Making a Way Out of No Way: Martin Luther King's Use of Proverbs for Civil Rights

About

For more than ten years Wolfgang Mieder has made the study of proverbs in political discourse one of his major research areas, particularly the role of proverbs at critical moments in American history. In this lecture he discusses his research for his most recent book, "Making a Way Out of No Way: Martin Luther King's Sermonic Proverbial Rhetoric" (2010). In barely 40 years of life, King (1929-1968) distinguished himself as one of the greatest social reformers of modern times. A vast array of biographies and studies have celebrated him as a civil rights leader, a defender of nonviolence in the struggle for desegregation, a champion of the poor, an antiwar proponent, and a broad-minded visionary. As King struggled proverbially to make a way out of no way for African Americans and others, proverbial communication became part of his nonviolent strategy to bring about social, economic, and political change. As he fought with words and deeds for a better world, he relied to an impressive extent on proverbs to add expressiveness to his powerful messages.

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Library of Congress

Language

English

Country

United States

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