Episode Transcript
[00:00:05] Hello, hello, hello everyone. Welcome back to Weird World Adventures, the podcast. I'm your host, Mallory. I'm here to show you just how weird this world of ours really is.
[00:00:15] If you guys haven't tuned in before, be sure to check out mallorysadventures.com where we post lots of wonderfully weird content about our world and the traditions and cultures it holds.
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[00:00:34] Alright, so it's the end of January and it was just Martin Luther King Day this week. So I thought it would be fun to share some facts about Martin Luther King Jr. That you probably didn't know. I know I did not know most of these. I haven't even read them all. I like to read them cold because it's more fun for the reaction. But I did skim ahead a little bit and I didn't know most of them. And I will say I apologize in advance for the raspy voice. I am sick for the fifth time this year. The wonders of the preschool plagues.
[00:01:06] And in a nice big giant Snuggie. I thought that would be a fun little addendum here as we talk about Martin Luther King Jr. And some interesting facts you probably didn't know about him. Let's get started.
[00:01:20] So his original name was not actually Martin.
[00:01:25] His given name was Michael, after his father, Reverend Michael King Sr.
[00:01:31] Apparently his father attended an international Baptist conference in Germany when he became inspired by the teachings of the 16th century Religious thinker Martin Luther.
[00:01:42] And then he changed both his and his son's name after coming back from Germany. At the time, Michael King was already five years old. So he remained Mike to his closest friends and family for the rest of his life.
[00:01:56] Obviously, everyone knows he was passionate about fighting for racial justice, but he also was this person doing that from a very young age.
[00:02:04] In his autobiography, he recounted his first personal experience with racism and segregation as a child. His white friends suddenly refused to play with him and it created a betrayal as the moment he first became interested in fighting against racism. I mean, that's a very horrible personal thing to have to go through at such a young age. So I totally get that he was kicked out of first grade and ended up skipping two more years of school. Later on, he was enrolled in first grade at the age of five, which was too young per the school's entry requirements, so his teacher expelled him.
[00:02:41] According to Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Educational Institute at Stanford, they're the ones who made that claim.
[00:02:48] Years later he was able to Skip both the 9th and 12th grades because of his academic achievements.
[00:02:54] He was enrolled in college when he was only 15 years old.
[00:02:58] Instead of finishing 12th grade and going through a formal high school graduation, he was accepted into and enrolled at Morehorse College at the age of 50, where he completed a bachelor's degree in sociology and appropriately, one of his first jobs was working for a newspaper. His work ethic led to a promotion and he became the youngest assistant manager for the Atlanta Journal delivery station at the age of 13 years old.
[00:03:25] I did not know that he was always a natural in front of a crowd. That checks out. He's one of the greatest speakers of all time.
[00:03:35] His public speaking date back to his teenage years when he won an oratory contest in Georgia for speaking on the topic titled the Negro and the Constitution when he was a teenager.
[00:03:47] He wasn't always steadfast in his faith. Although he would later become a religious leader, as a teenager, he had a very different view of faith. In his autobiography, he wrote that he wasn't afraid to openly question everything he had been taught, even when it got him into trouble.
[00:04:04] He said in his own autobiography that the age of 13 he shocked his Sunday school teacher by denying the bodily resurrection of Jesus.
[00:04:14] He was not inspired to become a minister until college. He didn't always plan on following his father's footsteps and becoming a minister, however. According to the research foundation, after he took a bible course with Dr. George Kelsey, he was inspired to use ministry as a medium for social justice and racism reform.
[00:04:34] He was the valedictorian of his class at Crozer Theological Seminary.
[00:04:41] He earned his PhD in Systematic Theology at Boston University, and he was also awarded at least 20 honorary degrees in his later years.
[00:04:52] As if earning three degrees as a student wasn't enough, he was awarded honorary doctorates from Howard University, Bard College, Yale Wesleyan and many other higher education institutes across the United States and the world.
[00:05:11] Interesting throughout his life, King was a voracious reader. He enjoyed delving into the works of great philosophers and thinkers such as Socrates, Rousseau and Aristotle. But of all the great texts that influenced him, the essay Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau was the most impactful.
[00:05:29] According to his autobiography, he said Thoreau's belief that an individual should not cooperate with an evil system greatly influenced his worldview.
[00:05:39] It's very interesting because I like a lot of Henry David Thoreau. I know a lot of people that don't, but I do.
[00:05:45] He met his future wife over the phone while studying at Boston University.
[00:05:51] He lamented to friends that he had yet to meet any woman he seriously liked. Then he reached out to his friend Mary Powell, who suggested he meet Coretta Scott. In 1952, they had their first interaction in a brief phone call, during which they agreed to meet in person.
[00:06:09] They had a very unusual honeymoon.
[00:06:13] They married on June 18, 1953, in Alabama.
