Remembering Martin Luther King

By Bill Kunkel

In a decade of momentous events and larger-than-life people, no one shaped the destiny of America in the '60s more powerfully than Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. A life-long advocate of non-violent social change in a time when instant solutions "by any means necessary" was the popular sentiment, Dr. King came to represent the responsible face of racial reconciliation for a generation.

A third-generation minister, Dr. King was not sympathetic to the more emotionally-driven forms of Christianity. He was far from a scriptural literalist, but he responded to the way his father, and men like him, had been able to use the church as a force for improving the fate of Black Americans. After receiving his doctorate from Boston University in 1955, King returned to the South to complete work on his Ph.D. and became pastor at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, where he became embroiled in the bus boycott following the Rosa Parks incident in that city. As president of the Montgomery Improvement Association, King gained national prominence, and the power of his personality and oratory won him an immediate following.

After the Supreme Court ordered the Montgomery buses desegregated, King sought to continue the momentum they had built by forming a group of Black ministers into the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). He spent the remainder of the 1950s growing in stature as both a man and a leader. As SCLC president, voting rights were his primary focus, but he maintained a fairly low profile, returning to Atlanta in 1959 to help his father at the Ebenezer Baptist Church.

When young black students launched a volley of sit-ins and other campus-based demonstration in 1960, King supported them publicly. He spoke at the inaugural meeting of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in April 1960 and even joined a sit-in (during which President Kennedy made a high-profile phone call to King's wife, Coretta Scott King), but to many of the younger protesters, Dr. King would always represent a voice on the other side of the generation gap.

King returned to the headlines in 1963 when he and his staff spearheaded a series of demonstration against institutionalized police racism in Birmingham, Alabama. The ugly battles in the streets between the unarmed protestors and police equipped with attack dogs, clubs, and fire hoses were recorded on the six o'clock news for the whole world to see. Galvanized by the violence, JFK submitted what would eventually become the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

But the day most Americans remember is August 28, 1963, with 250,000+ protesters jamming Washington, DC and the Capital Hill area. There, from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, King delivered the speech known commonly as "I Have a Dream." That was the turning point for Dr. King. In 1964, he was both Time magazine's Man of the Year and the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.

Passage of the Voting Rights Act followed in '65, but while King was making tremendous in-roads to the heart of white America, he was constantly coming into conflict with the headier young turks of the civil rights struggle. Black Power, the Black Panthers, and even a resurgence of the Back to Africa movement followed, with King taking heat from many sides. Black leaders such as Stokely Carmichael and Malcolm X felt his methods were ineffectual, while the Reverend's attempts to bring the non-violent protest paradigms which had worked so well in the South to industrialized Northern cities resulted in King being physically assaulted by white counter-protesters in Chicago. At the same time, supposed bastions of justice such as J. Edgar Hoover were busy spying on him and monitoring his activities, while King's vocal criticism of the Vietnam War earned him only enemies in the Johnson White House.

On April 4, 1968, King was assassinated while speaking from a motel balcony in Memphis. With the deaths of King and John and Robert Kennedy following within such a brief period of time, the nation seemed to be tearing itself apart. Riots followed in the wake of Dr. King's death, but in time, most of his dreams were realized. And he remains a symbol of hope and cooperation in the face of despair and divisiveness.

There is a wide array of collectibles associated with Dr. King, and they span a considerable price range. Few men were so frequently painted and photographed, and, as with any historical figure, there is always interest in his autograph, letters, and other documents pertinent to his life and times.

Perhaps the most humble, yet enduring Martin Luther King collectibles are the various buttons produced before and after his death. Several buttons are popular, including an exquisite "I Have a Dream" two-sided memorial pin from the Southern Christian Leadership. A more common collectible would be a button featuring Martin Luther King and Jesse Jackson from the 1984 Democratic National Convention.

Among the oddest King collectibles we find the Martin Luther King, Jr. Game from the Rapid Mounting and Finishing Company, Cadaco Division. Produced in 1986, it translates the Doctor's life into a board game! Then there's the Martin Luther King, Jr. and Family Paperdolls book, which was published by Tom Tierney, probably in the early '90s. This is a typical paper doll book and includes Dr. King, Coretta Scott King, and their four children with 29 outfits, highlighting clothes the Reverend wore during various historic moments in his life.

There are so many special portraits and commemorative items based on Dr. King that it's hard to know where to begin. There is at least one Martin Luther King Jr. Commemorative Plate from the late '60s that could be called "classic." It's a tin plate, eight-and-one-quarter inches in diameter, with a lithograph portrait of Dr. King on cardboard in the center! On the reverse side is a printed excerpt from Dr. King's last sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta.

But perhaps the most popular pieces of King memorabilia are the many church fans that bear his likeness. There are a great variety of these fans, and they can be obtained for fairly reasonable prices. Best of all, you can use them in church.

We think Reverend King would have liked that.

The preceding material was written by Bill Kunkel. These are the opinions of the author, not the opinions of eBay, and therefore eBay does not validate the accuracy of or endorse these opinions.