Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s account of the first successful large-scale application of nonviolent resistance in America is comprehensive, revelatory, and intimate. King described his book as "the chronicle of 50,000 Negroes who took to heart the principles of nonviolence, who learned to fight for their rights with the weapon of love, and who, in the process, acquired a new estimate of their own human worth." Stride Toward Freedom traces the phenomenal journey of a community and shows how the twenty-six-year-old King, with his conviction for equality and nonviolence, helped transform the nation and the world.
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"Martin Luther King's early words return to us today with enormous power, as profoundly true, as wise and inspiring, now as when he wrote them fifty years ago."
— Howard Zinn, author of A People's History of the United States
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) was born in Atlanta, Georgia, the son and grandson of pastors. He graduated from Morehouse College and Crozer Theological Seminary, becoming the pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama at age twenty-five. He subsequently earned his PhD from Boston University. In 1957, he and other civil rights leaders founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization he led until his death. A proponent of Gandhian principles of nonviolence, he led many protests and demonstrations for civil rights, including the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 29, 1963, where he delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. Winner of the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize, he continued to fight for civil rights, the eradication of poverty, and the end of the Vietnam War. He was assassinated on April 4, 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee.
JD Jackson is a theater professor, aspiring stage director, and award-winning audiobook narrator. He is a classically trained actor, and his television and film credits include roles on House, ER, Law & Order, Hack, Sherrybaby, Diary of a City Priest, and Lucky Number Slevin. He is the recipient of more than a dozen Earphones Awards for narration and an Odyssey Honor for G. Neri’s Ghetto Cowboy, and he was also named one of AudioFile magazine’s Best Voices of the Year for 2012 and 2013. An adjunct professor at Los Angeles Southwest College, he has an MFA in theater from Temple University.