MY INTEREST IN MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. • For most of my life, like most Americans, I have had tremendous respect for Martin Luther King, Jr. (MLK). But it wasn’t until 2017 that I had a big “aha”. It started with my 2015 visit to the presidential library of Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ) in Austin, Texas. In the midst of many moving exhibits of LBJ, one section contained stories from the 1960’s and the Civil Rights Movement led by MLK. Two years later, I happened to visit another presidential library; this time it was John F. Kennedy’s library in Boston, Massachusetts. At JFK’s library, there was a large exhibit all about MLK and his leadership of the Civil Rights Movement. Before finishing my day at JFK’s library, I came to realize that although he was not a U.S. president, there was MLK — playing a central role in the storylines of two presidents, JFK and LBJ. I later came to the conclusion that Martin Luther King, Jr. was not only a remarkable figure in American history, but that he was the most consequential American of the entire 20th century.

Nevertheless, my friendship with MLK was really cemented quite recently, in 2020. That was the year I read MLK’s first book, Stride Toward Freedom, which told the story from the very beginning of what eventually became known as the Civil Rights Movement. It all started with the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955. As I read his book, I felt I got to know MLK as a human being. And I began to understand his mind and his heart — to understand how deeply he thought through what was going on around him, how deeply he felt that the Montgomery miracle was the result of the call of Jesus Christ to love one’s enemies, and how God worked through Black people to give them a new sense of dignity and destiny.