Martin Luther King Martin Luther King Jr Family

Martin Luther King Jr. was a social activist and Baptist minister who played a primal part in the American civil rights movement from the mid-1950s until his bump-off in 1968. King sought equality and human rights for African Americans, the economically disadvantaged and all victims of injustice through peaceful protest. He was the driving strength behind watershed events such as the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the 1963 March on Washington, which helped bring about such landmark legislation equally the Ceremonious Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. Male monarch was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 and is remembered each year on Martin Luther Rex Jr. Day, a U.Due south. federal holiday since 1986.

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When Was Martin Luther Rex Built-in?

Martin Luther King Jr. was born on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia, the second child of Martin Luther King Sr., a pastor, and Alberta Williams Male monarch, a former schoolteacher.

Along with his older sister Christine and younger blood brother Alfred Daniel Williams, he grew upwards in the city'south Sweet Auburn neighborhood, and so dwelling to some of the near prominent and prosperous African Americans in the country.

A gifted student, Rex attended segregated public schools and at the age of 15 was admitted to Morehouse College, the alma mater of both his father and maternal granddaddy, where he studied medicine and police.

Although he had not intended to follow in his father'due south 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 Bachelor of Divinity degree, won a prestigious fellowship and was elected president of his predominantly white senior class.

Rex 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 young singer from Alabama who was studying at the New England Conservatory of Music. The couple midweek in 1953 and settled in Montgomery, Alabama, where Rex became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church building.

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

Montgomery Bus Boycott

The King family unit had been living in Montgomery for less than a year when the highly segregated city became the epicenter of the burgeoning struggle for civil rights in America, galvanized by the landmark Chocolate-brown 5. Lath of Education decision of 1954.

On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, secretary of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), refused to give upwardly her seat to a white passenger on a Montgomery bus and was arrested. Activists coordinated a omnibus boycott that would go on for 381 days. The Montgomery Charabanc Boycott placed a severe economic strain on the public transit system and downtown business organization 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, Rex—heavily influenced past Mahatma Gandhi and the activist Bayard Rustin—had entered the national spotlight as an inspirational proponent of organized, nonviolent resistance.

King had besides go a target for white supremacists, who firebombed his family home that January.

On September twenty, 1958, Izola Ware Curry walked into a Harlem department shop where King was signing books and asked, "Are you Martin Luther Rex?" When he replied "yes," she stabbed him in the chest with a knife. King survived, and the attempted assassination only reinforced his dedication to nonviolence: "The feel 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 than: Why MLK's Right-Manus Man, Bayard Rustin, Was Nearly Written Out of History

Southern Christian Leadership Conference

Emboldened by the success of the Montgomery Motorbus Boycott, in 1957 he and other civil rights activists—most of them fellow ministers—founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), a group committed to achieving total equality for African Americans through irenic protest.

The SCLC motto was "Non one pilus of one caput of 1 person should exist harmed." King would remain at the captain of this influential organization until his decease.

In his role every bit SCLC president, Martin Luther King Jr. traveled beyond the country and around the earth, giving lectures on nonviolent protest and ceremonious rights also 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 unit members and followers of Gandhi, the man he described in his autobiography as "the guiding light of our technique of irenic social change." King too authored several books and manufactures during this time.

Letter from Birmingham Jail

In 1960 King and his family moved to Atlanta, his native city, where he joined his begetter equally co-pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church. This new position did not stop Rex 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 particularly severe test during the Birmingham campaign of 1963, in which activists used a boycott, sit-ins and marches to protestation segregation, unfair hiring practices and other injustices in one of America'south nigh racially divided cities.

Arrested for his interest on April 12, Male monarch penned the civil rights manifesto known as the "Letter from Birmingham Jail," an eloquent defense of ceremonious disobedience addressed to a group of white clergymen who had criticized his tactics.

March on Washington

Afterward that year, Martin Luther Male monarch Jr. worked with a number of civil rights and religious groups to organize the March on Washington for Jobs and Liberty, a peaceful political rally designed to shed light on the injustices Black Americans connected to confront beyond the country.

