"Fish without bicycle"(1973); Gandhi's "eye for eye"(1982); Eyes/England(1943)

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Thu, 20 Jan 2005 09:57:15 -0600, Mullins, Bill
<Bill.Mullins at US.ARMY.MIL> wrote:

>> King was a student of Gandhi, of course (this is mentioned in
>> the 1958 review), but I don't know if he attributed the quote to him.
>
>King, from his days as a grad student onward, had a problem with proper
>attribution:
>
>http://chem-gharbison.unl.edu/mlk/plagiarism.html

The article that I cited upthread ("Composing Martin Luther King, Jr." by
Keith D. Miller, _PMLA_ Vol. 105, No. 1 (Jan. 1990), pp. 70-82), gives
many examples of King's, uh, liberal attribution policy.  The "eye for an
eye" quote, as I mentioned, was borrowed from Harris Wofford (who may have
heard it attributed to Gandhi).

The quote appeared (with other passages lifted from Wofford's 1957 lecture
"Non-violence and the Law") in King's _Stride toward Freedom_, published
in September 1958.  Miller writes in a footnote:

-----
Although _Stride_ does not mention any coauthors, Wofford apparently
worked as a ghostwriter on portions of the manuscript. He states that he
cannot recall whether he or King "picked something up from my [earlier]
work" and inserted it in _Stride_ (Interview). King's practice of
borrowing discourse inclines one to believe that King himself borrowed
material from Wofford's lecture. Wofford comments that he would be
"complimented" if that was the case (Interview).
-----


--Ben Zimmer