We don't have an autobiography from Martin Luther King, Jr. since he did not live long enough, but in the biography by his wife Coretta (1969), she speaks of his anger in terms of his favorite phrase, 'the slow fire of discontent' which he felt was central to the 'spirit and need' which lies at 'the beginning of every great human advance'. Going back to his father's autobiography (1980) we find that he held a special anger for whites which was touched off when he witnessed a vicious lynching as a child.

In the autobiography of Mahatma Gandhi (1954), a special importance is attributed to the incident in which he was forced out of the first class compartment because he was 'colored'. That was followed immediately by a further insult when he was not allowed to sit with the white passengers on a stagecoach. Gandhi notes that 'I knew it was sheer injustice and an insult, but I thought it better to pocket it. ..if I had raised a protest, the coach would have gone off without me and this would have meant the loss of another day'. As a rule, Gandhi did more than simply restrain his anger, instead he 'reserved' it, as he says later, 'to fight bigger battles'.

'This talk enraged me, but I restrained my feelings. ...Not that, if I had resisted the order, the resistance could not have been justified. But I wanted to reserve my strength for fighting bigger battles. I should not exhaust my skill as a fighter in insisting on retaining my turban. It was worthy of a better cause.'

Bertrand Russell, in his autobiography (1967), describes the angry mood with which he reacted to World War I:

'1 became filled with despairing tenderness towards the young men who were to be slaughtered, and with rage against all the statesmen of Europe. ...Pacifism had produced in me a mood of bitter rebellion.'

This was the period in his life when he wrote an open letter to President Wilson, appealing to him to save the world from war. Similarly, over thirty years later, in 1958, he describes a parallel development:

By November, my concern with international affairs had boiled up. I felt that I must do something. ..I wrote an open letter to President Eisenhower and Premier Khrushchev...to make clear the fact that the things which they held in common were far more numerous and far more important than their differences, and that they had much more to gain than to lose by cooperation.

Note, here again, how anger is the step that immediately preceded action.

Similarly, the first action of Helen Caldicott was preceded by anger. The following is from her book Nuclear Madness (1978):

'My personal commitment to human survival was sparked when I read Bertrand Russell's autobiography. ...When in 1971, I discovered that France had been conducting atmospheric tests over its small colony of Muroroa since 1966, contravening the treaty inspired by Russell's work, I became indignant... I knew that the mushroom cloud that billows into the sky carries particles of radioactive dust. ..(which) descend to the earth in rainfall and work their way through soil and water into the food chain, eventually posing a serious threat to human life. ... I decided that it was my duty, as a physician, to protest. ..and I began by writing a letter to a local newspaper .'

Note the parallels to Russell's experience, how anger inspires the initial act which consists of writing a letter of protest.

In only one peace activist autobiography, that of Willard Uphaus (1963), did I fail to find a critical role described for anger. Near the time of his death at age 91, I asked him about this. Willard, a Methodist lay minister, told me with a twinkle in his eye that while it was necessary as a good Christian to love the good, it was also necessary to hate the evil! At exactly what point this developed in his own consciousness development, however, I cannot say with certainty.