Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy for today: Stanford Institute director to speak at Whitworth
News Story by Kali Nelson | FāVS News
Award-winning author, historian and scholar Lerone Martin will discuss Martin Luther King Jr.’s continuing relevance for a just society in the free talk “A King for Our Time” on Feb. 26 at 7 p.m.
“My involvement in this, in many ways, goes back to my childhood,” Martin said. “I was raised in a home where my parents talked and debated religion and politics fairly often. They were both Protestant Christians but had very different ideas about religion and politics.”
He thought everyone discussed religion and politics in a civil manner, much like his parents, until he grew older. He decided to pursue those same themes as an academic and will bring both politics and religion into the fore in his talk on King.
“The aim is to really present Kings’ ideals in their context, and then how they are still very relevant to us today, and some strategies and ways that we can engage with those ideas and continue the movement for justice and equality,” Martin said.
He was invited to speak about King by Whitworth University’s Weyerhaeuser Center for Christian Faith & Learning in partnership with Whitworth’s Office of Church Engagement, Office of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, and Speakers & Artists.
David Henreckson, the director of the Weyerhaeuser Center, said the talk was planned to honor Black History Month.
“We hope the event honors the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., not merely as a historical figure, but as an exemplar for our own contemporary pursuit of racial and economic justice,” Henreckson said.
Martin earned a master’s of divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary and a doctorate in religion in U.S. History from Emory University.
He is an award-winning author and published “The Gospel of J. Edgar Hoover: How the FBI Aided and Abetted the Rise of White Christian Nationalism” in 2023. The book received accolades from several publications, including The Nation, Foreign Affairs, The Guardian, Publisher’s Weekly and History Today.
Martin is the Martin Luther King Jr. Centennial professor, professor of Religious Studies of African and African American Studies and Nina C. Crocker Faculty Scholar. He is the director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University.
His work at the Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute includes presenting the writings of Martin Luther King Jr. to the public. He is the second person to hold the position after he took over for Clayborne Carson, a professor of history at Stanford University and worked with Coretta Scott King to establish the institute in 1986.
The free talk will be held at Weyerhaeuser Hall’s Robinson Teaching Theatre at the Whitworth campus, 300 W. Hawthorne Road.
