Young King: The Making of Martin Luther King Jr.

From a preeminent King scholar, the origin story of the man, minister, and civil rights hero who would lead the nation and change the world.

We know who Martin Luther King Jr. became, but who was he at the beginning of his life? How did his youth inform his outlook and activism?

Before Martin Luther King Jr. was a civil rights leader, a Nobel Laureate, and a global icon, he was an emotional boy and a middling high school student devoted to fashion, dancing, and dating. Lerone A. Martin, Faculty Director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University, traces these roots to develop a fuller understanding of the influential preacher’s emotional life, his youthful uncertainty about his future, his teenage missteps, and his growing inspiration to fight for justice.

Revelatory, humanizing, and compassionate, Young King explores:

• MLK’s childhood on Auburn Avenue: his days as “Little Mike”—an eager middle child and prankster—spent at Ebenezer Baptist Church and the Auburn Avenue Library in Atlanta
• Early encounters with racism: his first experiences of segregation and summers spent on a Connecticut tobacco farm, including his first trips outside the Jim Crow South
• College life at Morehouse: his transformative years studying sociology, playing basketball, hosting parties, and joining the Ministers’ Union
• Path to seminary and activism: his winding journey into seminary, the development of his activist consciousness, his spiritual devotion, and his relationship with Coretta Scott

As America undergoes another era of turmoil and change, this powerful biography offers a vital roadmap for how greatness comes into focus. Young King is a testament to how history shapes a leader.

The book also includes rarely seen black-and-white photographs of Martin Luther King Jr. during his high school and college years.