MLK legacy: Gaining a voice in democracy

Imagine a year in which you are invited to the White House to meet with a sitting president, your daughter is born, you are arrested and placed in solitary confinement, you deliver a historic and nationally televised speech, and you are named person of the year by Time Magazine. That was Martin Luther King's year in 1963! In 1963, at the age of just 34, Martin Luther King was considered by many to be the moral leader of the civil rights movement. He was an ordained clergyman, a gifted orator, a labor activist and an accomplished scholar with a doctorate from Boston University. He also was considered by many to be a revolutionary, a radical and, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, an enemy of the United States. By all accounts, Martin Luther King was a complicated and controversial figure.