The Masks of Character

This chapter discusses the personae, or “masks,” implicit in Martin Luther King, Jr.’s strategies of style by which he communicated his purposes for America. These roles he accepted and played with absolute fidelity. For example, when speaking prophetically, no unseemly aside, unmeant gesture, or hint of backstage behavior ever detracted from his role or diminished the high ground he had chosen for himself. Like a Greek actor, he moved across the stage speaking his lines with a passion appropriate to his mask. He never broke character. What sociologist Erving Goffman calls the “front,” which is a performer’s setting, appearance, and manner, remained in King utterly consistent.