Which specific passages in Jack Boozer’s 1952 dissertation match text in King’s 1955 dissertation, and where can side‑by‑side comparisons be found?
Executive summary
The overlap between Jack Boozer’s 1952 dissertation and Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1955 dissertation consists of multiple near‑verbatim sentences and longer passages dealing with Paul Tillich’s theology, with scholars — and Theodore Pappas in particular — publishing side‑by‑side comparisons that reproduce several matching passages [1] [2]. Public reproductions of at least one matching sentence and several longer comparisons appear in mainstream reporting and in Pappas’s published work, while the King Papers Project and Boston University have acknowledged borrowing and investigated the matter [3] [4] [5].
1. What the documented matches are: specific examples identified by reporters and scholars
Reporting and scholarly reviewers identified multiple instances where King’s wording parallels Boozer’s nearly word for word in sections about Paul Tillich’s concept of the symbol and other theological formulations; a representative example quoted in The New York Times shows Boozer writing “A characteristic of the symbol is its innate power” and King writing “The basic characteristic of the symbol is its innate power,” illustrating the kind of sentence‑level match reviewers flagged [1]. Chroniclers of the controversy and Theodore Pappas reproduced six or more longer passages in which King’s phrasing, arguments and even punctuation errors closely mirror Boozer’s text, and several analyses assert that whole phrases, sentences and paragraphs were appropriated without full attribution [2] [6].
2. Where side‑by‑side comparisons have been published
Side‑by‑side reproductions have appeared in a number of outlets: the Los Angeles Times published at least one paired passage showing the similar treatment of Tillich by Boozer and King [3]; The New York Times published illustrative sentence comparisons as part of its coverage [1]; Theodore Pappas secured copies of both dissertations and printed multiple side‑by‑side comparisons in Chronicles and related publications, where he reprinted six lengthy passages matching the two theses nearly word for word [2] [7]. Pappas’s material is the most cited source for direct, extended comparisons in the publicly available reporting compiled here [2].
3. Archival and scholarly venues that document the overlaps
The Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers Project at Stanford — which undertook the long cataloguing and annotation of King’s papers at the request of Coretta Scott King — identified plagiarism in the dissertation drafts and has said the thesis contained material borrowed from Boozer and other secondary sources; the Project’s published volumes and Stanford’s King Institute discuss authorship issues and note that some borrowing occurred [5] [4]. Boston University convened a faculty committee in response to the revelations and examined the dissertation, a fact widely reported in contemporaneous and later coverage [1] [5].
4. How many passages, and limits of available reporting
Different investigators counted overlapping material differently: contemporary summaries cite that roughly 45 percent of one part and 21 percent of another part drew heavily on Boozer according to one characterization, while Pappas and others reproduced at least six specific matched passages for readers to compare [8] [2]. The sources provided here document representative sentence and paragraph matches and publish several side‑by‑side comparisons, but they do not present a complete, exhaustively indexed list of every matching passage with page‑by‑page alignment in a single publicly archived file; fuller documentary annotation was the intended goal of the King Papers Project’s volumes [2] [5].
5. Competing interpretations and implicit agendas in the reporting
Scholars and institutions offered competing takes: some emphasize careless citation practices and the context of King’s broader contributions, while critics and polemical outlets stress systematic copying and moral failure, and Pappas’s reproductions have been used by both scholarly critics and partisan commentators [4] [7] [6]. Boston University’s committee and some defenders suggested the dissertation still represented an “intelligent contribution” and therefore did not merit degree revocation — a mitigation that others contest — revealing institutional and editorial choices about how to weigh provenance, extent of overlap, and intent [1] [8].
6. Practical pointers for readers seeking the side‑by‑side material
To see the matching text reproduced side‑by‑side, consult the Los Angeles Times and New York Times coverage for illustrative pairings and Theodore Pappas’s reproduced comparisons in Chronicles and related publications, which explicitly print matched passages from Boozer and King [3] [1] [2]. For archival annotation and the Project’s editorial perspective, consult the Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers Project publications and the Stanford King Institute summary of the dissertation’s authorship issues [5] [4]. Note that the reporting referenced here reproduces examples and several extended comparisons but does not publish an exhaustive line‑by‑line concordance in the public domain according to these sources [2] [5].