One day in the 1930s, a very young Martin Luther King Jr. was sitting in the passenger seat of his father’s car when his dad accidentally ran a stop sign on a Georgia street.

“A policeman pulled up to the car and said: ‘All right, boy, pull over and let me see your license,’ ” King remembered in an essay years later. “My father replied indignantly, ‘I’m no boy.’ Then, pointing to me, ‘This is a boy. I am a man, and until you call me one, I will not listen to you.’ ”

The officer was so flummoxed that he quickly wrote out the traffic ticket and hurried away.

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