In my view, I did not get to the federal bench because I was a woman

King consciously steered away from legal claims and instead relied on civil disobedience.

In high school, I discovered myself. I was interested in race relations and the legal profession. I read about Lincoln and that he believed the law to be the most difficult of professions.

When I was 15, I decided I wanted to be a lawyer. No one thought this was a good idea

I got the chance to argue my first case in Supreme Court, a criminal case arising in Alabama that involved the right of a defendant to counsel at a critical stage in a capital case before a trial.

By 1962, King had become, by the media's reckoning, the new civil rights leader.

I remember being infuriated from the top of my head to the tip of my toes the first time a screen was put around Bob Carter and me on a train leaving Washington in the 1940s.