White Fire King
White Fire King
Martin Luther King Jr., Catalyst for a Peaceful Revolution
Martin Luther King received the Nobel Prize for Peace for his work leading a peaceful revolution in America's civil rights movement.
Early Years
Martin Luther King, Jr., originally Michael Luther King, was born January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia, to Reverend Martin Luther King, Sr. and Alberta Williams King. Both King, Sr. and Alberta preached at the Ebenezer Baptist Church, as King Jr. would later do himself. He had an older sister, named Willie Christine, and a younger brother, named Albert Daniel.
King was exceptionally bright, enrolling at Morehouse College at only fifteen years old. There, he learned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology. He then earned a Bachelor of Divinity degree from the Crozer Theological School, before beginning his doctoral studies in Systematic Theology at Boston University. There he received his Ph.D. in 1955. While in Boston, King also met and married Corretta Scott King, with whom he would have two children.
Early Activism
In 1954, King accepted his first position as a full-time pastor at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. By this point, at the age of 24, he was an executive committee member for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In December of 1955, King helped form the Montgomery Improvement Association, and took charge of the first major non-violent protest of the civil rights movement, the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The boycott was called in response to the arrest of a woman named Rosa Parks, who refused to forfeit her seat on a bus to a white man. The boycott lasted for 382 days, only ending when the Supreme Court declared the forced segregation of buses unconstitutional.
SCLC - Civil Rights Explosion!
Soon afterwards, in 1957, King was elected president of the newly formed Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), which provided a ideological and organizational foundation for the growing American Civil Rights Movement. He implanted into the SCLC moral ideas and techniques based on Christianity and the non-violent teachings of Mahatma Gandhi. For more than a decade, he spoke at thousands of locations about civil rights and social justice, as well as writing five books and several articles on the topic. He organized many demonstrations advocating desegregation, labor rights, and the dismantling of prejudice Jim Crow laws.
King's actions cast him and the Civil Rights Movement into the public eye, becoming the focus of contemporary media attention. In particular, the Birmingham protests, which he organized, and the March on Washington, for which he represented the SCLC and delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech, both during 1963, sparked a great deal of controversy. The March on Washington, organized by the so-called Big Six organizations of the Civil Rights Movement, ended up a resounding success. The next year, King was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace. He was the youngest recipient in the history of the award.
Death and Legacy
On April 4, 1968, King was shot and killed while standing on a balcony outside his motel room in Memphis, Tennessee. The next day,he had been scheduled to lead a protest by the city's garbage workers. Though a man named James Earl Ray was accused of plead guilty to the crime, the exact circumstances surrounding his death have been shrouded in mystery.
Since his death, Martin Luther King, Jr. has been recognized as one of the greatest advocates for universal civil rights in history, as well as one of the most remarkable modern orators. He is perhaps the most recognizable figure of the Civil Rights Movement, and has posthumously received many awards and recognitions, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
For some other great biographies see: Barack Obama 2008, 2008 calendar and Hillary Clinton 2008.
Born: January 15, 1929
Died: April 4, 1968
Famous For: Leading figure of the Civil Rights Movement and SCLC, one of the greatest American orators.
Key Accomplishments: Doctorate in Systematic Theology from Boston University as well as 20 Honorary Degrees from various Universities, earned the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1964.
Significant Quote: "I have a dream that one day the state of Alabama, whose governor's lips are presently dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, will be transformed into a situation where little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers."
Fun Quote: "Our scientific powers have outrun our spiritual powers; we have guided missiles and mis-guided men."
About the Author
Gary Hayduk enjoys free lance writing on web topics. For readers of this article, he recommends Private Website File Sharing, 2008 Free Printable Calendars, and using Free Downloadable Calendars.
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The Life of Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King Jr. was born on 15 January 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia. Interestingly, he was named after the original Martin Luther, the initiator of the Protestant Reformation. The young King received his early education at Booker T. Washington High School; he excelled there, being allowed to enter Morehouse College at the tender age of fifteen without even formally graduating from high school. He graduated from Morehouse in 1948 with a degree in sociology and enrolled in Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania from which he graduated with a Degree of Divinity in 1951. He then enrolled at Boston University, receiving his Doctor of Philosophy on 5 June, 1955. He married Coretta Scott in 1953, they began their lives in Montgomery, Alabama with King becoming pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. The civil rights leader Howard Thurman was a profound influence on the young King. Thurman had met with Gandhi and he arranged for King to meet with the Gandhi family in India in 1959, the trip was to greatly influence King’s thinking, confirming his dedication to non-violent resistance. The civil rights activist Baynard Rustin further counselled King to confine his struggle entirely to non-violent means. In 1955, Claudette Colvin and Rosa Parks were arrested for refusing to give up their bus seats to white passengers. King was one of the prime organisers of the ensuing Montgomery Bus Boycott, which caused huge deficits in public transit profits. The boycott lasted or over a year and led to the United States Supreme Court decision that declared the Alabama and Montgomery bus segregation laws were unconstitutional. In 1957, King was one of the founding member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) which was created to organise the black churches into mass protests by non-violent means, King would lead the movement until his death. King was a victim of an assassination attempt in 1958; while signing copies of his book, Strive Toward Freedom, in a Harlem department store, he was stabbed in the chest by a Izola Curry and narrowly escaped death. It didn’t swerve him from his vision, he continued to work tirelessly, organising and leading civil rights marches. In December 1961, King and the SCLC became involved with the Albany Movement, a group which had mobilised thousands of citizens in a wide ranging non-violent protest on all elements of segregation within the city of Albany, Georgia. King was scooped up in a mass of peaceful protestors, he declined bail until the city made concessions, agreements were made and King accepted to be released but the authorities rescinded on all their promises. A similar campaign was embarked upon in Birmingham, Alabama in the spring of 1963; it was more successful, the movement had learned from it’s past mistakes. The SCLC leant it’s influential sway to similar protests in St. Augustine, Florida and Selma, Alabama in 1964. King was also one of the prime movers in the August 1963 massive March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. It has become one of the most seminal moments of the twentieth century, providing the indelible image of over a quarter of a million people crammed from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial onto the National Mall and around the calm waters of the reflecting pool. It also provided humanity with some of it’s most powerful rhetoric ever voiced as King delivered his electrifying I Have a Dream speech. However, resistance against the civil rights movement and it’s goals was still fierce, as evidenced by the violence meted out to protestors on a series of attempted marches from Selma to Montgomery. King and others began to realise that they would need to spread the movement further, they knew they needed to go nationwide, that is they knew that they had to motivate the North of the country. They began this phase of their resistance in Chicago, where they met equal if not more ferocious opposition as they had in the South. In 1968, King and the SCLC organised the Poor People’s Campaign to address issues of economic injustice, King began to travel the length and breath of the country in order to assemble an army of multi-racial supporters to march on Washington. Towards the end of March, King arrived in Memphis, Tennessee to support black sanitary public works employees. Horrifically, he was assassinated in the early evening of April 4, 1968. However, they could not silence him, his legacy ensured the progress of civil rights in America and indeed throughout the world.
About the Author
Russell Shortt is a travel consultant with Exploring Ireland, the leading specialists in customised, private escorted tours, escorted coach tours and independent self drive tours of Ireland. Article source Russell Shortt, http://www.exploringireland.net
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