The powerful woman who inspired MLK

We honor Martin Luther King's memory every January, but there are still so many things most people do not know about his life. For example, in his family and among his closest friends, he was known to be lighthearted and humorous. He made fun of his older sister for taking things too seriously, he always tried to lighten the mood and avoid confrontation. As a youth, he was a prankster who would hide behind a bush with his mother's furs tied to a stick, waiting to jump out at people as they walked past his childhood home.

He was not some superhero but a real person who risked his life for a larger cause. He was a human being who, just like the rest of us, was influenced by his own experiences and shaped by the generations of family members who came before him, the city he was born in and most importantly, the mother who birthed him.

All of us are shaped by our mothers to some extent, but in King's case, the presence of his mother's teachings in his work was profound and the similarities between her passions and his are readily apparent. She was the daughter of the leaders of Ebenezer Baptist Church; it wasn't King's father who established the church but his mother who inherited it from her parents.

She didn't call it nonviolence, but she believed that you could fight Jim Crow through faith, marches and boycotts. She was one of the earliest members of the NAACP, as well as an active member of the YWCA and the International League for Peace and Freedom.