Diarmuid lawrence biography of martin luther king
Reddick, Lawrence Dunbar
March 3, to August 2,
On 5 December , Lawrence Reddick attended the first mass meeting of the Montgomery bus boycott.
Diarmuid lawrence biography of martin luther king jr After the legal defeats and large financial losses, the city of Montgomery lifted the law that mandated segregated public transportation. Born and schooled in a relatively comfortable segment of Atlanta's black community, he decided to take the part of the underdog. Although they undoubtedly tried, Martin Jr. Edgar Hoover , which urged King to kill himself if he wanted to prevent news of his dalliances from going public.Although he recalled feeling “baffled” by what was taking place, he did “realize that something socially significant was happening” and began to take copious notes (Reddick, ). Throughout and , as his notes materialized into a manuscript for a book, Reddick became friends with Martin Luther King, Jr., while conducting interviews with the bus boycott leader.
In his biography of King, Crusader without Violence (), Reddick called King a “national asset,” claiming that King “symbolizes an idea that meets a fundamental need of our times. His way is needed in the painful transition through which the South is presently passing, and his way is needed by the American nation in a divided world” (Reddick, –).
Diarmuid lawrence biography of martin luther king day 2025 By , the years of demonstrations and confrontations were beginning to wear on King. His lengthy absences became a way of life for their children, but Martin III remembered his father returning from the road to join the kids playing in the yard or bring them to the local YMCA for swimming. Among the discoveries was a memo suggesting that King had encouraged the rape of a parishioner in a hotel room as well as evidence that he might have fathered a daughter with a mistress. Reddick Introduction by Derryn E.For more than a decade, Reddick chronicled the events of the civil rights movement and assisted King in writing many of his public statements and speeches.
Born in Jacksonville, Florida, Reddick received his BA () and MA () from Fisk University, and his PhD () in history from the University of Chicago. Upon earning his PhD, Reddick was named curator of the Schomburg Collection of Negro Literature at the New York Public Library.
Before joining the faculty at Alabama State College in , Reddick taught at a number of colleges, including Atlanta University and the New School for Social Research.
In King appointed Reddick chairman of the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) History Committee, to record the events of the bus protest. Having completed his own account of the bus boycott for the spring issue of Dissent, Reddick later agreed to help King recount the events for Stride Toward Freedom ().
Reddick accompanied King and his wife Coretta Scott King on their month-long India trip in On the way the group stopped briefly in Paris, where Reddick introduced the Kings to Richard Wright.
Of that meeting, Reddick wrote: “Coretta and I threw in a point now and then but we were content to observe the giants in intellectual action. Both were short and brown-skinned but Dick was intense, always reaching for a thought or phrase while Martin was relaxed and un-spirited” (Papers ). Once they arrived in India Reddick meticulously recorded the events of the trip.
Biography of john knox In September , King survived an attempt on his life when a woman with mental illness stabbed him in the chest as he signed copies of his book Stride Toward Freedom in a New York City department store. Martin stepped in as pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church upon the death of his father-in-law in The SCLC helped conduct nonviolent protests to promote civil rights reform. In other projects.The publication of Crusader without Violence followed the trip.
In January King praised Reddick for being a “friend, not only to me and to Coretta, but to our total movement” (Papers ). Reddick, however, paid a high price for supporting the movement, when he was fired from his post as chair of the Alabama State College History Department by President H.
Councill Trenholm at the request of Governor John Patterson. In Reddick’s defense, King released a statement extolling the historian’s “unswerving devotion to the ideals of American democracy, and his basic commitment to the ethical principles of the Christian faith.” He further admonished Governor Patterson and the State of Alabama for sinking to “a new low” by “seeking to bring a halt to the creative movement for human rights by making an example of a man who has committed no crime” (King, 16 June ).
Reddick was fired in June His colleagues, English teachers and MIA stalwarts Mary Fair Burks and Jo Ann Robinson, resigned at the close of the spring semester.
The following fall Reddick began teaching at Coppin State Teachers College in Baltimore, Maryland.
Diarmuid lawrence biography of martin luther king Representative John Conyers Jr. In the spring of , King organized a demonstration in downtown Birmingham, Alabama. It was in this Gandhian emphasis on love and nonviolence that I discovered the method for social reform that I had been seeking. King, Jr.Although no longer in Alabama, Reddick continued to work with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, providing content for the organization’s newsletter. In addition, Reddick continued to offer King suggestions on his public statements. After it was announced that King would receive the Nobel Peace Prize in , Reddick wrote King, offering ideas for his acceptance speech.
“I believe that you would want to say that you accept the award for the thousands of Negro Americans and their white friends who have struggled for equality and democracy in America but have resolutely done so nonviolently” (Reddick, 25 November ). Reddick further suggested that King connect the civil rights struggle with the international liberation struggle by referring to the peace work in South Africa done by Nobel laureate Albert Lutuli.
In his acceptance speech, King wrote: “You honor the dedicated pilots of our struggle, who have sat at the controls as the freedom movement soared into orbit.
You honor, once again, Chief Lutuli of South Africa, whose struggles with and for his people, are still met with the most brutal expression of man’s inhumanity to man” (King, “Acceptance Address for the Nobel Peace Prize,” ).
In Reddick accepted a position teaching African American history at Dillard University in New Orleans.
He retired in , after 40 years of teaching. Following his death in the Association of Third World Studies honored Reddick’s academic contributions by establishing the Lawrence Dunbar Reddick Memorial Scholarship Award.
Footnotes
Introduction, in Papers ; , 4,
King, “Acceptance Address for the Nobel Peace Prize,” in A Call to Conscience, ed.
Carson and Shepard,
King, Address Delivered during “A Salute to Dr. and Mrs. Martin Luther King,” at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, 31 January , in Papers –
King, Statement on the firing of Reddick, 16 June , MLKP-MBU.
King to Mary Fair Burks, 5 April , in Papers –
Reddick, “The Bus Boycott in Montgomery,” Dissent 3 (Spring ): 1–
Reddick, Crusader without Violence,
Reddick to King, 25 November , MLKJP-GAMK.