Young King: The Making of Martin Luther King Jr.

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

Co-presented with KALW

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 hero, he was an emotional boy, a middling high school student devoted to fashion, dancing, and dating. Lerone A. Martin, Faculty Director of the Martin Luther King Institute at Stanford University, traces these roots to develop a fuller understanding of the influential preacher’s emotional life, his youthful confusion about his future and career direction, his teenage missteps, and his inspiration to fight for justice. In conversation with KALW's Sunni Khalid. FREE

Lerone A. Martin is the Martin Luther King, Jr., Centennial Professor in Religious Studies and director of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University. Dr. Martin is an internationally recognized award-winning author and public speaker. His writing and commentary have been featured on the Today show, the History Channel, PBS, NPR, and C-SPAN as well as in the New York Times and the Boston Globe. He currently serves as senior editor of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers Project and was an adviser on the PBS documentary series Gospel. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Sunni Khalid is the news editor at KALW. Before coming to KALW, Khalid worked more than 40 years in print, radio and television. From 1995-1997, Khalid was the Cairo bureau chief for NPR, traveling throughout the Middle East.