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Martin Luther King Jr
King was born in Atlanta, Georgia to the Rev. Martin Luther King, Sr. and
Alberta Williams King. He graduated from Morehouse College with a
Bachelor of Arts degree (in Sociology) in 1948, and from Crozer Theological
Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania with a Bachelor of Divinity in 1951. He
received his Ph.D. in Systematic theology from Boston University in 1955.
Martin Luther King Jr
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Martin Luther King and Civil Rights
In 1954, King became the pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in
Montgomery, Alabama. He was a leader of the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott which
began when Rosa Parks refused to cede her seat to a white person. The boycott
lasted for 362 days. The situation became so tense that King's house was
bombed. King was arrested during this campaign, which ended with a United
States Supreme Court decision outlawing racial segregation on intrastate
buses.
Following the campaign, King was instrumental in the founding of the Southern
Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957, a group created to organize
Civil Rights activism. He continued to dominate the organization to his
death, a position criticized by the more radical and democratic Student
Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). The SCLC derived its membership
principally from black communities associated with Baptist churches. King was
an adherent of the philosophies of nonviolent civil disobedience used
successfully in India by Mohandas Gandhi, and he applied this philosophy to
the protests organized by the SCLC. King correctly identified that organized,
non-violent protest against the racist system of Southern separation known as
Jim Crow, when violently attacked by racist authorities and covered
extensively by the media, would create a wave of pro-Civil Rights public
opinion, and this was the key relationship which brought Civil Rights to the
forefront of American politics in the early 1960s.
He organized and led marches for the right to vote, desegregation, fair
hiring, and other basic civil rights. Most of these rights were later
successfully enacted into United States law with the passage of the Civil
Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
King and the SCLC applied the principles of nonviolent protest with
astonishing success by choosing the method of protest, and the places in
which protests were carried out, in order to provoke the harshest and most
shocking retaliation from racist authorities. King and the SCLC were
instrumental in the unsuccessful protest movement in Albany in 1961–1962,
where splits within the black community and the canny, low-key response by
local government defeated the movement, in the Birmingham protests in the
summer of 1963, and in the protest in St. Augustine, Florida in 1964. King
and SCLC joined SNCC in the city of Selma, Alabama in December 1964; SNCC had
already been there working on voter registration for a number of months.
King and SCLC, in partial collaboration with SNCC, then attempted to organise
a march which was intended to go from Selma to the state capital Montgomery
starting on March 25, 1965. The first attempt to march, on March 7, was
aborted due to mob and police violence against the demonstrators. The day has
since become known as Bloody Sunday. Bloody Sunday was a major turning point
in the effort to gain public support for the Civil Rights movement, the
clearest demonstration so far of the dramatic potential of King's techniques
of nonviolence. King, however, was not present; after meeting with President
Lyndon B. Johnson, he had attempted to delay the march until March 8, and the
march was carried out against his wishes and without his presence by local
civil rights workers. The footage of the police brutality against the
protestors was broadcast extensively across the nation, and aroused a
national sense of public outrage.
The second attempt at the march, on March 9, was ended when King stopped the
march at the Edmund Pettus Bridge on the outskirts of Selma, an action which
he seemed to have negotiated with city leaders beforehand. This unexpected
action aroused the surprise and anger of many within the local movement. The
march finally went ahead fully on March 25, with the agreement and support of
President Johnson, and it was during this march that Willie Ricks coined the
phrase "Black Power" (widely credited to Stokely Carmichael).
King was instrumental in the organization of the March on Washington for Jobs
and Freedom in 1963. This role was another which courted controversy, as King
was one of the key figures who helped President John F. Kennedy change the
intent of the march. Conceived as a further part of the Civil Rights protest,
it became more of a celebration of the achievements of the movement—and the
government—so far, a development which angered activists who were more
radical than King.
King wrote and spoke frequently, drawing on his long experience as a
preacher. His "Letter from Birmingham Jail", written in 1963, is a passionate
statement of his crusade for justice. On October 14, 1964, King became the
youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, which was awarded to him for
leading non-violent resistance to end racial prejudice in the United States.
Martin Luther King's Assasination
In 1968, King and the SCLC organized the "Poor People's Campaign" to
address issues of economic justice. The campaign culminated in a march on
Washington, D.C. demanding economic aid to the poorest communities of the
United States.
On April 3, 1968, King prophetically told a euphoric crowd:
It really doesn't matter what happens now.... some began to... talk about the
threats that were out -- what would happen to me from some of our sick white
brothers.... Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has
its place, but I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's
will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over, and
I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to
know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land. And so I'm
happy tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine
eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.
King was assassinated the next morning, April 4, 1968, on the balcony of the
Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, while preparing to lead a local march
in support of the heavily-black Memphis sanitation workers' union. Friends
inside the apartment heard the shot fired and ran to the balcony to find King
shot in the jaw. He was pronounced dead several hours later. Four days later,
President Johnson declared a national day of mourning for their lost civil
rights leader. A crowd of 300,000 attended his funeral that same day.
Martin Luther King's Legacy
Since his death, King's reputation has grown to become one of the most
revered names in American history to the point where he is compared with
Abraham Lincoln. Supporters of this idea remark that both were leaders
credited with strongly advancing human rights against poor odds in a nation
divided against itself on the issue - and were assassinated in part for it.
Even posthumous accusations of marital infidelity and academic plagiarism
have not seriously dented his public esteem, but merely reinforced the image
of a very human hero and leader.
In 1980, King's boyhood home in Atlanta and several other nearby buildings
were declared as Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site. In 1986, a
U.S. national holiday was established in honor of Martin Luther King Jr.,
which is called Martin Luther King Day. It is observed on the third Monday of
January each year, around the time of King's birthday. On January 18, 1993,
for the first time, Martin Luther King Day was officially observed in all 50
U.S. states. In addition, many U.S. cities have officially renamed one of
their streets to honor King.
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from
Wikipedia
and from ShiningRise.com
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