Martin Luther King, Jr.

Religion

One of the world’s best-known advocates of nonviolent social change. King was born in Atlanta, Georgia. As a student at Morehouse College in Atlanta, at Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania, and at Boston University, he deepened his understanding of theological scholarship and of Mahatma Gandhi’s nonviolent strategy for social change. He became pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1954 and received a Ph.D. in theology in 1955.

In December 1955, after Montgomery civil rights activist Rosa Parks refused to obey the city’s policy mandating segregation on buses, black residents launched a bus boycott and elected King as president of the newly formed Montgomery Improvement Association, gaining him national prominence for his exceptional oratorical skills and personal courage. His house was bombed, and he and other boycott leaders were convicted on charges of conspiring to interfere with the bus company’s operations. But, in December 1956, Montgomery’s buses were desegregated when the Supreme Court declared Alabama’s segregation laws unconstitutional.

In 1957, seeking to build upon the success in Montgomery, King and other black ministers founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). As president, King emphasized the goal of black voting rights when he spoke at the Lincoln Memorial during the 1957 Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom. He traveled to West Africa to attend the independence celebration of Ghana and toured India, increasing his understanding of Gandhi’s ideas. At the end of 1959, he resigned from Dexter and returned to Atlanta where the SCLC headquarters were located.

Although increasingly portrayed as the preeminent black spokesman, King did not mobilize mass protest activity during SCLC’s first few years. Then southern black college students launched a wave of sit-in protests in 1960. Although King sympathized with their movement and spoke at the founding meeting of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee SNCC in April 1960, he soon became the target of criticisms from SNCC activists. Even King’s joining a student sit-in and his subsequent arrest in October 1960 did not allay the tensions. (After the arrest, presidential candidate John F. Kennedy’s sympathetic telephone call to King’s wife, Coretta Scott King, helped attract crucial black support for Kennedy’s campaign.)

King and his staff then initiated a major campaign in Birmingham, Alabama, where white police officials were notorious for their anti-black attitudes. In 1963, clashes between unarmed black demonstrators and police with attack dogs and fire hoses generated newspaper headlines throughout the world. Subsequent mass demonstrations in many communities culminated in a march on August 28, 1963, attracting more than 250,000 protesters to Washington, D.C. Addressing the marchers from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, King delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” oration.

During the year following the march, King’s renown as a nonviolent leader grew, and, in 1964, he received the Nobel Peace Prize. Despite the accolades, however, King faced strong challenges to his leadership. In 1966, King encountered strong criticism from “black power” proponent Stokely Carmichael. Shortly afterward, white counter-protestors in Chicago physically assaulted King during an unsuccessful effort to transfer nonviolent protest techniques to the North. Nevertheless, King remained committed to nonviolence.

King’s ability to achieve his objectives was also limited by the increasing resistance he encountered from national political leaders. As urban racial violence escalated, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover intensified his efforts to discredit King, and King’s public criticism of American intervention in the Vietnam War soured his relations with the Johnson administration. He delivered his last speech during a bitter sanitation workers’ strike in Memphis on April 3, 1968. The following evening, April 4, he was assassinated.

After his death, King remained a controversial symbol of the civil rights struggle, revered by many for his martyrdom on behalf of nonviolence and condemned by others for his insurgent views. In 1986, King’s birthday, January 15, became a federal holiday.

Marvin Gaye

The Arts

Born in 1939, Marvin Pentz Gay, Jr. was a rebel. He resisted the iron fist rules of his minister father and suffered through the beatings that were meant to keep him in line. He began singing in his father’s church and also sang in various local groups including the Moonglows. In 1960 he moved to Detroit and found work as a Motown sessions drummer. Gaye was Motown’s most successful male solo act. He racked up more hits than anyone else there. The label’s leading sex symbol, he was paired with Mary Wells and then Kim Weston, but the duet concept didn’t catch on until 1967 when he joined Tammi Terrell.

The duo had six R&B chart toppers with their smoky sexual chemistry that had listeners convinced they were lovers. Unfortunatley, Tammi was diagnosed with a brain tumor after she collapsed on stage into Marvin’s arms. She died 2 years later and Marvin was never the same. After her death, he went into seclusion, coming out four years later to record an album with Diana Ross..but the chemistry wasn’t the same. Marvin was shot to death by his father while he was trying to stop his dad from beating his long suffering mother. He was 45.

Mary McLeod Bethune

Places

Born on July 10, 1875 in Mayesville, South Carolina, Mary McLeod Bethune ranks high among great women in America. The last of seventeen children of sharecroppers, Mary Bethune lifted herself from the cotton field to the White House as an advisor to the President of the United States. Her greatest accomplishment, however, was almost single-handedly building Bethune-Cookman College in 1923.

With only one dollar and fifty cents, nerve and determination, she set out to build a school for the Blacks who were working in the railroad labor camps in Florida. Slowly the school emerged from old crate boxes and odd rooms of old houses near the Daytona Beach City Dump. Bethune served as the school’s president until 1942. Today Bethune-Cookman graduates thousands. In 1935, she received the NAACP Springarn Medal as a symbol of distinguished achievement. Also in 1935, President Roosevelt appointed her national director of the National Youth Administration’s Division of Negro Affairs. She died on May 18, 1955 in Daytona Beach, Florida.

Meredith Gourdine

Science

Meredith C. Gourdine was born in Newark, New Jersey on September 26, 1929. He received a B.S. in Engineering Physics from Cornell University in 1953 and a Ph.D. in Engineering Physics from the California Institute of Technology in 1960. Dr. Gourdine pioneered the research of electrogasdynamics. He was responsible for the engineering technique termed Incineraid for aiding in the removal of smoke from buildings. His work on gas dispersion developed techniques for dispersing fog from airport runways. Dr. Gourdine served on the Technical Staff of the Ramo-Woolridge Corporation from 1957-58. He then became a Senior Research Scientist at the Caltech Jet Propulsion Laboratory from 1958-60. He became a Lab Director of the Plasmodyne Corporation from 1960-62 and Chief Scientist of the Curtiss-Wright Corporation from 1962 to 1964. Dr. Gourdine established a research laboratory, Gourdine Laboratories, in Livingston, New Jersey, with a staff of over 150. Dr. Gourdine has been issued several patents on gasdynamic products as a result of his work. Dr. Gourdine served as president of Energy Innovation, Inc. of Houston, Texas.

Creole Sauce

Appetizer, Other, Recipes

Ingredients
1 c. chopped carrots
1 c. chopped onions
1/2 c. chopped celery
1 qt. clam juice
1 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. marjoram
1/4 tsp. tarragon
3/4 tsp. thyme
2 bay leaves
1 tbsp. garlic
1/2 c. white wine (Taylor Chardonnay)
1 lb. can tomato paste
Cayenne pepper

Preparation:
Saute carrots, onion and celery together in butter (or olive oil, preferred). Add flour and saute to cook roux, stirring constantly. Add clam juice, herbs, garlic and wine. Simmer about 15 to 20 minutes. Add tomato paste to thicken. Serve with shrimp, scallops, etc.