[00:06:17] After enjoying a beautiful ceremony led by his father, the couple looked for a place to stay. At the time, no hotels in the area welcomed black couples as guests, so they spent their first night together at a family's friend's house. But he happened to also be an undertaker who worked out of his home. That sounds like a honeymoon I'd be interested in.
[00:06:39] Talk about weird and unusual.
[00:06:42] He called Boston his second home. He returned to New England several times throughout the rest of his life after spending many young adult years in Boston.
[00:06:53] And of course, he never expected to become a civil rights leader.
[00:06:59] So the King family moved to Atlanta. From Atlanta to Montgomery, Alabama, when the famous 1956 bus boycott, a citywide protest against racialized segregation and public transit, began. At the time, he was only 26 years old and pretty much unknown in activism, Though he had previously expressed interest in social justice.
[00:07:19] He originally opposed the boycott because he was worried that it would be unethical to put people's jobs at risk.
[00:07:26] But when he realized the ultimate goal behind it, he volunteered to use his church's basement as a meeting spot for the boycott organizers.
[00:07:33] During the first meeting, the group elected King as their president because no one else volunteered to take on the role.
[00:07:40] He then wrote his first public political speech in less than an hour.
[00:07:45] And then, of course, throughout his career as an activist, he spoke at over 2,500 events and gave hundreds of addresses a year every year.
[00:07:58] That's a lot. It's estimated that between his weekly sermons at church and media appearances, he spoke about 450 times a year.
[00:08:08] Although the famed I have a Dream speech will always hold a special place in history, it certainly wasn't the only memorable address or quote that gets regularly circulated now that he delivered. During his life, he spoke all around the world, including countries such as India, Ghana, and England.
[00:08:27] And once he became the president of the Southern Christian leadership conference in 1967, he began traveling all over the world to deliver speeches about the importance of fighting for racial equality.
[00:08:39] He wrote six books, I Did Not Know that.
[00:08:42] His collective works include Stride Toward Freedom, Where Do We Go From Here, and why We Can't Wait, which all document the rise of civil rights movements in the United States.
[00:08:53] Additionally, he published A book of his most requested sermons and a collection of his broadcast addresses and an autobiography.
[00:09:02] He had a deep appreciation for gospel and jazz, and this naturally makes sense. I don't know about this being an interesting fact per se, but his political position became more radical over time, which just kind of makes sense because if you're pushing for a cause, the more resistance you see against it, the more passionate I feel like you become to push for that.
[00:09:26] His imprisonment helped get JFK elected.
[00:09:31] In October 1960, King was jailed for participating in a sit in protest at the Georgia department store. At the time, Senator JFK was running against Richard Nixon for presidency. Although Kennedy was a registered Democrat, his views on civil rights and racial justice had been very unclear up until that point.
[00:09:50] However, upon learning of the Reverend's unjust treatment by the police department, a key advisor told Kennedy that his response to the situation would determine his voter turnout. So. So as a result, Kennedy called Scott King and personally offered his support.
[00:10:06] Many historians credit this action to the large black voter turnout in 1960s in that election and led to Kennedy's eventual win.
[00:10:19] The most memorable part of his I have a Dream speech was not planned.
[00:10:24] During the 1967 March on Washington, King delivered a monumental speech. Obviously that had been well prepared by his speechwriter, Clarence Jones.
[00:10:33] But the more he spoke in front of this 250,000 person crowd, the more impassioned he grew, which led him to go off course towards the end of the speech. His famous lines, I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up, were actually improvised.
[00:10:50] Apparently he almost died years before his assassination.
[00:10:55] In 1958, a woman approached him at a book signing event in New York and stabbed him with a letter opener.
[00:11:02] The attack resulted in life threatening injuries and it was very close to his heart, but he received immediate emergency medical care and survived.
[00:11:13] You know, lots of people have fun conspiracies, and this one's interesting. Some people actually believed his last speech foreshadowed his death.
[00:11:22] The day before he was assassinated, he gave a speech in Memphis to offer support for sanitation workers who had received unfair treatment from their bosses.
[00:11:32] The goal of this address was to push for union representation and safer working conditions. As he told the crowd, and I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as people will get to the promised land. In the aftermath of his death, some people found the language he used to be an eerie indication that he knew his death was imminent and coming fast.
[00:11:57] His final conversation involved a very simple request.
[00:12:02] According to biographer and historian Taylor Branch. His final conversation was with a saxophonist named Ben Branch.
[00:12:11] The Reverend reportedly asked the musician to play his favorite song, the hymn Precious Lord, Take My Hand, at an event they were both scheduled to attend later that evening. However, King never got to hear Branch's rendition of the song. Moments after making the request, he was assassinated on the balcony outside his room. Someone else at the motel died on the day of his assassination.
[00:12:32] One of the staff members who worked at the Lorraine Motel where King was assassinated died shortly after he did. The motel owner's wife was so traumatized by the sight and sound of his death that it caused her to suffer from a fatal stress induced heart attack.
