We celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr.'s, birthday today, but moreso we celebrate the life that followed. Reversing course this morning, you try to learn about King's birth. Instead, you learn more about antitheses.

… In The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr., the civil rights leader writes little on his birth. "I was born in the late twenties on the verge of the Great Depression, which was to spread its disastrous arms into every corner of this nation for over a decade," King writes in the first sentence. He then writes more about the Great Depression. He makes various mentions over following pages about the street where he was born and his health at birth. But King clearly uses birth just as setup.

He closes the opening section by writing about his family.

My home situation was very congenial. I have a marvelous mother and father. I can hardly remember a time that they ever argued (my father happens to be the kind who just won't argue) or had any great falling out. These factors were highly significant in determining any religious attitudes. It is quite easy for me to think of a God of love mainly because I grew up in a family where love was central and where lovely relationships were ever present. It is quite easy for me to think of the universe as basically friendly mainly because of my uplifting hereditary and environmental circumstances. It is quite easy for me to lean more toward optimism than pessimism about human nature mainly because of my childhood experiences.

In my own life and in the life of a person who is seeking to be strong, you combine in your character antitheses strongly marked. You are both militant and moderate; you are both idealistic and realistic. And I think my strong determination for justice comes from the very strong, dynamic personality of my father, and I would hope that the gentle aspect comes from a mother who is very gentle and sweet.

A simple, beautiful passage.

But then you go to learn when King wrote his autobiography and find: 1998. The book, which initially looks co-written, turns out to be a long-after-death, family-endorsed, scholar creation from King's words over his life. Pages across the Web, from student papers and even in more recent books cite autobiography as autobiography. They're all wrong.

As you look more closely at the book, you find the scholar is up front about the nature of the text and detailed about the varied sourcing.

Critics also tend to rate the book well, acknowledging autobiography as "autobiography" and moving on. Texts can be messy, you decide.

In an end note, you learn most of the opening section comes from an essay King wrote in seminary school about his religious development. What's missing from that essay, though, are the "antitheses strongly marked." The book's other sources from the section come out beyond the reach of the Web, but a Google of the phrase itself is successful.

In his 1963 Strength to Love collection of sermons, the phrase appears in the first sermon, in the sermon's introduction, in the first paragraph. Your source confusion skims off. You are glad, thankful, you searched. The "autobiography" label may be weak, but its hints bring you here:

A French philosopher said, "No man is strong unless he bears within his character antitheses strongly marked." The strong man holds in a living blend strongly marked opposites. Not ordinarily do men achieve this balance of opposites. The idealists are no usually realistic, and the realists are not usually idealistic. The militant are not generally known to be passive, nor the passive to be militant. Seldom are the humble self-assertive, or the self-assertive humble. But life at its best is a creative synthesis of opposites in fruitful harmony. The philosopher Hegel said that truth is found neither in the thesis not the antithesis, but in an emergent synthesis that reconciles the two.

Jesus recognized the need for blending opposites. He knew that his disciples would face a difficult and hostile world, where they would confront the recalcitrance of political officials and the intransigence of the protectors of the old order. He knew that they would meet cold and arrogant men whose hearts had been hardened by the long winter of traditionalism. So he said to them, "Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves." And he gave them a formula for action. "Be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves." It is pretty difficult to imagine a single person having, simultaneously, the characteristics of the serpent and the dove, but that is what Jesus expects. We must combine the toughness of the serpent and the softness of the dove, a tough mind and a tender heart.

Update, hours later: A colleague tweets the King Center has opened its digital archive today. A search for this sermon turns up earlier and later outlines, as well as the delivered version, all in hand-written form.

If the opening of Washington's new MLK Memorial has you wanting to read a book about King, I'd want to recommend Behind the Dream as a good place to start. My subway reading for the past week, the book is from a King lawyer/advisor/speechwriter. Young at the time and now a prof, Clarence B. Jones dives deep on the creation of "I have a dream."

What first attracted me to the book was editing. Editing, writing, group creation of content, improvisation. An excerpt from the book appeared in the Post last winter, and I couldn't put it down. The book worked in the same themes, adding issues around the March's creation to issues around the text. Jones also ranged into how a deeper reading of the text and experience allowed a deeper take on today's race contexts.

One of the book's best summary paragraphs came in the introduction.