Held on August 28 and attended by some 200,000 to 300,000 participants, the event is widely regarded as a watershed moment in the history of the American civil rights movement and a cistron in the passage of the Civil Rights Human action of 1964.

READ More: For Martin Luther King Jr., Nonviolent Protest Never Meant 'Expect and See'

"I Have a Dream" Speech

The March on Washington culminated in King'south most famous accost, known every bit the "I Take a Dream" speech, a spirited telephone call for peace and equality that many consider a masterpiece of rhetoric.

Continuing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial—a monument to the president who a century earlier had brought downwards the institution of slavery in the United States—he shared his vision of a futurity in which "this nation volition rise upwardly and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be cocky-axiomatic, that all men are created equal.'"

The speech and march cemented King's reputation at home and abroad; later that yr he was named "Man of the Yr" past TIME mag and in 1964 became, at the time, the youngest person always awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

In the spring of 1965, Rex's elevated profile drew international attending to the violence that erupted betwixt white segregationists and peaceful demonstrators in Selma, Alabama, where the SCLC and Student Nonviolent Analogous Committee (SNCC) had organized a voter registration campaign.

Captured on television, the brutal scene outraged many Americans and inspired supporters from across the country to get together in Alabama and take part in the Selma to Montgomery march led by King and supported by President Lyndon B. Johnson, who sent in federal troops to continue the peace.

That August, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act, which guaranteed the correct to vote—get-go awarded by the 15th Amendment—to all African Americans.

READ MORE: 7 Things You May Non Know Virtually MLK's 'I Have a Dream' Speech

Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

The events in Selma deepened a growing rift between Martin Luther Rex Jr. and young radicals who repudiated his irenic methods and delivery to working within the established political framework.

Equally more than militant Black leaders such as Stokely Carmichael rose to prominence, Rex broadened the scope of his activism to accost issues such every bit the Vietnam War and poverty amid Americans of all races. In 1967, Rex and the SCLC embarked on an aggressive program known equally the Poor People's Campaign, which was to include a massive march on the capital.

On the evening of April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King was assassinated. He was fatally shot while standing on the balcony of a cabin in Memphis, where King had traveled to support a sanitation workers' strike. In the wake of his decease, a wave of riots swept major cities across the country, while President Johnson declared a national day 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 later recanted his confession and gained some unlikely advocates, including members of the King family unit, before his death in 1998.

READ More than: Why Martin Luther Rex'due south Family Believes James Earl Ray Was Not His Killer

MLK Day

After years of candidature by activists, members of Congress and Coretta Scott King, amidst others, in 1983 President Ronald Reagan signed a bill creating a U.Due south. federal holiday in honor of King.

Observed on the 3rd Monday of January, Martin Luther King Day was first historic in 1986.

Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes

While his "I Have a Dream" spoken communication is the most well-known slice of his writing, Martin Luther King Jr. was the writer of multiple books, include "Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story," "Why We Can't Await," "Strength to Love," "Where Do We Go From Hither: Chaos or Community?" and the posthumously published "Trumpet of Conscience" with a foreword past Coretta Scott Male monarch. Here are some of the most famous Martin Luther King Jr. quotes:

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; just light can do that. Hate cannot drive out detest; only love tin exercise that."

"The ultimate measure of a human is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of claiming and controversy."

"Freedom is never voluntarily given past the oppressor; it must be demanded past the oppressed."

"The fourth dimension is always correct to do what is right."

"True peace is non merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice."

"Our lives begin to end the 24-hour interval we become silent most things that affair."

"Costless at last, Free at concluding, Thank God almighty we are free at concluding."

"Organized religion is taking the get-go step even when yous don't see the whole staircase."

"In the stop, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."

"I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the concluding discussion in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant."

"I accept decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear."

"Exist a bush if you lot can't be a tree. If you can't be a highway, simply be a trail. If you can't be a sunday, be a star. For it isn't by size that y'all win or neglect. Be the best of whatsoever you are."

"Life's nearly persistent and urgent question is, 'What are you doing for others?'"

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