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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 the only reason I remember that movie. In the middle of it, this guy came in and said that Dr. King was dead and we need to do something. Everybody left. I went back to my dorm and couldn’t find my roommate. Came to find out he was already in the streets with a whole bunch of other people, tearing up and burning up our neighborhood.”
Hoping to make King’s death count for something, Jackson decided to become involved, and just a few days later, at the urging of famous actors Robert Culp and Bill Cosby, he and other students boarded a plane to Memphis, Tennessee to march with striking sanitation workers.
Upon returning to Atlanta, he immediately went over to Spelman College, where the body of King was lying in state. Answering a call for volunteers, he ended up being named an usher for the huge and solemn funeral.
The experience with King and living in the tumultuous 1960s as a college student was a potent…
