ABSTRACT
No one made a greater impact upon the struggle for racial justice in America than Martin Luther King, Jr. Before King, America was a contented segregated society—de jure in the South and de facto in the North. The idea of racial equality and freedom was a marginal issue in American life, seldom mentioned by government officials and other public figures, and largely confined to the legal work of the NAACP and the academic writings of a few scholars. Martin King changed all that. Through his civil rights activity, public speeches, and writings, he placed the problem of race at the center of American life and forced this nation to acknowledge racism as its greatest moral dilemma.
