Talent is everywhere. Access? Less so.
As a high school student, taking a year of college courses transformed Lerone Martin’s sense of what was possible. As a Stanford professor, he’s now offering that same experience to students too often excluded from elite higher education.
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Lerone Martin is the Martin Luther King, Jr. Professor, professor of religious studies and of African and African American studies, and the director of Stanford’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute. Photo: Jess Alvarenga
As a high school student in Ohio, Lerone Martin wondered about the world beyond his hometown.
His parents worked in factories, assembling car parts. It provided a comfortable life and taught him the value of hard work. Still, Martin wanted to build on that foundation, like many kids. But how? His parents didn’t attend college. His older brother had played football in college—maybe sports was a way to see the world. Or perhaps he could become a pastor? For all his drive and imagination, though, a future in academia was outside what he’d ever seen or known.
“It simply wasn’t part of my world,” he says. “I didn’t know any professors. At that point, I literally hadn’t even seen an African American professor.”
Martin had talent and curiosity but limited exposure to the kinds of opportunities that, in turn, create more opportunities.
One day, a favorite high school teacher urged him to take classes at the local college. Martin was hesitant, but he agreed to try. He spent the next year driving himself to campus each morning for seminars in English literature and public speaking. Seeing himself excel in both, something shifted.
“Taking those classes changed the way I viewed myself.It expanded what I believed was possible.”Lerone Martin
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Photo: Jess Alvarenga
Martin is now the Martin Luther King, Jr. Professor, professor of religious studies and of African and African American studies, and the director of Stanford’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute. His forthcoming book Young King, to be published in May 2026, examines Martin Luther King, Jr.’s formative years and the shaping of his moral and political imagination. The project reflects Martin’s long-standing interest in how ideas encountered early in life can alter a young person’s sense of agency and direction.
Martin never forgot what that early experience of college had meant for him—or how a single opportunity had reshaped his sense of what was possible. So when the chance arose to bring his popular undergraduate course Between Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.: Race, Religion, and the Politics of Freedom to Title I high schools around the country, he leapt. (Schools qualify as Title I if at least 40 percent of their students come from low-income households.)
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The course
The classes blend short recorded lectures from Martin with live Zoom discussions led by Stanford teaching fellows, supported by the students’ own teachers. What began as a collaboration with Stanford and the nonprofit National Education Equity Lab—an organization linking a dozen top universities with more than 300 Title I schools in 29 states—now operates in partnership with Stanford’s Haas Center for Public Service.
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Anna Rose Robinson, ’26, a biology major who was a teaching fellow in 2024, says the students she worked with at the Valley Academy of Arts and Sciences in Los Angeles were fascinated not just by the readings, but also by the deeper context of Malcolm and King’s personal lives and evolving values—from King’s support for a universal basic income to the limited way the men thought about women and their roles.
Other parts of the course felt more personal. Robinson remembers a student who explained how Malcolm X’s speech “Black Is Beautiful” made her feel more comfortable in her own skin, and especially with her natural hair—something Robinson had wrestled with as well.
“It’s something I also try to do, to feel more proud as a Black girl.So conversations like that were really wonderful to have.”Anna Rose Robinson, ’26
Martin designed the course to focus on how Malcolm and King understand the causes and solutions to racism and inequality, but students were also encouraged to keep a journal where they would connect that week’s reading to current events or ongoing structural problems.
“The time is always right to do what is right.”Martin Luther King, Jr.
“The goal is always for them to be able to apply this knowledge,” Martin says. “I want them to be able to say, ‘Okay, we are facing a food desert in my community. What would King say about that? What might Malcolm say?’”
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While the level of critical thinking and writing skill is challenging for high schoolers, the subjects are energizing, says Lara Eldredge, who co-taught the course at H. D. Woodson High School in Washington, DC. Students have written papers on everything from gun violence to housing to mass deportations. Others have tackled popular culture, in one case by looking at how a recent Kendrick Lamar album framed race, and what King would have made of it.
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(L) excerpt from MLK- Bill of Rights for the Disadvantaged (M) King and Malcolm in 1964 (R) “The Purpose of Education,” The Maroon Tiger, 1947. Morehouse College Archives.
Martin Luther King, Jr. visits Stanford (1967)
In the future, Martin hopes to bring students to campus for two weeks in the summer, to give them something closer to a true college experience. “There’s something pedagogically powerful about having a high-impact educational experience on a university campus as a high school student,” Martin says. “To go to class, to live in the dorm, and to eat the dorm food.”
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Martin poses in front of one of several immersive wall murals depicting scenes from MLK’s life in the Institute’s new office in the Main Quad. He hopes to bring visiting students here, among many parts of campus. Photo: Jess Alvarenga
While those opportunities exist for wealthier students, they’re prohibitively expensive for the students whom Martin hopes to reach. In order for students from less privileged backgrounds to thrive at a place like Stanford, he notes, they need not just academic and reasoning skills but also some level of comfort and confidence.
Even just taking the online course made a difference in that respect, according to Robinson.
“One thing we heard from students was that, at the start, Stanford felt like this big-name, faraway, almost mystical place,” she says. By the end, it felt closer—and possible.
Because of that, one of Martin’s main goals is to keep growing the program—on the belief that while talent is widely distributed, access to institutions like Stanford too often isn’t.
“One reason why I’m so passionate about this is the way we can scale this program up to reach so many students,” he says. “I’m hoping that the ability to take a class at Stanford, and do well, will be transformative—both in terms of how these students see the world, and in terms of how they see themselves.”
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