Background
Mary King, full named Mary Elizabeth King was born on July 30, 1940, in New York City, New York, United States. She is a daughter of Luther Waddington King, a Methodist Church minister, and Alba Iregui King, a teacher of nursing.
2007
Mary King with President Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, at Mansfield College, University of Oxford.
2008
(left to right) Sam Beard, President and Founder, Jefferson Awards for Public Service, Professor Mary King, her husband Dr Peter G Bourne, Nancy Leonard, National Director, Jefferson Awards for Public Service.
2012
Some of the winners of the James M. Lawson Award for Nonviolent Achievement (left to right): Lhadon Tethong (Tibet), Mary King, Mohamed Nasheed (former President of the Maldives), Nada Alwadi (Bahrain), and the Rev. Dr. James M. Lawson.
Delaware, Ohio, United States
Ohio Wesleyan University where Mary King received her Bachelor of Arts degree in 1962.
Penglais Campus, Penglais, Aberystwyth SY23 3FL, United Kingdom
The old building of Aberystwyth University where Mary King obtained her Ph. D. in international politics in 1999.
Mary King with M. A. Baby at the release of her book 'Gandhian non-violence struggle and untouchability in South India'
Mary King receiving an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Ohio Wesleyan University.
Mary King with Adam Michnik, a key player in Poland’s revolutionary struggle for freedom, democracy, and independence.
(The renowned civil rights activist Mary Elizabeth King qu...)
The renowned civil rights activist Mary Elizabeth King questions the prevailing wisdom that the first Palestinian Intifada was defined by violence
https://www.amazon.com/Quiet-Revolution-Palestinian-Nonviolent-Resistance/dp/1560258020/?tag=2022091-20
2007
(The book for the first time explores what actually happen...)
The book for the first time explores what actually happened in the south Indian village of Vykom in the 1920s, including its controversial settlement. Correcting misunderstandings, it addresses the rarity of conversion as a mechanism of change, and evaluates shortcomings of Gandhi's leadership.
https://www.amazon.com/Gandhian-Nonviolent-Struggle-Untouchability-South/dp/0199452660/?tag=2022091-20
2015
political scientist professor author
Mary King, full named Mary Elizabeth King was born on July 30, 1940, in New York City, New York, United States. She is a daughter of Luther Waddington King, a Methodist Church minister, and Alba Iregui King, a teacher of nursing.
Mary King received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Ohio Wesleyan University in 1962. Later, she earned her Ph.D. in international politics from Aberystwyth University.
In 2011, King was given an honorary doctor of laws degree from her alma mater Ohio Wesleyan University.
Mary King first came into contact with the civil rights movement as a senior at Ohio Wesleyan University. King took part in the study project and toured across the south. While staying at such black colleges as Fisk University, Clark College, and Tuskegee Institute, and such white schools as Vanderbilt University, Agnes Scott College, and Georgia Tech, King was introduced to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (also known as SNCC). She also met another student activist, Casey Hayden who also joined SNCC and became her close friend.
At the age of 22, King graduated from the University and met civil rights activist, Ella Baker. Along with professor Howard Zinn of Spelman College, Baker invited King to participate at the Young Women's Christian Association project on race relations in the south as a human relations specialist.
As a member of the project, King toured the Atlanta and Georgia national headquarters of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (also known as SNCC) where she worked as a volunteer. While there, she met prominent civil rights figures – Julian Bond, John Lewis, and James Forman. The experience galvanized King’s imagination and provided her with staff position in the organization. In June 1963, Mary King became an assistant director of communications to the organization's press secretary Julian Bond.
King played various roles in the SNCC during the early days. She worked for senior civil rights advisor Ella Baker and in the communications arm of the SNCC, working with Julian Bond, James Forman, and John Lewis in the writing of press releases. One of her missions on the post was to control communications for the Mississippi Summer Project called Freedom Summer in Jackson where she was sent in 1964.
Another experience she lived while at the SNCC was a meeting with a white Texan woman, Casey Hayden, who became one of her mentors in the intellectual side of the civil rights and feminist movements.
The SNCC’s practice of leadership by consensus led to power struggles in which northern, urban figures who had recently joined the movement increasingly imposed their views on the entire group. Tensions arose between white and black volunteers, between men and women, and between black women and white women. At one SNCC meeting, King and Hayden circulated, anonymously, a letter discussing the problematic position of women in the organization. The letter stirred already-existing tensions and much discussion.
A second King-Hayden document, entitled ‘A Kind of Memo from Casey Hayden and Mary King to a Number of Other Women in the Peace and Freedom Movements,’ became an important stimulus for the late-1960s feminist movement.
After leaving SNCC at the end of 1965, Mary King continued an active career in public service. In 1968, she became a project officer for the United States Office of Economic Opportunity, serving in that capacity for four years. In 1972, she joined a small group of people organizing Jimmy Carter’s 1976 presidential campaign. During her five-years affiliation with Carter, King attended the 1976 and 1980 Democratic National conventions as a delegate, coordinated a regional primary campaign, and convinced Carter of the importance of giving greater prominence to women in his organization. Simultaneously, she was president of a Washington D.C. based management consulting firm from 1972 to 1976.
During the four-year Carter administration, Mary King traveled extensively as a member of American delegations to international conferences on such subjects as food policy, agrarian reform, and the fight against hunger and poverty. A founder of the National Association of Women Business Owners, she became its president in 1976. She has also been an important figure in the work of the Save the Children Foundation and other public service groups.
Mary King works with international as well as domestic interests. She has spurred private initiatives in development, refugees, human rights, international trade, and improving international relations. From 1983 to 1985, she directed Andrew Young’s nonprofit development organization called Young Ideas, Inc. During the five following years, she ran the United States-Iraq Business Forum, aimed at opening up normal trade between the two nations. For two decades, her international work has required contact with heads of state and government ministers of ninety developing countries, and she has been a personal emissary and intermediary for president Carter with political and business leaders of the Middle East. In the 1990s, King set up Global Action, Inc., a nonprofit research organization on conflict resolution, ethnic diversity, and nonviolent struggle.
As an author, Mary King struggled for years to find a publisher for her debut book ‘Freedom Song: A Personal Story of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement’. When the book was finally published in 1987, it received both critical acclaim and a Robert F. Kennedy Book Award honorable mention. Others writings by King include ‘Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr: The Power of Nonviolent Action’, ‘A Quiet Revolution: The First Palestinian Intifada and Nonviolent Resistance’, and the recent one 2015 ‘Gandhian Nonviolent Struggle and Untouchability in South India: The 1924–25 Vykom Satyagraha and the Mechanisms of Change’. In addition to her own writings, she has also contributed articles to many periodicals, including Los Angeles Times, Sunday Times (London), Vogue, Washington Star, and others.
Since 2002, Mary King has been professor of peace and conflict studies with the UN-affiliated University for Peace. Nowadays, she is living with her husband in Virginia, the United States, and Oxford, the United Kingdom where she is a Distinguished Rothermere American Institute Fellow. She also teaches at the University for Peace’s Distance Learning Programme.
(The book for the first time explores what actually happen...)
2015(The renowned civil rights activist Mary Elizabeth King qu...)
2007
Mary King has served on the board of directors of the Save the Children Federation, the Albert Einstein Institution, the Women’s Action Alliance, and on the board of selectors of the American Institute for Public Service.
She has been a member of the International Commission on Peace and Food in India from 1989 to 1994.
She is a member of the Arca Foundation, of the Consortium on Peace Research, Education and Development, the Authors Guild, and the Middle East Studies Association.
Mary King married Peter Geoffrey Bourne on November 9, 1974.