Mavis Staples Is an American Institution. She’s Not Done Singing Yet.

After more than seven decades onstage, the gospel and soul great decided last year that it was time to retire. Then she realized she still had work to do.

By Grayson Haver Currin

Reporting from Chicago and Los Angeles

On a rainy April day in Chicago, Mavis Staples sat in the restaurant of the towering downtown Chicago building where she’s lived for the past four years. For two hours, she talked about the civil rights movement and faith. And finally, she mentioned her old flame Bob Dylan.

The singer-songwriter first proposed to Staples after a kiss at the 1963 Newport Folk Festival; she hid from him during a show at the Apollo decades later, fearing he’d ask again. They’ve remained friends, even taking daily strolls during a 2016 tour together. She’d heard rumors he would soon retire, finally wrapping his fabled Never Ending Tour. Staples knew he would hate it.

“Oh, Bobby : He gotta keep on singing,” Staples said. “I could handle it more than him. I will call him and say, ‘Don’t retire, Bobby. You don’t know what you’re doing.’”

Staples speaks from experience: Late in the summer of 2023, soon after turning 84, she told her manager she was done. She’d been on the road for 76 years, ever since her father, Roebuck Staples, known as Pops, assembled a family band when she was 8. The Staple Singers became a gospel fulcrum of the civil rights movement and, later, a force for bending genres — mixing funk, rock and soul inside their spiritual mission, an all-American alchemy. The band’s mightiest singer and sole survivor since the death of her sister Yvonne in 2018 and brother, Pervis , in 2021, Mavis remained in high demand, a historical treasure commanding a thunderous contralto.

“Being an American and not believing in royalty, meeting her was the closest I’d ever felt,” said Jeff Tweedy of Wilco, who marveled at her while watching “ The Last Waltz ” decades before he produced a string of her poignant albums. “I felt the same way when I met Johnny Cash, like meeting a dollar bill or bald eagle.”

A seemingly indomitable extrovert, Staples had deeply resented being homebound during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. So she returned to the road with gusto, playing more than 50 shows last summer. But in July, she missed the end of a moving walkway in Germany and fell on her face. Was this, she wondered, the life she wanted? She’d previously mentioned retirement, but now she insisted.

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