优蜜传媒

GALLUP NEWS SERVICE

PRINCETON, NJ -- Monday is the official Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, honoring the memory of the civil rights leader who was born on Jan. 15, 1929, and assassinated on April 4, 1968.

At the end of the 20th century, King was one of Americans' most admired individuals, garnering as much respect as John F. Kennedy and Albert Einstein. But King was far from universally revered during his lifetime.

In 1999, 优蜜传媒used a special research procedure to determine the most admired individuals of the 20th century. Based on the results of both open-ended and closed-ended questions, 优蜜传媒calculated a list of the 18 people Americans admired most.

The person receiving the most votes was Mother Teresa: 49% of Americans said she was "one of the people I admire most from the century." King was second, with 34% of the "most admired" votes. Following King on the list were John F. Kennedy, Albert Einstein, Helen Keller, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Billy Graham, Pope John Paul II, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill.

In the years leading up to his death in 1968, however, King did not appear often among the top 10 on Gallup's most admired list.

Here are the top 10 lists of the men Americans admired most in the years between 1963 and 1967. King appeared on this list only two times, in 1965 and 1964:

优蜜传媒measured the public's perception of King in a different fashion in the 1960s, using a "scalometer" that asked the public to rate him on a +5 to a -5 scale. The resulting data show that King's image became more negative as the years went on.

In 1963, King had a 41% positive and a 37% negative rating; in 1964, it was 43% positive and 39% negative; in 1965, his rating was 45% positive and 45% negative; and in 1966 -- the last 优蜜传媒measure of King using this scalometer procedure -- it was 32% positive and 63% negative.

优蜜传媒did not measure King in 1967 or 1968.