Martin L. King - Awards and Recognition

Awards and Recognition

King was awarded at least fifty honorary degrees from colleges and universities in the U.S. and elsewhere. Besides winning the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize, in 1965 King was awarded the American Liberties Medallion by the American Jewish Committee for his "exceptional advancement of the principles of human liberty". In his acceptance remarks, King said, "Freedom is one thing. You have it all or you are not free." King was also awarded the Pacem in Terris Award, named after a 1963 encyclical letter by Pope John XXIII calling for all people to strive for peace.

In 1957, he was awarded the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP.

In 1959, King was awarded the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for his book Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story.

In 1966, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America awarded King the Margaret Sanger Award for "his courageous resistance to bigotry and his lifelong dedication to the advancement of social justice and human dignity". King was posthumously awarded the Marcus Garvey Prize for Human Rights by Jamaica in 1968. Also in 1966, King was elected as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

In 1971, King was posthumously awarded the Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for his Why I Oppose the War in Vietnam. Six years later, the Presidential Medal of Freedom was awarded to King by Jimmy Carter. King and his wife were also awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 2004.

King was second in Gallup's List of Most Widely Admired People of the 20th Century. In 1963, King was named Time Person of the Year and in 2000, King was voted sixth in the Person of the Century poll by the same magazine. King was elected third in the Greatest American contest conducted by the Discovery Channel and AOL.

More than 730 cities in the United States have streets named after King. King County, Washington rededicated its name in his honor in 1986, and changed its logo to an image of his face in 2007. The city government center in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, is named in honor of King. King is remembered as a martyr by the Episcopal Church in the United States of America (feast day April 4) and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (feast day January 15).

In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed King on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.

In 2011, comparing the record of the leaderless Occupy movement in creating meaningful change with the civil rights movement, Malcolm Gladwell described King as "one of the foremost tacticians of the 20th century."

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