As editor of The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Dr. Clayborne Carson, with the assistance of his staff at Stanford's Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute, had access to many documents relating to Dr. King's life and career. From their unique familiarity with these materials, they have compiled an encyclopedia offering a fresh and exciting look at the work of Dr. King and the course of the civil rights movement. Scholars, students, and interested nonspecialists will all find the more than 280 entries provided in the encyclopedia to be both informative and engaging. Alphabetically arranged, each entry concludes with a list of sources, both primary and secondary, upon which it is based. The entries cover all facets of Dr. King's life and career, including the following members of his family: BLhis wife, Coretta Scott King BLhis father, Martin Luther King, Sr. BLhis mother, Alberta Williams King BLhis brother, Alfred Daniel Williams King and all four of his children His many friends and associates in the movement: BLRalph David Abernathy BLMaya Angelou BLSammy Davis Jr. BLMedgar Evers BLDick Gregory BLBenjamin Hooks BLJames Meredith BLAndrew Young His campaigns and marches: BLBirmingham Campaign BLChicago Campaign BLMarch on Washington for Jobs and Freedom BLMemphis Sanitation Workers Strike BLMongomery Bus Boycott BLOperation Breadbasket And the many organizations he led or interacted with: BLCongress of Racial Equality BLMontgomery Improvement Association BLNational Conference on Religion and Race BLSouthern Christian Leadership Conference BLStudent Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Other entries discuss the churches he pastored, the dissertation he wrote, thetrips he took to India and Ghana, the books he published, the speeches he delivered, the Nobel Prize he won, the presidents and other national figures he knew, and his chief opponents and critics. The encyclopedia also offers a detailed chronology of Dr. King's life, a selected bibliography of important seconday sources, and a detailed Introduction putting Dr. King's career in context with its times, a Guide to Related Topics, and a detailed subject index.

Dedicated to documenting the life of America's best-known advocate for peace and justice, "The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr. "breaks the chronology of its series to present King's never-before-published sermon file. In 1997 Mrs. Coretta Scott King granted the King Papers Project permission to examine papers kept in boxes in the basement of the Kings' home. The most significant finding was a battered cardboard box that held more than two hundred folders containing documents King used to prepare his celebrated sermons. This private collection that King kept in his study sheds considerable light on the theology and preaching preparation of one of the most noted orators of the modern era.
These illuminating papers reveal that King's concern about poverty, human rights, and social justice was clearly present in his earliest handwritten sermons, which conveyed a message of faith, hope, and love for the dispossessed. His enduring message can be charted through his years as a seminary student, as pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, as a leader of the Montgomery bus boycott, and, ultimately, as an internationally renowned proponent of human rights who saw himself mainly as a preacher and "advocate of the social gospel." Ten of the original and unedited sermons King submitted for publication in the 1963 book "Strength to Love "and audio versions of King's most famous sermons are the culmination of this groundbreaking work.