With Martin Luther King Jr. Day approaching, people are picking up biographies and watching documentaries about his life, absorbing as much of his history as they can.

Political science professor Kevin Anderson said King, an ordained Baptist minister with a doctorate in theology, was practically “drafted” by members of the civil rights protest movement once Rosa Parks was arrested in 1955.

King seemed like the perfect man to lead protests following Parks’ arrest because he was a new community member in Montgomery; other protesters understood that leading such a movement might mean losing their jobs or damaging their reputations, he said.

From 1955 until his death in 1968, King led a number of marches at cities such as Chicago, Atlanta, Birmingham and the country’s capitol just to name a few, he said.

In fact, professor of history Martin Hardeman said he had the opportunity to meet King during one of his speeches at Chicago.

During King’s demonstration at Chicago in 1966, Hardeman said he and a few of his friends merged with the large crowd to shake hands with the civil rights leader.

The timing was just about perfect; Hardeman and his fellow classmates had just enough time between classes to meet him, he said.

Hardeman said King greeted him, his friends and the rest of the crowd, and he shook Hardeman’s hand before he left to engage with the other listeners.

“There’s something nifty about encountering the famous; it’s not like they’re six feet tall or orange or anything, it’s just that for an instant you contact someone who helped make history,” he said.

Even though his brush with King was brief, he said he would describe the meeting as an encounter with someone so much more influential and impactful than any celebrity spotting.

Even though he never advocated violence, Anderson said King had been arrested many times during his activism.

Something he and other protestors would often do was something called “sit-ins,” Anderson said.

A “sit-in” was a nonviolent approach to draw attention to the oppressive segregation laws that existed in public places, such as restaurants, he said.

King and other protestors would visit restaurants that did not serve black people, and after they were asked to leave, they would instead peacefully sit until they were arrested for trespassing, he said.

Nonviolent resistance was central to King’s protests, and some activists did not agree with this method, he said.

During just one of his many prison sentences, King wrote the famous “Letter From a Birmingham Jail” from his cell as a response to a critical letter for him that was published in the local newspaper, Anderson said.

In King’s letter, Anderson said he described why he was willing to go to jail for his cause; he stated that American laws were unfair if they only pertained to one group, which they did, and he would gladly become imprisoned over and over again for resisting nonviolently if it meant the laws might change.

Of all King’s speeches, perhaps the most acclaimed was his March for Jobs on Washington in 1963, he said.

This was the speech in which King said four words that lit a fire under the American people, Anderson said.

Something not well known, Anderson said, is that King’s famous four-letter declaration was not as planned as people may think.

King had used the thematic phrase “I have a dream” in several speeches before, Anderson said, and his aids urged him not to use it for the March for Jobs speech, but an acquaintance in the audience changed King’s mind.

“A gospel singer named Mahalia Jackson, a wonderful, talented singer, (heard) King before. Mahalia Jackson is sitting not far from the podium (at the Lincoln Memorial), and as King is speaking, she sort of yells out at him, saying, “Tell ‘em about the dream, Martin. Tell ‘em about the dream,’” Anderson said.

King then decided to deviate from his original text, bring back his “I have a dream” phrase and the rest became history, Anderson said.

“(The speech) is significant because (King) connects the push for civil rights to the general idea of American political thought. He’s arguing that this push for equality is not only consistent for American political thought, it’s essential for American political thought,” he said.

Anderson said King’s assassination in 1968 left America grieving, confused and shocked.

King was by no means universally loved, Anderson said, but his sudden death brought forward some of the worst in people, and it also brought to light an important fact about civil rights and civil debate in America: there is a big difference between “I disagree” and violence.

When it comes to King’s national holiday, Anderson said he thinks a good way to celebrate King and his contributions to the civil rights movement could be as simple as reflecting on one’s life, or pursuing something one is passionate about, because that was, in essence, what King did in his life.

“Is there something I can do? Is there something that I’m willing to do for a cause? I think that would be a great sort of honor to him, to sort of reflect on something that’s important and act on it,” he said.

Logan Raschke can be reached at 581-2812 or [email protected].