Martin Luther King, Jr.

Africa is arguably, in view of its Diaspora, one of the most riveting continents in the history of humankind, especially in view of the institution of slavery and the slave trade. Africa’s struggle for freedom spanned the years of its initial contact with Europeans and persists to this day in many significant ways. The forms and dynamics of the struggle are many. In Africa it was a struggle for decolonization and independence and in the United States and elsewhere it was about equal rights of citizenship, freedom, dignity, social justice, and natural rights. In the Americas and the Caribbean the struggle continued unabated for about 400 years, but it reached its greatest intensity in the 1950s and 1960s during the American Civil Rights Movement. The movement was the culmination and epicenter of the American struggle for the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Although localized in the United States, the Civil Rights Movement had a worldwide appeal and relevance. King’s formative experiences and philosophy relative to social justice, equality, and freedom for African Americans also had important implications for Africa’s struggles for decolonization and independence, as they rested on universal human rights principles and implicit in these is the conceptualization of Africa by King. But these rights were denied African Americans and Africans alike and needed to be restored. Hence, King’s effort in America was inextricably linked to the struggle in Africa, where his courage and effort made him popular among African leaders and in whose arduous struggle and notable successes in places like Nigeria and Ghana manifested cross-cutting kindred inspiration. This chapter utilizes the qualitative (explanatory and historical analysis) method to review King’s formative experiences and philosophy vis-à-vis his conceptualization of the fight for freedom as a common struggle for all peoples of color everywhere.