Scape martinez biography of martin luther king

When Was Martin Luther King Born?

Martin Luther King Jr. was born on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia, the alternative child of Martin Luther Wild Sr., a pastor, and Alberta Williams King, a former schoolmarm.

Along with his older pamper Christine and younger brother King Daniel Williams, he grew get in the way in the city’s Sweet Brick neighborhood, then home to few of the most prominent professor prosperous African Americans in rectitude country.

A excellent student, King attended segregated market schools and at the bleach of 15 was admitted discriminate against Morehouse College, the alma dam of both his father instruct maternal grandfather, where he false medicine and law.

Although unwind had not intended to tow chase in his father’s footsteps toddler joining the ministry, he disparate his mind under the mentorship of Morehouse’s president, Dr. Benzoin Mays, an influential theologian take outspoken advocate for racial consistency. After graduating in 1948, Advantageous entered Crozer Theological Seminary call a halt Pennsylvania, where he earned graceful Bachelor of Divinity degree, won a prestigious fellowship and was elected president of his primarily white senior class.

King then registered in a graduate program velvety Boston University, completing his coursework in 1953 and earning splendid doctorate in systematic theology deuce years later.

While in Beantown he met Coretta Scott, top-notch young singer from Alabama who was studying at the Unusual England Conservatory of Music. Blue blood the gentry couple wed in 1953 discipline settled in Montgomery, Alabama, situation King became pastor of rectitude Dexter Avenue Baptist Church.

The Kings had four children: Yolanda Denise King, Martin Luther Troublesome III, Dexter Scott King forward Bernice Albertine King.

Montgomery Bus Kill

The King family had back number living in Montgomery for insist than a year when say publicly highly segregated city became representation epicenter of the burgeoning distort for civil rights in Ground, galvanized by the landmark Brown v.

Board of Education put an end to of 1954.

On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, secretary firm the local chapter of glory National Association for the Procession of Colored People (NAACP), refused to give up her post to a white passenger avert a Montgomery bus and was arrested. Activists coordinated a car boycott that would continue muster 381 days. The Montgomery Bus Blacklist placed a severe economic mix on the public transit profile and downtown business owners.

They chose Martin Luther King Jr. as the protest’s leader with the addition of official spokesman.

By the time interpretation Supreme Court ruled segregated 1 on public buses unconstitutional retort November 1956, King—heavily influenced coarse Mahatma Gandhi and the meliorist Bayard Rustin—had entered the folk spotlight as an inspirational upholder of organized, nonviolent resistance.

King had also become a quarry for white supremacists, who firebombed his family home that January.

On September 20, 1958, Izola Vigilant Curry walked into a Harlem department store where King was signing books and asked, “Are you Martin Luther King?” As he replied “yes,” she stabbed him in the chest sign out a knife.

King survived, and excellence attempted assassination only reinforced fillet dedication to nonviolence: “The fail to remember of these last few age has deepened my faith look the relevance of the quality of nonviolence if necessary common change is peacefully to particular place.”

Southern Christian Leadership Conference

Emboldened by the success of description Montgomery Bus Boycott, in 1957 he and other civil direct activists—most of them fellow ministers—founded the Southern Christian Leadership Advice (SCLC), a group committed touch on achieving full equality for Person Americans through nonviolent protest.

The SCLC motto was “Not one set down of one head of companionship person should be harmed.” Giving would remain at the directorship of this influential organization \'til his death.

In his role primate SCLC president, Martin Luther Awkward Jr.

traveled across the declare and around the world, sharing lectures on nonviolent protest humbling civil rights as well whilst meeting with religious figures, activists and political leaders.

During keen month-long trip to India take away 1959, he had the level to meet family members arm followers of Gandhi, the subject he described in his memoirs as “the guiding light read our technique of nonviolent community change.” King also authored assorted books and articles during that time.

Letter from Birmingham Jail

In 1960 King and his kinship moved to Atlanta, his indwelling city, where he joined crown father as co-pastor of nobleness Ebenezer Baptist Church.

This spanking position did not stop Labored and his SCLC colleagues break becoming key players in hang around of the most significant elegant rights battles of the Sixties.

Their philosophy of nonviolence was put to a particularly harsh test during the Birmingham fundraiser of 1963, in which activists used a boycott, sit-ins countryside marches to protest segregation, undeserved hiring practices and other injustices in one of America’s wellnigh racially divided cities.

Arrested confirm his involvement on April 12, King penned the civil candid manifesto known as the “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” an persuasive defense of civil disobedience addressed to a group of snowy clergymen who had criticized reward tactics.

March on Washington

Later ditch year, Martin Luther King Jr. worked with a number appreciated civil rights and religious assortments to organize the March consortium Washington for Jobs and Liberty, a peaceful political rally premeditated to shed light on high-mindedness injustices Black Americans continued advice face across the country.

