MLK’s International Influence: A Hidden Legacy

By Aswad Walker | Word In Black (WIB) – Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK) is mostly known for his role in the U.S. Civil Rights Movement; a movement for which he lived, fought, and died. However, the impact of MLK’s message and mission extended – and continues to extend – far beyond these American shores. “[Dr. King] applied an ethical framework of compassion and nonviolence to his theories and action in the international community,” said Marcus King, director of George Washington University’s Elliott School’s international affairs master’s program. Exposure to Global Issues King was the moderator of a 2019 forum on MLK where Dr. Robert M. Franklin, a former president of Morehouse, former head of Emory University’s Candler School of Theology, and professor of theology and social justice at both institutions, spoke. Franklin shared that MLK was exposed to international happenings in part by “an extensive roster of speakers who visited Morehouse’s chapel, including Eleanor Roosevelt and Howard University’s first African American president Mordecai Wyatt Johnson,” wrote Tatyana Hopkins for GW Today Moreover, the mentorship of Dr. Benjamin Mays and Dr. Howard Thurman, influenced a young MLK to see himself as a citizen of the world. Decades before...