Martin Luther King, Jr is one of the iconic figures of 20th century history, and one of the most influential and important in the American Civil Rights Movement. John Kirk here presents the life of Martin Luther King in the context of that movement, placing him at the center of the Afro-American fight for equality and recognition.

This book combines the insights from two fields of study seeking to combine the "top down” national federal policy-oriented approach to the movement with the "bottom up” local grassroots activism approach to demonstrate how these different levels of activism intersect and interact with each other.