Dec. 29, 1963 - The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, the civil rights leader who became a symbol of the Negro revolution in 1963, has been named “Man of the Year” by Time magazine. Time’s editors said Dr. King was the first Negro to be so designated since Time established the tradition 37 years ago. Few can explain the extraordinary King Mystique, the announcement said, “yet he possesses an inexpressible capacity for empathy that is the touchstone of leadership. By deed and by preachment, he has stirred in his people a Christian forbearance that nourishes hope and smothers injustice. It is with an inner strength so tenaciously rooted in Christian concepts that King has made himself the unchallenged voice of the Negro people — and the disquieting conscience of the whites. That voice in turn has infused the Negroes themselves with the fiber that gives their revolution its true stature.” The Man of the Year is the personality who the magazine’s editors believe “dominated the news that year and left an indelible mark — for good or ill — on history.” An example of the latter would be Adolf Hitler, chosen as Man of the Year for 1938. Pope John XXIII was Time’s Man of the Year for 1962.
