5 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Statements That Were Faked or Misquoted

By Michael Gryboski, Mainline Church Editor Monday, January 16, 2017

3. "Not Rejoice in the Death of One, Not Even an Enemy"

Former Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in May 1998. | (Photo: REUTERS/Stringer)

In early May 2011, Seal Team Six raided a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, and killed infamous al Qaida leader and 9/11 terrorist attack mastermind Osama bin Laden.

While much of social media positively reacted to the news, many posted a quote attributed to King denouncing such happiness over the death of a human being.

"I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy," supposedly said King.

However, it did not take long for researchers to discover that the quote was not spoken by King at all, but rather had come from Facebook user Jessica Dovey, who posted an actual quote from the noted practitioner of nonviolence.

"Dovey, a 24-year old Penn State graduate who now teaches English to middle schoolers in Kobe, Japan, posted a very timely and moving thought on her Facebook status, and then followed it up with the Martin Luther King Jr. quote," noted the Atlantic.

"At some point, someone cut and pasted the quote, and ... stripped out the quotation marks. Eventually, the mangled quotation somehow came to the attention of Penn Jillette, of Penn and Teller fame. He tweeted it to his 1.6 million Facebook followers, and the rest was internet history."