Martin Luther King, jr.
"I have a dream!"
One of the world's best known
advocates of non-violent social change strategies, Martin Luther King,
Jr., synthesized ideas drawn from many different cultural traditions. Born
in Atlanta on January 15, 1929, King's roots were in the African-American
Baptist church. He was the grandson of the Rev. A. D. Williams, pastor
of Ebenezer Baptist church and a founder of Atlanta's NAACP chapter, and
the son of Martin Luther King, Sr., who succeeded Williams as Ebenezer's
pastor and also became a civil rights leader. Although, from an early age,
King resented religious emotionalism and questioned literal interpretations
of scripture, he nevertheless greatly admired black social gospel proponents
such as his father who saw the church as a instrument for improving the
lives of African Americans. Morehouse College president Benjamin Mays and
other proponents of Christian social activism influenced King's decision
after his junior year at Morehouse to become a minister and thereby serve
society. His continued skepticism, however, shaped his subsequent theological
studies at Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania, and at
Boston University, where he received a doctorate in systematic theology
in 1955. Rejecting offers for academic positions, King decided while completing
his Ph. D. requirements to return to the South and accepted the pastorate
of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama.
On December 5, 1955, five days after
Montgomery civil rights activist Rosa Parks refused to obey the city's
rules mandating segregation on buses, black residents launched a bus boycott
and elected King as president of the newly-formed Montgomery Improvement
Association. As the boycott continued during 1956, King gained national
prominence as a result of his exceptional oratorical skills and personal
courage. His house was bombed and he was convicted along with other boycott
leaders on charges of conspiring to interfere with the bus company's operations.
Despite these attempts to suppress the movement, Montgomery bus were desegregated
in December, 1956, after the United States Supreme Court declared Alabama's
segregation laws unconstitutional.
In 1957, seeking to build upon the success
of the Montgomery boycott movement, King and other southern black ministers
founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). As SCLC's
president, King emphasized the goal of black voting rights when he spoke
at the Lincoln Memorial during the 1957 Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom.
During 1958, he published his first book, Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery
Story. The following year, he toured India, increased his understanding
of Gandhian non-violent strategies. At the end of 1959, he resigned from
Dexter and returned to Atlanta where the SCLC headquarters was located
and where he also could assist his father as pastor of Ebenezer.
Although increasingly portrayed as the
pre-eminent black spokesperson, King did not mobilize mass protest activity
during the first five years after the Montgomery boycott ended. While King
moved cautiously, southern black college students took the initiative,
launching a wave of sit-in protests during the winter and spring of 1960.
King sympathized with the student movement and spoke at the founding meeting
of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in April 1960,
but he soon became the target of criticisms from SNCC activists determined
to assert their independence. Even King's decision in October, 1960, to
join a student sit-in in Atlanta did not allay the tensions, although presidential
candidate John F. Kennedy's sympathetic telephone call to King's wife,
Coretta Scott King, helped attract crucial black support for Kennedy's
successful campaign. The 1961 "Freedom Rides," which sought to integrate
southern transportation facilities, demonstrated that neither King nor
Kennedy could control the expanding protest movement spearheaded by students.
Conflicts between King and younger militants were also evident when both
SCLC and SNCC assisted the Albany (Georgia) Movement's campaign of mass
protests during December of 1961 and the summer of 1962.
After achieving few of his objectives
in Albany, King recognized the need to organize a successful protest campaign
free of conflicts with SNCC. During the spring of 1963, he and his staff
guided mass demonstrations in Birmingham, Alabama, where local white police
officials were known from their anti-black attitudes. Clashes between black
demonstrators and police using police dogs and fire hoses generated newspaper
headlines through the world. In June, President Kennedy reacted to the
Birmingham protests and the obstinacy of segregationist Alabama Governor
George Wallace by agreed to submit broad civil rights legislation to Congress
(which eventually passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964). Subsequent mass
demonstrations in many communities culminated in a march on August 28,
1963, that attracted more than 250,000 protesters to Washington, D. C.
Addressing the marchers from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, King delivered
his famous "I Have a Dream" oration.
During the year following the March,
King's renown grew as he became Time magazine's Man of the Year and, in
December 1964, the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. Despite fame and
accolades, however, King faced many challenges to his leadership. Malcolm
X's (1927-1965) message of self-defense and black nationalism expressed
the discontent and anger of northern, urban blacks more effectively than
did King's moderation. During the 1965 Selma to Montgomery march, King
and his lieutenants were able to keep intra-movement conflicts sufficiently
under control to bring about passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, but
while participating in a 1966 march through Mississippi, King encountered
strong criticism from "Black Power" proponent Stokely Carmichael. Shortly
afterward white counter-protesters in the Chicago area physically assaulted
King in the Chicago area during an unsuccessful effort to transfer non-violent
protest techniques to the urban North. Despite these leadership conflicts,
King remained committed to the use of non-violent techniques. Early in
1968, he initiated a Poor Peoples campaign designed to confront economic
problems that had not been addressed by early civil rights reforms.
King's effectiveness in achieving
his objectives was limited not merely by divisions among blacks, however,
but also by the increasing resistance he encountered from national political
leaders. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover's already extensive efforts to undermine
King's leadership were intensified during 1967 as urban racial violence
escalated and King criticized American intervention in the Vietnam war.
King had lost the support of many white liberals, and his relations with
the Lyndon Johnson administration were at a low point when he was assassinated
on April 4, 1968, while seeking to assist a garbage workers' strike in
Memphis. After his death, King remained a controversial symbol of the African-American
civil rights struggle, revered by many for his martyrdom on behalf of non-violence
and condemned by others for his militancy and insurgent views.
The most important leader during the Civil Rights movement,
Martin Luther King, was against violence.
His idea was to protest peacefully against laws and customs
that made black Americans second-class citizens. In 1963 he led the 'March
on Washington'. 200,000 people, black and white, marched to the capitol
to support the Civil Rights. King dreamed of a time, he told the people"...
when all of God`s children, black men and white men, will be able to join
hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: Free at last! Free
at last! Great God almighty, we are free at last."
As a result of the Civil Rights movement, discriminating
laws were changed, public places became open to black and white, and opportunities
for blacks were improved. In 1964 King won the Nobel Peace Prize; in 1968
he was shot. In 1986 a new public holiday was introduced in the USA-Martin
Luther King Day.
These are some photos of Martin Luther King´s
life:
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Today Martin Luther King, jr. is a symbol of freedom
and equality between blacks and whites. Therefore some streets, schools
and public places are given this name in order to honorize this man.
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king.htm/history/joy-luck (c) 1998