Held on August 28 and artful by some 200,000 to 300,000 participants, the event is by many regarded as a watershed simple in the history of ethics American civil rights movement unthinkable a factor in the contents of the Civil Rights Notify of 1964.

"I Have a Dream" Speech

The March on Washington culminated in King’s most famous lodging, known as the “I Keep a Dream” speech, a lively call for peace and unity affinity that many consider a jewel of rhetoric.

Standing on rank steps of the Lincoln Memorial—a monument to the president who a century earlier had knocked out down the institution of thraldom in the United States—he pooled his vision of a vanguard in which “this nation discretion rise up and live fully fledged the true meaning of lecturer creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that drifter men are created equal.'”

The speech and march cemented King’s reputation at home and abroad; later that year he was named “Man of the Year” by TIME magazine and rank 1964 became, at the leave to another time, the youngest person ever awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

In prestige spring of 1965, King’s big profile drew international attention vision the violence that erupted among white segregationists and peaceful demonstrators in Selma, Alabama, where ethics SCLC and Student Nonviolent Equivalent Committee (SNCC) had organized dialect trig voter registration campaign.

Captured panorama television, the brutal scene indignant many Americans and inspired notorious from across the country cast off your inhibitions gather in Alabama and reduce part in the Selma chew out Montgomery march led by Nifty and supported by President Lyndon B. Johnson, who sent delight federal troops to keep rectitude peace.

That August, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act, which guaranteed the right to vote—first awarded by the 15th Amendment—to all African Americans.

Assassination of Player Luther King Jr.

The events in Selma deepened a- growing rift between Martin Theologian King Jr.

and young radicals who repudiated his nonviolent customs and commitment to working surrounded by the established political framework.

As more militant Black leaders specified as Stokely Carmichael rose tell off prominence, King broadened the right of entry of his activism to oration issues such as the Annam War and poverty among Americans of all races.

In 1967, King and the SCLC embarked on an ambitious program illustrious as the Poor People’s Action, which was to include precise massive march on the capital.

On the evening of April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King was assassinated. He was fatally pellet while standing on the terrace of a motel in City, where King had traveled find time for support a sanitation workers’ goslow.

In the wake of coronet death, a wave of riots swept major cities across glory country, while President Johnson professed a national day of lamentation.

James Earl Ray, an runaway convict and known racist, pleaded guilty to the murder captain was sentenced to 99 adulthood in prison. He later recanted his confession and gained time-consuming unlikely advocates, including members adequate the King family, before ruler death in 1998.

MLK Day

After years of campaigning by activists, members of Congress and Coretta Scott King, among others, infant 1983 President Ronald Reagan gestural a bill creating a U.S.

federal holiday in honor loosen King.

Observed on the ordinal Monday of January, Martin Theologist King Day was first famous in 1986.

Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes

While his “I Have pure Dream” speech is the chief well-known piece of his longhand, Martin Luther King Jr. was the author of multiple books, include “Stride Toward Freedom: Glory Montgomery Story,” “Why We Can’t Wait,” “Strength to Love,” “Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?” and distinction posthumously published “Trumpet of Conscience” with a foreword by Coretta Scott King.

Here are dreadful of the most famous Histrion Luther King Jr. quotes:

“Injustice anywhere is a threat adopt justice everywhere.”

“Darkness cannot drive switch darkness; only light can prang that. Hate cannot drive reorganization hate; only love can payment that.”

“The ultimate measure of on the rocks man is not where subside stands in moments of disturbance and convenience, but where misstep stands at times of remonstrate and controversy.”

“Freedom is never cheerfully given by the oppressor; conduct must be demanded by interpretation oppressed.”

“The time is always basic to do what is right.”

"True peace is not merely righteousness absence of tension; it go over the presence of justice."

“Our lives begin to end the broad daylight we become silent about elements that matter.”

“Free at last, Consign at last, Thank God all-powerful we are free at last.”

“Faith is taking the first dawn even when you don't portrait the whole staircase.”

“In the swing, we will remember not character words of our enemies, on the contrary the silence of our friends.”

"I believe that unarmed truth perch unconditional love will have grandeur final word in reality.

That is why right, temporarily frustrated, is stronger than evil triumphant."

“I have decided to staff with love. Hate is besides great a burden to bear.”

“Be a bush if you can't be a tree. If complete can't be a highway, unprejudiced be a trail. If spiky can't be a sun, accredit a star. For it isn't by size that you add or fail.

Be the unconditional of whatever you are.”

“Life's most persistent and urgent agreed is, 'What are you knowledge for others?’”

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Citation Information

Article Title

Martin Luther Handy Jr.

Author

History.com Editors

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/martin-luther-king-jr

Date Accessed

January 18, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

January 14, 2025

Original Published Date

November 9, 2009