A kind of unique energy emanated from the massive crowd, and it was just that energy that made the words in Martin Luther King Jr.'s speech resonate. He had, in fact, used the phrase "I have a dream" in a previous speech with hardly anyone registering anything exceptional about it. It played out differently that August day. The reason is simple: The power is not in the words themselves. Nor is it in the speaker. The power was woven into the feedback loop that jumped between the words, the speaker, and his audience. It was those quarter of a million souls who made the "dream" the "Dream." It was a perfect storm. I know, because I saw it happen. I was standing no more than fifty feet behind Martin when I saw Mahalia Jackson, his favorite gospel singer, look to him with a beaming face and shout out a piece of advice. As the suggestion took root, I watched Martin push aside the text of the speech I'd helped prepare — a text, it bears noting, that did not contain the phrase "I have a dream."

The best part of this paragraph was how you learned, over the course of the book, how the points also worked backward. The feedback loop had led to the "Dream" and the pushing aside, but that kind of choice and moment had been present throughout the movement's time — for many of its players — and had led to the crowd being there that day.

Previously in the blog: Evolution of King's speech to junior high students.

If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, sweep streets like Beethoven composed music, sweep streets like Leontyne Price sings before the Metropolitan Opera. Sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will have to pause and say: Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well.

Delivered at Barratt Junior High School in Philadelphia on October 26, 1967. Full "What Is Your Life's Blueprint?" text, via The Seattle Times.

The lines to the students originate in King's challenging sermon, "The Three Dimensions of a Complete Life," delivered in Chicago in April.

"Darker yet may be the night, harder yet may be the fight. Just stand up for that which is right." [Beams of Heaven]

It seems that I can hear a voice speaking even this morning, saying to all of us, "Stand up for what is right. Stand up for what is just. Lo, I will be with you even until the end of the world." Yes, I've seen the lightning flash. I've heard the thunder roll. I've felt sin-breakers dashing, trying to conquer my soul. But I heard the voice of Jesus saying still to fight on. He promised never to leave me, never to leave me alone. No, never alone. No, never alone. He promised never to leave me, never to leave me alone. And I go on in believing that. Reach out and find the breadth of life.

Was going to link Beams of Heaven. Finding this audio, I had to embed.

Full lyrics are here. "Oftentimes my sky is clear, joy abounds without a tear; though a day so bright begun, clouds may hide tomorrow's sun. There'll be a day that's always bright, a day that never yields to night, and in its light the streets of glory, I shall behold someday…"

In the scope of history or in personal struggle. The lesson of the day is trying your hardest for a long time without finding success doesn't mean you've found failure. It means you haven't found success yet. I know my heart can run long but fall short, and I know so can yours.

Martin Luther King's "Unfulfilled Dreams" sermon turns up in Google. "Life is a continual story of shattered dreams," he says at one point.

Later, we hear: "Well, that is the story of life. And the thing that makes me happy is that I can hear a voice crying through the vista of time, saying: 'It may not come today or it may not come tomorrow, but it is well that it is within thine heart. It's well that you are trying.' You may not see it. The dream may not be fulfilled, but it's just good that you have a desire to bring it into reality. It's well that it's in thine heart."

With such promise, we can go wrong. We can momentarily give up on a friend, lash out at others or much worse, for far longer. Desire can do wrong in pursuit of promise. "It's a civil war. I don't care who you are, I don't care where you live, there is a civil war going on in your life.  … There's a tension at the heart of human nature. And whenever we set out to dream our dreams and to build our temples, we must be honest enough to recognize it." But when we pick up, the promise remains.

Forty years after Martin Luther King Jr. won the Nobel Peace Prize, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution remembers the stir surrounding King's honor. As Stockholm hands out Nobels this week, the micro side of reception — the off-headline weight — is well worth recognizing.

At 35, King became the youngest recipient of the peace prize. But the coming weeks were to be anything but peaceful for him as the FBI stepped up its clandestine campaign to discredit him by using salacious information about his personal life.

Atlanta's reputation hung in the balance, too. People weren't exactly snapping up tickets for a banquet to honor Georgia's first Nobel winner. Was "the city too busy to hate" going to turn its back on a native who had become an internationally known disciple of nonviolence?

On a macro level, the Nobel site has the text of King's acceptance speech as well as other resources. In his speech we hear: "When our days become dreary with low-hovering clouds and our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, we will know that we are living in the creative turmoil of a genuine civilization struggling to be born."

This year's peace prize is to be awarded later this morning.