Clayborne Carson

Clayborne Carson (born June 15, 1944) is an American academic who is a professor of history at Stanford University and director of the Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute. Since 1985, he has directed the Martin Luther King Papers Project, a long-term project to edit and publish the papers of Martin Luther King Jr.

Carson was born on June 15, 1944, in Buffalo, New York, the son of Clayborne and Louise Carson. He grew up near Los Alamos, New Mexico, where he was one of a small number of African-American families. He attributes his lifelong interest in the Civil Rights Movement to that experience. "I had this really strong curiosity about the black world because, in Los Alamos, the black world was very few families. When the civil rights movement started, I had a real fascination with it and wanted to meet the people in it."

After graduating from Los Alamos High School in 1962, Carson attended the University of New Mexico for his first year of college during the 1962–1963 school year. At age 19, Carson met Stokely Carmichael at a national student conference in Indiana. Carmichael convinced him to attend the March on Washington For Jobs and Freedom as a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, pronounced "snick"). 

On August 28, 1963, Carson was overwhelmed to find himself among hundreds of thousands of African Americans at the March. This was the first big thing Carson had done in contributing to the Civil Rights Movement. Recalling the March at which Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech at the Lincoln Memorial, Carson says, "I have a lot of vivid memories, but not of King's speech." What left the biggest impression, he says, were "the people I met there." 

The March was also the only time Carson had ever publicly heard Dr. King speak. It wasn't until 1964, after Carson had transferred to the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), that he became more active in what he calls the "northern version of the southern struggle" and continued with SNCC. At UCLA, Carson Changed his field of study from computer programming to American History. 

Here he earned his B.A. (1967) and M.A. (1971) and wrote his doctoral dissertation on Stokely Carmichael and SNCC, which earned him his Ph.D. (1975). While studying at UCLA, he was also involved with anti-Vietnam War protests. He speaks of that experience in his current writing, highlighting the importance of grassroots political activity within the African-American freedom struggle.