Comic Book: Martin Luther King and The Montgomery Story: Museum Object and Cultural History

The object in the museum catalogue

Martin Luther King and The Montgomery Story (By Martin Luther King Jr. in collaboration with the Fellowship of Reconciliation, 1957), 16 pgs.

In 1960, one of four college students who participated in the first sit-in at the segregated Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, credited his strength of resolve to this difficult find and dangerous to possess comic book, which taught methods of nonviolence. The Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), sold over 250,000 copies of the comic book. FOR was founded in 1914 at an ecumenical conference in Switzerland of Christians seeking to prevent the outbreak of war in Europe. Following the famed Montgomery bus boycott, Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. collaborated frequently with the organization in pursuit of racial equity and desegregation in the United States. Today, this interfaith organization has membership in 40 countries representing Christians, Buddhists, Jews, Moslems, and individuals of no formal religious affiliation devoted to peaceful reconciliation worldwide. This comic book was donated to the Smithsonian Institution in 1991 by Reverend Edwin King, who was also an activist in the Civil Rights Movement.

Materials, dates and provenance

• Date made: 1957
• author; depicted: King, Jr., Martin Luther
• publisher: Fellowship of Reconciliation
• maker: Fellowship of Reconciliation
• maker: King, Jr., Martin Luther
• Object Name: Book, Comic
• Physical Description: paper (overall material)
• Physical Description: lithograph (overall material)
• Measurements: average spatial: 10 1/2 in x 6 3/4 in; 26.67 cm x 17.145 cm
• place made: United States
• Subject: Comics
• Subject: Christianity
• Subject: Baptists
• Subject: Clergy
• Subject: Education
• Subject: Pacifism
• Subject: Blacks
• Subject: African American
• ID Number: 1988.0595.03
• catalog number: 1988.0595.03
• accession number: 1988.0595
• catalog number: 1988.595.3
• Data Source: National Museum of American History

Sources and reuse

Catalogue descriptions and facts adapted from National Museum of American History through the Smithsonian's official Open Access dataset. This record explicitly marks its metadata CC0 1.0; formatting and selection have been changed.