From a 1982 book review in which Garry Wills argued that Martin Luther King, Jr. knew he “would have to accept his own death” if he were to play a leading role in the civil rights movement:

…He did not do it all at once; he hoped to slip away from the appointment he had made. But it was soon clear to him, as to others around him, that one could not challenge the entire moral basis of a society’s racial arrangements without being jailed, beaten, and (finally) killed. Going to jail meant risking death from inmates as well as guards, and he went to jail nineteen times… More here.