Was Martin Luther King Jr. a part of the modernist movement?

I thought Modesrists were painters. MLK was a preacher and a civil rights leader.

Well, my concern with your definition of modernism is that it's very closely linked with progress or rebellion; while these concepts were held very closely by many modernists, there are other characteristic components to the *aesthetic* definition of modernism that MLK doesn't fit.

Modernists were particularly interested in minimalism and realism, portraying the world the way it really was, with a minimum of 'waxing poetic' and interpolating moral values - MLK based much of his rhetoric on a theological basis; his speeches refer frequently to God's plan and His children, an imposition of the grand narrative from which modernists like D.H. Lawrence or Hemingway would shy away.

I think the confusion here lies in the fact that Modernism *does* figure in tightly with progress, though progress is *not necessarily indicative of Modernism*. Modernism is often inherently stark and, occasionally, pessimistic and cynical, as a result of its genesis after the first world war. MLK's message was a polar opposite to this: he believed in a brighter future and a morally guided present, a common morality that links all of mankind that most modernists would, if not reject, question.

Although MLK may have gathered some courage from the peaceful artistic revolution of the Modernists, I would hesitate to call him a Modernist (especially considering his most important work took place at the dawning of the Postmodernist movement), and I would certainly not call him a 'part of the Modernist movement': he wasn't an artist, and he was about 30 years too young.

Well, you've said it was your own definition. I could certainly imagine a definition of a modernist that included ML King, Jr. (Say, someone who rejected tradition and worked to remake a modern world.) And since you haven't told us your definition, it is hard to answer.

However, traditionally modernist movements have been in the arts, not in politics, and so if we operate not under your own definition but under a more commonly accepted one, I'd say no, he wasn't. In the arts, people like Frank Lloyd Wright, Alfred Steiglitz, Paul Cezanne, James Joyce, and Igor Stavinsky have all been considered great modernists.