When I was just entering
my freshman year of college an English professor handed out a sheet about
plagiarism. The policy of the school was on it, different forms of plagiarism were listed and right smack in the middle of the page was the name of Martin Luther King Jr.,
the most famous plagiarist of them all.
King
plagiarized his way through college on paper after paper at both
Boston University and
Crozer Theological Seminary. Theologian
Edgar S. Brightman was one victim of this 'great' man's transgressions as he pulled large chunks of text from
The Finding of God and plopped them straight into his essay
The Place of Reason and Experience in Finding God. Another victim of King's
cut and paste education was
Walter Marshall Horton.
The first sermon King gave in 1947 at the Ebenezer Baptist Church was full of non-original material,
a slap in the face to reverends, pastors and preachers of all types who spend hours coming up with original material each week, as was his first book
Stride Toward Freedom.
The final blow to King's reputation as
a pillar of virtue is the blatant stealing of text from
Dr. Jack Boozer's Ph.D. dissertation,
The Place of Reason in Paul Tillich's Concept of God for his own doctoral thesis titled
A Comparison of the Conceptions of God in the Thinking of Paul Tillich and Harry Nelson Wieman.
The
blame doesn't sit square on the shoulders of King or his wife,
Coretta Scott King, who aided in his plagiarism while serving as his secretary, but also on the shoulders of those professors who didn't root out the crime, or worse, turned a blind eye. Theorists say
it was because he was black that they overlooked the infraction and lack of quality in papers that were more 'summary' than true research papers. They needed the minorities, he was an ambitious black man and it was
politically correct to overlook the sub-par papers.
The question becomes if
he cheated his way through school what titles that are so commonly slapped in front of his name does he deserve to retain? You may have noticed, as I have, that over the years 'Doctor' appears less and less before his name. As the knowledge of his less than admirable behavior spreads and is affirmed
people are reluctant to give him this respected title that he never truly earned.
At an early age American children are taught that there are few people worth emulating and Martin Luther King is one of them. He is the moral standard presented again and again each year. When the knowledge of his less than admirable actions are learned later in life there are varying reactions.
For some King's memory is somewhat tarnished by these less than reputable actions. It's not that the things he did for Civil Rights are forgotten or that his plagiarism stands alone as his legacy, just that the icon he once presented no longer stands so brilliantly revered. The ideal he once represented no longer remains tethered to this man, it stands alone - we all have the dream. We all strive to see that dream come to fruition, with or without a visible icon representing that ideal.
For others the knowledge of King's stolen education and the allegations of spousal abuse don't matter. It's secondary to the image of the Civil Rights leader they've been ingrained with all their lives. What does it matter if he took someone else's words for
his own, or hit his wife, when he led the way in non-violent protests in America and paved the way for equality?
The topic of King's less than admirable history is one that incites a great deal of controversy. In the posting of this node I discovered two noders very passionate about the non-importance of this information in light of King's Civil Rights works. I believe the terms they used to describe me included "wack" "idiot" and "misguided." I also discovered three noders who believe the 'tarnishing' does occur and he shouldn't be held up to the heights of greatness that he is. In the words of one supporter "Fuck em if they wanna live in denial. If that shit were about George W. they'd be eating it up."
References:
"King's Plagiarism: Imitation, Insecurity and Transformation," The Journal of American History, June 1991, p. 87
Holiday for a Cheater, by Michael Hoffman