Monday, April 4, 2016

MLK Essay Contest Winners


Davis Library recently hosted a library tour for the Martin Luther King Jr. Essay Contest winners.

OhioLINK’s Biography Reference Bank provides biographical information on approximately half a million people, from antiquity to the present, along with thousands of images. 

The biographies are searchable by name, profession, title, place of origin, gender, and race/ethnicity, titles of works, date of birth, date of death, keyword, and presence of images. Daily updates provide up-to-the-minute coverage of newsmakers. 


Here is the abstract (article summary) for one gem:

Martin Luther King, Jr. consistently allowed Langston Hughes’s poem “Mother to Son” significant places in his public speeches and sermons from 1956 to 1967. Charting no fewer than thirteen overt references to this poem reveals that it has been overlooked despite the fact that it even appears in King’s dramatic “I Have a Dream” speech, delivered on August 28, 1963. 

In addition to tracing the trajectory of this poem within King’s speeches, this article also documents the political tensions that persuaded King to decide against referencing Hughes’s poem overtly, choosing instead to allude quietly to it. These clear and abrupt shifts result in part from false, yet potent accusations of Communist activity levied against both Hughes and the civil rights movement. Analyzing King’s use of this poem demonstrates how Langston Hughes’s poetry became a measurable inflection in the voice of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Miller, W. Jason. "“Don’t Turn Back”: Langston Hughes, Barack Obama, and Martin Luther King, Jr." African American Review 46.2/3 (2013): 425. Biography Reference Bank (H.W. Wilson). Web. 4 Apr. 2016.

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