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| Martin Luther King |
Born: January 15, 1929, Atlanta, Georgia, United States
Died April 4, 1968 (aged 39) Memphis, Tennessee, U.S.
Alma mater: Morehouse College (B.A.) Crozer Theological Seminary (B.D.) Boston University (Ph.D.)
Occupation: Clergyman, activist
Parents: Martin Luther King, Sr. (Father) Alberta Williams King (Mother)
Children : Yolanda Denise King (1955–2007)
Martin Luther King III (b. 1957)
Dexter Scott King (b. 1961)
Bernice Albertine King (b. 1963)
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who was a social activist and Baptist minister and also be who led a key role in the American civil rights movement from the mid-1950s until his by assassination in 1968 by the less than 13 years. African Americans acquire additional real progress toward racial equality in America than the prior 350 years had made.Inspired by advocates of nonviolence such as Mahatma Gandhi, King sought equality for African Americans, the economically disadvantaged and victims of injustice through peaceful protest.
Early life:
Martin Luther King, Jr., was born on January 15, 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia, to Reverend Martin Luther King, Sr. and Alberta Williams King. Michael Luther King, Jr., but later his father changed his name in honor of German reformer Martin Luther. His grandfather, A.D. Williams, was a rural minister for years and then moved to Atlanta in 1893.
He married Jennie Celeste Parks and that they had one kid that survived, Alberta. Michael King Sr. came from a cropper family in a very poor farming community. He married Canadian province in 1926 once associate degree eight-year prayer. The newlyweds affected to A.D. Williams direct Atlanta.
Martin, Jr., was a middle child, between an older sister, Willie Christine King, and a younger brother, Alfred Daniel Williams King.[4] King sang with his church choir at the 1939 Atlanta premiere of the movie Gone with the Wind.
When he growing up.... he started to attended Booker T. Washington High School. A premature student In 1948, he graduated from Morehouse with a B.A. degree in sociology, and enrolled in Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania, from which he graduated with a B.Div. degree in 1951. King married Coretta Scott, on June 18, 1953, on the lawn of her parents' house in her hometown of Heiberger, Alabama. They became the parents of four children: Yolanda King, Martin Luther King III, Dexter Scott King, and Bernice King. During their marriage, King limited Coretta's role in the civil rights movement, and expected her to be a housewife.
Montgomery Bus Boycott:
Martin, Jr....was recruited to function voice for the Montgomery Bus Boycott.On March 2, 1955, a 15-year-old girl refused to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery city bus in violation of local law. Claudette Colvin was arrested and taken to jail.
that was a campaign by the African-American population of Montgomery, Alabama to force integration of the city’s bus lines. when 381 days of nearly universal participation by voters of the black community, several of whom had to steer miles to figure day by day as a result, the U.S. Supreme Court dominated that separatism in transportation was unconstitutional.
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference:
In 1957 he was electoral president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, a corporation fashioned to supply new leadership for the currently burgeoning civil rights movement. The ideals for this organization he took from Christianity; its operational techniques from Gandhi. within the eleven-year amount between 1957 and 1968, King traveled over six million miles and spoke over twenty-five hundred times, showing where there was injustice, protest, and action; and meantime he wrote 5 books moreover as varied articles. In these years, he junction rectifier an enormous protest in Birmingham, Alabama, that caught the eye of the whole world, providing what he referred to as a coalition of conscience. and galvanizing his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail", a pronunciamento of the Negro revolution; he planned the drives in Alabama for the registration of Negroes as voters; he directed the peaceful locomote Washington, D.C., of 250,000 folks to whom he delivered his address, "l Have a Dream", he presented with President John F. Kennedy and campaigned for President Lyndon B. Johnson; he was in remission upwards of twenty times and raped a minimum of four times; he was awarded 5 unearned degrees; was named Man of the Year by Time magazine in 1963; and have become not solely the symbolic leader of yankee blacks however additionally a world figure.
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| Martin Luther king Memorial |
In 1963, he light-emitting diode a coalition of diverse civil rights teams in a very nonviolent campaign geared toward Birmingham, Alabama, that at the time was represented because the “most separate town in America.” the following brutality of the city’s police, illustrated most vividly by tv pictures of young blacks being molested by dogs and water hoses, light-emitting diode to a national outrage leading to a push for unprecedented civil rights legislation. it absolutely was throughout this campaign that Dr. King written the “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” the pronunciamento of Dr. King’s philosophy and ways, that is these days required-reading in universities worldwide.
"I Have a Dream" (28 August 1963):
Martin Luther King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech, delivered at the 28 August 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, synthesized portions of his previous sermons and speeches, with selected statements by other prominent public figures.
King had been drawing on material he used in the “I Have a Dream” speech in his other speeches and sermons for many years. The finale of King’s April 1957 address “A Realistic Look at the Question of Progress in the Area of Race Relations,” envisioned a “new world,” quoted the song “My Country ’Tis of Thee,” and proclaimed that he had heard “a powerful orator say not so long ago, that… Freedom must ring from every mountain side…His Full text speech,,,,,,
"I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.
But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.
In a sense we have come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds." But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check -- a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quick sands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.
It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.
But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.
We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. They have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.
As we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied, as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating "For Whites Only". We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.
I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.
Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.
I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal."
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom
and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.
This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.
This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with a new meaning, "My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring."
And if America is to be a great nation this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!
Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!
Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California!
But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!
Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee!
Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.
And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"
In 1964, at 35 years old, Martin Luther King, he is the the youngest man who is rewarded the Nobel Peace Prize. When notified of his selection, he announced that he would turn over the prize money of $54,123 to the furtherance of the civil rights movement.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s but 13 years of nonviolent leadership complete short and tragically on April fourth, 1968, once he was dead at the French region court in Memphis, Tennessee. Dr. King’s body was came to his town of Atlanta, Georgia, wherever his ceremonial occasion ceremony was attended by high-level leaders of all races and political stripes.
Awards: Nobel Peace Prize (1964), Presidential Medal of Freedom (1977, posthumous), Congressional Gold Medal (2004, posthumous)
