Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr. is widely perceived as one of the greatest people in American history. Most people only think of how much African Americans owe him, but Jack White, author of the MLK page in the Time top 100 people list, thinks that whites owe him more. He says that without MLK whites couldn't claim that America was the leader of the "free world". How could we be the leader of the free world if segregation is still around, and we oppress African Americans? Another man would've failed at doing what Martin Luther King Jr. did; MLK was "the right man at the right time" to end segregation. First off, he was a preacher, and the church was the one place that most African Americans went. Secondly, he was very courageous to stand up to all the death threats, bombings of his house, and violence against him, and afterward, his ideas still worked around nonviolent protest. He made many speeches to get across his point of nonviolence and integration, and people today use one line from his speeches more than any other: "I have a dream". He would be ashamed of what some people use this quote for. There have been opponents of affirmative action that have used it, and they claimed that King would be marching right along with them.