Introduction

 I study how different we are as people. I go into depth and compare a social figure like American Baptist Martin Luther King jr. who rose to the challenge of his environment and led a civil rights movement, to Ed Kemper who gave into his environment and murdered six college students before murdering his mother and her friends. As people we are shaped by our environment and those who surround us. This determines how people react to  discrimination, Upbringing, and even how they respond to each other.

Upbringing

To understand the difference between someone like Kemper and Martin we have to do our research and understand who they are as people. According to John Douglass and Mark Olshaker in their non-fiction crime book Mindhunter , Edmund Emil Kemper III was born on December 18, 1948. Raised in Burbank, California. Kemper grew up in a dysfunctional family in which his mother and father fought constantly and eventually separated . After the family was broken apart, Kemper went to live with his mother who would later despise her son for having the complexion of his father. The young teenage Kemper who towered over his mother at six-foot four inches, would be mistreated and psychologically abused for how awkward and different he was. Locked away in the basement of his home Kemper started showing signs of manic behavior by killing and dissecting his house pets. Frightened by what her son was doing Kempers mother sent Ed to live with his grandparents. Frustrated and trapped from society Ed murdered his granparents and killed a human for the first time. He was then diagnosed with a “personality trait disturbance, passive aggressive type” and was committed to the Atascadero State Hospital for the criminally insane. He was let out in 1969 by the decision of a state psychiatrist, and put in the custody of his mother. By this time He was twenty-one years old at six-foot nine inches and weighed approximately 300 pounds. After two years of practicing picking up hitchhikers and getting a job with the State Highway Department. After seemingly taking over a new leaf he began killing Hitchhikers he would pick up on the road. Kemper would eventually build up the courage to take the life of his mother and her friends.  

Now that we understand Kemper we must understand Martin. According to History.com, Martin Luther King Jr. was born on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia. The second child of Martin Luther King, a pastor and Alberta King, a former school teacher. King grew up in the city’s sweet auburn neighborhood, at the time home to some of the most prominent and prosperous African Americans in the country. Though at a young age King  realized he was hated for the color of his skin, he had the love of his family and community with him. As a young gifted student, he attended segregated public schools. He furthered his education at HBCU Morehouse College where he studied medicine and law. Although not planning to, King eventually followed in his fathers footsteps into ministry. After earning his masters then bachelors degree, King had four children and moved to Montgomery,Alabama which was the epicenter of the segregated burgeoning struggle for civil rights in America. From there on King would lead a Montgomery Bus boycott, March on Washington, and his famous I Have a Dream speech. 

Environment

When comparing people like King and Kemper you have to analyze each environment. Who and what was surrounding them. Kemper, surrounded and harassed by those around him, developed hatred for his family and women at a young age. King, though judged for the color of his skin, was surrounded by love within his family and community. Some may argue that due to Kempers diagnosis of his mental illness that my argument is invalid. According to the book Mindhunter, Kemper was well known for his high IQ of 145 and his ability to be deceptive and manipulative. When confessing to the police while turning himself in, the officer didn't believe him because of how loved he was amongst his peers. John Olshaker constantly reminds us in his book that while interviewing Kemper with his partner they were always scared they “were not the brightest ones in the room” referring to Kempers intelligence. The point I'm trying to make is even though Kemper does have a mental illness, his environment is a main role in what shaped him into what he became. Since now that we know we are what surrounds us, what difference does it make? Will you cave into your environment or will you make a path for yourself?