A leader deals with personal despair and a gnawing feeling of defeat. A leader seeks to rally a team and hold it together despite constant setbacks. A leader tries to find resources where there are very few available. A leader uses creativity to find new options, new choices, and new methods. And through it all, this leader must point to the way forward to a vision and to a victory, all the while his enemies and adversaries watch him for any slip-up, any sign of weakness.

Martin Luther King, Jr faced a nearly impossible task in spring 1963 in Birmingham, Alabama. Hard upon the heels of a humilating defeat in Albany, Georgia, King must rally his supporters to press their cause of civil rights against powerful local opponents in one of Alabama’s most racist communities in the early 1960s. Try, stumble. Try, stumble. Try, stumble. Again and again, King confronted the obstacles of not only defeat but defeatism. He had to find a way to overcome and with the incredible support of his followers, he did. You can, too.

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