Martin Luther King Day: How well do you know MLK? Take the quiz!

Susan Walsh/AP
James 'Plunky' Branch plays his soprano saxophone near the Martin Luther King, Jr., Memorial in Washington, in August 2011.

Martin Luther King Day honors the slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. In the 50s and 60s King, a black Southern reverend who advocated nonviolent, peaceful resistance, became the voice of the civil rights movement. King was assassinated in 1968, though his legacy ensured his place in history as an American hero.

In August 2011, the Martin Luther King Memorial opened in Washington D.C. Along with the passage the the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1968, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the memorial serves as a permanent reminder of King's work. Test your knowledge of one of America's greatest men in this quiz.

1. Where was Martin Luther King Jr. born?

Atlanta, Ga.

Birmingham, Ala.

Montgomery, Ala.

Nashville, Tenn.

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About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

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