[00:12:49] Stevie Wonder wrote a song to honor the late activist. In the wake of his death in 68, several notable figures found ways to honor him and aid in the push for Martin Luther kingdom.
[00:13:00] By the 1970s, President Jimmy Carter pledged his support of the holiday, but the King Holiday Bill didn't pass in Congress. To help garner support in the following years, Stevie Wonder wrote and recorded his song Happy Birthday in honor of King.
[00:13:15] He also joined the Reverend's wife on a four month tour to advocate for the holiday.
[00:13:22] He is the only American other than George Washington whose birthday is a national holiday.
[00:13:29] Another really interesting fact, Martin Luther King Day is a big deal in Hiroshima.
[00:13:37] Interesting.
[00:13:38] So on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, thousands of Americans join parades, volunteer, or just take a few minutes to enjoy the legacy of a man devoted to peace.
[00:13:48] And odds are, at least a few people do in Japan, thanks to a former Hiroshima mayor who was also a Martin Luther King superfan.
[00:13:58] Apparently, Hiroshima is one of the only cities outside of North America to honor Martin Luther King Day.
[00:14:07] The relationship highlights a lesser known part of King's legacy as an anti nuclear activist. For decades, King spoke adamantly against the nuclear weapons that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki, saying that further use of such bombs would transform the world into an inferno that even the mind of Dante could not imagine.
[00:14:28] In a 1967 letter addressed to the people of Japan, he wrote, Japan knows the horror of war and has suffered as no other nation under the cloud of nuclear disaster.
[00:14:40] Certainly Japan can stand strong for a world of peace. He also wrote a desire to visit, expressing hope that his schedule will soon permit him to bring greetings from the goodwill and brotherhood of the United States.
[00:14:54] Tragically, he never made it there. Four months after he signed the letter, he was assassinated.
[00:15:00] It took 30 more years and a man named Tadochiti Akiba for the ties King established to be tightened.
[00:15:09] Born in Tokyo in 1942. Akiba traveled to the United States to get his graduate degree and stayed there for 18 years.
[00:15:17] After moving back into Japan, he entered politics and was elected the mayor of Hiroshima in 1999.
[00:15:25] He quickly threw himself into peace activism work and like his predecessors, he wrote protest letters to countries possessing nuclear weapons and became president of the Mayors for Peace.
[00:15:37] He often resurrected the words and teachings of Dr. King, drawing parallels between the fight for civil rights and the struggle for disarmament.
[00:15:45] He borrowed King's phrasing to explain an early project in which Hiroshima donated cherry blossoms to the United States in exchange for dogwood trees, saying he had a dream of diverse people and trees gathered together.
[00:15:58] As a featured speaker at a Martin Luther King Jr. Day tribute event in Washington, D.C. he detailed how he shared King's legacy with new generations in Japan.
[00:16:09] And he said, in Japan, we traditionally celebrate the coming of age for young people on January 15, Martin Luther King Jr. S birthday. He said, on that day I always tell our young people about the civil rights movement in the United States to impress upon them the importance of electoral politics and nonviolent social change.
[00:16:28] He also passed out booklets about King to the city's youth.
[00:16:33] This alliance worked well for Akiba because in his time with Mayors for Peace, he brought hundreds of new member cities and helped to pass a number of disarmament resolutions.
[00:16:44] Though he stepped down as mayor in 2011, his enthusiasm for Dr. King has left a legacy in Hiroshima, one that is reciprocated across the sea. When Americans seek a place to commemorate the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they often choose Washington D.C. 's Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, which is a foreground for much of the year by the cherry blossoms.
[00:17:08] He actually won a Grammy. After he died. One of the most controversial addresses that he gave went on to receive a high honor.
[00:17:18] The speech referred to as why I Oppose the War in Vietnam and also why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam was recorded on vinyl and earned him a post mortem Grammy for the best spoken word recording in 1970.
[00:17:33] And he's also still the youngest man to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.
[00:17:40] He's honored in cities all over the world. There are dozens of statues and monuments commemorating King across the US and the world, including one in England at Westminster Abbey and another in Cuba.
[00:17:52] This doesn't include the countless schools and 1,000 plus streets named after him across the globe.
[00:18:00] So I just think that's really fascinating. We wanted to honor Martin Luther King from Martin Luther King Day here for weird World Adventures.
[00:18:07] And I know it's a little bit late, but we release our podcast on Wednesday and Martin Luther King Day was Monday, so I hope you enjoyed these interesting facts. I know I did not know most of those.
[00:18:20] Thank you guys so much for tuning in today. Again, please visit MallorySadventures.com to learn more and make sure you watch Weird World Adventures on Amazon prime with Season two releasing any day here now. And tune in next week where we talk about Penguin Awareness Day.
[00:18:38] Thank you guys so much for tuning in. And until next time, everybody stay weird.
