Ten Facts You Didnt Know Africans
Martin Luther Male monarch Jr. was a social activist and Baptist minister who played a key role in the American civil rights motility from the mid-1950s until his assassination in 1968. King sought equality and human being rights for African Americans, the economically disadvantaged and all victims of injustice through peaceful protestation. He was the driving force backside watershed events such equally the Montgomery Motorcoach Boycott and the 1963 March on Washington, which helped bring about such landmark legislation every bit the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Human activity. King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 and is remembered each year on Martin Luther King Jr. 24-hour interval, a U.S. federal holiday since 1986.
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When Was Martin Luther King Born?
Martin Luther King Jr. was born on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia, the 2nd child of Martin Luther Male monarch Sr., a pastor, and Alberta Williams King, a erstwhile schoolteacher.
Forth with his older sister Christine and younger brother Alfred Daniel Williams, he grew up in the city's Sweet Auburn neighborhood, then home to some of the most prominent and prosperous African Americans in the land.
A gifted student, Male monarch attended segregated public schools and at the age of fifteen was admitted to Morehouse College, the alma mater of both his father and maternal grandfather, where he studied medicine and law.
Although he had not intended to follow in his father's footsteps by joining the ministry, he changed his mind under the mentorship of Morehouse's president, Dr. Benjamin Mays, an influential theologian and outspoken advocate for racial equality. After graduating in 1948, King entered Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania, where he earned a Available of Divinity degree, won a prestigious fellowship and was elected president of his predominantly white senior grade.
King then enrolled in a graduate program at Boston University, completing his coursework in 1953 and earning a doctorate in systematic theology two years later. While in Boston he met Coretta Scott, a immature singer from Alabama who was studying at the New England Solarium of Music. The couple wednesday in 1953 and settled in Montgomery, Alabama, where Rex became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church building.
The Kings had 4 children: Yolanda Denise King, Martin Luther King 3, Dexter Scott King and Bernice Albertine King.
Montgomery Bus Boycott
The Male monarch family unit had been living in Montgomery for less than a year when the highly segregated metropolis became the epicenter of the burgeoning struggle for ceremonious rights in America, galvanized by the landmark Chocolate-brown v. Lath of Education decision of 1954.
On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, secretary of the local chapter of the National Clan for the Advocacy of Colored People (NAACP), refused to surrender her seat to a white passenger on a Montgomery autobus and was arrested. Activists coordinated a bus boycott that would go along for 381 days. The Montgomery Bus Boycott placed a severe economic strain on the public transit system and downtown business organisation owners. They chose Martin Luther King Jr. as the protest's leader and official spokesman.
By the time the Supreme Court ruled segregated seating on public buses unconstitutional in November 1956, Male monarch—heavily influenced by Mahatma Gandhi and the activist Bayard Rustin—had entered the national spotlight every bit an inspirational proponent of organized, nonviolent resistance.
King had also get a target for white supremacists, who firebombed his family home that Jan.
On September 20, 1958, Izola Ware Back-scratch walked into a Harlem department store where King was signing books and asked, "Are you lot Martin Luther King?" When he replied "yeah," she stabbed him in the chest with a pocketknife. Rex survived, and the attempted bump-off only reinforced his dedication to nonviolence: "The experience of these last few days has deepened my faith in the relevance of the spirit of nonviolence if necessary social change is peacefully to take place."
READ More: Why MLK's Right-Hand Man, Bayard Rustin, Was Well-nigh Written Out of History
Southern Christian Leadership Briefing
Emboldened by the success of the Montgomery Charabanc Cold-shoulder, in 1957 he and other civil rights activists—almost of them fellow ministers—founded the Southern Christian Leadership Briefing (SCLC), a grouping committed to achieving full equality for African Americans through nonviolent protest.
The SCLC motto was "Non one pilus of 1 caput of ane person should be harmed." Rex would remain at the captain of this influential organization until his decease.
In his role as SCLC president, Martin Luther King Jr. traveled across the country and effectually the world, giving lectures on nonviolent protestation and civil rights every bit well as meeting with religious figures, activists and political leaders.
During a month-long trip to Bharat in 1959, he had the opportunity to meet family members and followers of Gandhi, the homo he described in his autobiography equally "the guiding light of our technique of nonviolent social alter." King also authored several books and articles during this time.
Letter of the alphabet from Birmingham Jail
In 1960 King and his family unit moved to Atlanta, his native urban center, where he joined his male parent as co-pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church building. This new position did non stop King and his SCLC colleagues from becoming key players in many of the most meaning civil rights battles of the 1960s.
Their philosophy of nonviolence was put to a especially astringent test during the Birmingham campaign of 1963, in which activists used a cold-shoulder, sit down-ins and marches to protest segregation, unfair hiring practices and other injustices in i of America's almost racially divided cities.
