How Samuel L. Jackson Went From Taking Martin Luther King Sr. Hostage To Hollywood Legend
One of film’s best known actors led an interesting life prior to starting a career in the movies
Although the leader board tends to fluctuate, as of last month, the actor with the cumulative highest grossing films of all time was the legendary Samuel L. Jackson, according to IGN, with nearly $6 billion. His success has made him a titan of Hollywood, but as a young man, he was heavily involved in advocacy and protest, getting in trouble for taking hostages, including the father of slain civil right’s leader Martin Luther King.
Born in 1948 in Washington, D.C., Jackson was a bright student who ended up enrolling at the prestigious Morehouse University in Atlanta. He hoped to graduate with a degree in marine biology, but his attraction to reform and social justice ended up taking him on a much different path, which surprisingly ended with him becoming a Hollywood legend.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968, as Jackson was finishing up the spring semester of his junior year at Morehouse. He later recalled to The Hollywood Reporter how he found out about the murder:
“I went to the movie — it was John Goldfarb, Please Come Home. That’s…
