MLK was a Sociology Major

January 18 is the official Martin Luther King, Jr. Birthday Holiday for 2021. As a sociology professor, I found it interesting to learn that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a sociology major having received his B.A. in sociology from Morehouse College in 1948 (See https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2014/01/20/martin-luther-king-jr-sociology-major/ ). He continued his education at Crozer Theological Seminary (B.D., 1951), and Boston University (Ph.D., 1955).

Dr. King understood and tried to help others understand a basic sociological insight. Namely, the fact that the individual and the society and connected in a special way. Society shapes the individual and the individual shapes society. For example, data about rates of suicide have shown that even something as personal as suicide is affected by your connection to society, by the categories that you belong to within society.

Many of Dr. King's speeches helped people use the sociological imagination. As Johanna Bockman remarked, "Dr. King moves beyond the individual focus of psychology to the societal focus of sociology. Within a society with racial segregation, poverty, and religious bigotry, it is not only normal but also positively good to feel and remain maladjusted, for example, in segregated places or during discriminatory acts. Feelings of 'maladjustment' and 'deviance' led people to join a range of social movements -- the civil rights movement to name just one -- to change society, rather than merely adjust themselves as individuals" (https://sociologyinmyneighborhood.blogspot.com/2015/01/the-sociology-of-martin-luther-king-jr.html).