Arrested for his involvement on April 12, Rex penned the civil rights manifesto known as the "Letter from Birmingham Jail," an eloquent defense of ceremonious disobedience addressed to a grouping of white clergymen who had criticized his tactics.
March on Washington
Later on that year, Martin Luther Rex Jr. worked with a number of civil rights and religious groups to organize the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, a peaceful political rally designed to shed calorie-free on the injustices Black Americans continued to face across the country.
Held on August 28 and attended past some 200,000 to 300,000 participants, the event is widely regarded as a watershed moment in the history of the American civil rights move and a factor in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
READ MORE: For Martin Luther Rex Jr., Nonviolent Protest Never Meant 'Wait and Meet'
"I Have a Dream" Speech
The March on Washington culminated in King'southward most famous address, known as the "I Have a Dream" speech, a spirited phone call for peace and equality that many consider a masterpiece of rhetoric.
Standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial—a monument to the president who a century earlier had brought down the institution of slavery in the U.s.a.—he shared his vision of a future in which "this nation will rise upwards and live out the true significant of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.'"
The speech communication and march cemented King's reputation at home and abroad; later on that year he was named "Human being of the Year" past TIME magazine and in 1964 became, at the time, the youngest person e'er awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
In the leap of 1965, King's elevated profile drew international attending to the violence that erupted between white segregationists and peaceful demonstrators in Selma, Alabama, where the SCLC and Pupil Irenic Coordinating Committee (SNCC) had organized a voter registration campaign.
Captured on idiot box, the brutal scene outraged many Americans and inspired supporters from across the country to gather in Alabama and take part in the Selma to Montgomery march led by King and supported past President Lyndon B. Johnson, who sent in federal troops to keep the peace.
That Baronial, Congress passed the Voting Rights Deed, which guaranteed the right to vote—first awarded by the 15th Amendment—to all African Americans.
READ MORE: vii Things You lot May Not Know About MLK'due south 'I Accept a Dream' Speech
Assassination of Martin Luther Rex Jr.
The events in Selma deepened a growing rift between Martin Luther King Jr. and young radicals who repudiated his nonviolent methods and delivery to working within the established political framework.
Every bit more militant Black leaders such as Stokely Carmichael rose to prominence, King broadened the scope of his activism to accost problems such equally the Vietnam War and poverty among Americans of all races. In 1967, King and the SCLC embarked on an aggressive program known every bit the Poor People's Campaign, which was to include a massive march on the capital.
On the evening of April 4, 1968, Martin Luther Rex was assassinated. He was fatally shot while standing on the balcony of a motel in Memphis, where King had traveled to support a sanitation workers' strike. In the wake of his death, a wave of riots swept major cities across the country, while President Johnson declared a national 24-hour interval of mourning.
James Earl Ray, an escaped convict and known racist, pleaded guilty to the murder and was sentenced to 99 years in prison. He afterward recanted his confession and gained some unlikely advocates, including members of the King family, earlier his expiry in 1998.
READ More than: Why Martin Luther Rex's Family Believes James Earl Ray Was Not His Killer
MLK Day
Subsequently years of campaigning past activists, members of Congress and Coretta Scott Male monarch, among others, in 1983 President Ronald Reagan signed a beak creating a U.S. federal vacation in accolade of King.
Observed on the tertiary Mon of January, Martin Luther Male monarch Day was first celebrated in 1986.
Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes
While his "I Have a Dream" speech is the near well-known piece of his writing, Martin Luther King Jr. was the author of multiple books, include "Step Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story," "Why Nosotros Can't Wait," "Strength to Love," "Where Do Nosotros Go From Hither: Chaos or Customs?" and the posthumously published "Trumpet of Censor" with a foreword by Coretta Scott King. Hither are some of the near famous Martin Luther King Jr. quotes:
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
"Darkness cannot bulldoze out darkness; but light can practice that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only honey can do that."
"The ultimate measure of a man is non where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy."
"Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed."
"The fourth dimension is always correct to do what is right."
"True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice."
"Our lives begin to stop the twenty-four hours we become silent about things that matter."
"Free at terminal, Free at final, Thank God almighty we are free at last."
"Faith is taking the first stride even when y'all don't run across the whole staircase."
"In the end, we will remember non the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."
"I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional dear volition have the concluding word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant."
"I take decided to stick with dearest. Hate is as well bang-up a burden to bear."
"Be a bush if you can't be a tree. If you can't be a highway, just be a trail. If you can't exist a sun, be a star. For it isn't by size that you win or neglect. Be the best of whatever yous are."
"Life's most persistent and urgent question is, 'What are you doing for others?'"
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Source: https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/martin-luther-king-jr
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