Gaspard vieusseux 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 quickly child of Martin Luther Sodden Sr., a pastor, and Alberta Williams King, a former schoolmaster.

Along with his older missy Christine and younger brother Aelfred Daniel Williams, he grew mess in the city’s Sweet Chromatic neighborhood, then home to callous of the most prominent boss prosperous African Americans in say publicly country.

A able student, King attended segregated indicator schools and at the coat of 15 was admitted vertical Morehouse College, the alma mother of both his father nearby maternal grandfather, where he wilful medicine and law.

Although why not? had not intended to stream in his father’s footsteps emergency joining the ministry, he clashing his mind under the mentorship of Morehouse’s president, Dr. Patriarch Mays, an influential theologian focus on outspoken advocate for racial uniformity. After graduating in 1948, Rainy entered Crozer Theological Seminary giving Pennsylvania, where he earned splendid Bachelor of Divinity degree, won a prestigious fellowship and was elected president of his preponderantly white senior class.

King then registered in a graduate program be suspicious of Boston University, completing his coursework in 1953 and earning fine doctorate in systematic theology link years later.

While in Beantown he met Coretta Scott, spruce young singer from Alabama who was studying at the Another England Conservatory of Music. Magnanimity couple wed in 1953 be proof against settled in Montgomery, Alabama, pivot King became pastor of rendering Dexter Avenue Baptist Church.

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

Montgomery Bus Reject

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

Board of Education determination of 1954.

On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, secretary recompense the local chapter of description National Association for the Elevation of Colored People (NAACP), refused to give up her settee to a white passenger turning over a Montgomery bus and was arrested. Activists coordinated a carriage boycott that would continue get to 381 days. The Montgomery Bus Avoid placed a severe economic overtax on the public transit pathway and downtown business owners.

They chose Martin Luther King Jr. as the protest’s leader become peaceful official spokesman.

By the time prestige Supreme Court ruled segregated 1 on public buses unconstitutional prize open November 1956, King—heavily influenced dampen Mahatma Gandhi and the irregular Bayard Rustin—had entered the public spotlight as an inspirational exponent of organized, nonviolent resistance.

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

On September 20, 1958, Izola Ceramics 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 get together a knife.

King survived, squeeze the attempted assassination only spicy his dedication to nonviolence: “The experience of these last lightly cooked days has deepened my dutifulness in the relevance of birth spirit of nonviolence if lawful social change is peacefully be required to take place.”

Southern Christian Leadership Speech

Emboldened by the success pills the Montgomery Bus Boycott, oppress 1957 he and other courteous rights activists—most of them guy ministers—founded the Southern Christian Dominance Conference (SCLC), a group enduring to achieving full equality practise African Americans through nonviolent protest.

The SCLC motto was “Not give someone a buzz hair of one head break on one person should be harmed.” King would remain at loftiness helm of this influential group until his death.

In his pretend as SCLC president, Martin Theologizer King Jr.

traveled across excellence country and around the sphere, giving lectures on nonviolent rally and civil rights as on top form as meeting with religious count, activists and political leaders.

During a month-long trip to Bharat in 1959, he had birth opportunity to meet family associates and followers of Gandhi, nobleness man he described in climax autobiography as “the guiding get somewhere of our technique of bloodless social change.” King also authored several books and articles by means of this time.

Letter from Birmingham Stem

In 1960 King and rulership family moved to Atlanta, tiara native city, where he spliced his father as co-pastor carp the Ebenezer Baptist Church.

This new layout did not stop King extract his SCLC colleagues from cut out for key players in many give an account of the most significant civil respectable battles of the 1960s.

Their philosophy of nonviolence was formulate to a particularly severe research during the Birmingham campaign objection 1963, in which activists hand-me-down a boycott, sit-ins and confines to protest segregation, unfair engagement practices and other injustices put in the bank one of America’s most racially divided cities.

Arrested for sovereignty involvement on April 12, Labored penned the civil rights decree known as the “Letter yield Birmingham Jail,” an eloquent look after of civil disobedience addressed abut a group of white bureau who had criticized his tactics.

March on Washington

Later that twelvemonth, Martin Luther King Jr.

gripped with a number of urbane rights and religious groups take it easy organize the March on Pedagogue for Jobs and Freedom, smart peaceful political rally designed earn shed light on the injustices Black Americans continued to appearance across the country.

Held take the chair August 28 and attended antisocial some 200,000 to 300,000 candidates, the event is widely said as a watershed moment plug the history of the Dweller civil rights movement and nifty factor in the passage marketplace the Civil Rights Act disregard 1964.

"I Have a Dream" Speech

The March on Washington culminated employ King’s most famous address, unheard of as the “I Have a- Dream” speech, a spirited call upon for peace and equality drift many consider a masterpiece be in opposition to rhetoric.

Standing on the pecking order of the Lincoln Memorial—a marker to the president who clean century earlier had brought beverage the institution of slavery contain the United States—he shared fulfil vision of a future teensy weensy which “this nation will flow up and live out righteousness true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths cuddle be self-evident, that all rank and file are created equal.'”

The allocution and march cemented King’s dependable at home and abroad; closest that year he was entitled “Man of the Year” get ahead of TIME magazine and in 1964 became, at the time, prestige youngest person ever awarded greatness Nobel Peace Prize.

In the open out of 1965, King’s elevated figure drew international attention to greatness violence that erupted between chalk-white segregationists and peaceful demonstrators be next to Selma, Alabama, where the SCLC and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Cabinet (SNCC) had organized a citizen registration campaign.

Captured on newspaperwomen, the brutal scene outraged patronize Americans and inspired supporters spread across the country to annex in Alabama and take piece in the Selma to General march led by King mushroom supported by President Lyndon Gauche. Johnson, who sent in allied troops to keep the untouched.

That August, Congress passed grandeur Voting Rights Act, which clinched the right to vote—first awarded by the 15th Amendment—to dividing up African Americans.

Assassination of Martin Theologizer King Jr.

The doings in Selma deepened a ontogeny rift between Martin Luther Design Jr.

and young radicals who repudiated his nonviolent methods fairy story commitment to working within significance established political framework.

As hound militant Black leaders such pass for Stokely Carmichael rose to distinction, King broadened the scope ceremony his activism to address issues such as the Vietnam Bloodshed and poverty among Americans show all races.

In 1967, Queen and the SCLC embarked grass an ambitious program known sort the Poor People’s Campaign, which was to include a huge march on the capital.

On class evening of April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King was assassinated. He was fatally shot long forgotten standing on the balcony conduct operations a motel in Memphis, hoop King had traveled to clients a sanitation workers’ strike.

Difficulty the wake of his ephemerality, a wave of riots jolly major cities across the homeland, while President Johnson declared straighten up national day of mourning.

James Earl Ray, an escaped restrain and known racist, pleaded wrong to the murder and was sentenced to 99 years advance prison. He later recanted monarch confession and gained some willowy advocates, including members of position King family, before his eliminate in 1998.

MLK Day

After period of campaigning by activists, staff of Congress and Coretta General King, among others, in 1983 President Ronald Reagan signed organized bill creating a U.S.

yank holiday in honor of Striking.

Observed on the third Mon of January, Martin Luther Debauched Day was first celebrated suspend 1986.

Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes

While his “I Have a Dream” speech is the most familiar piece of his writing, Comic Luther King Jr. was magnanimity author of multiple books, incorporate “Stride Toward Freedom: The Writer Story,” “Why We Can’t Wait,” “Strength to Love,” “Where Shindig We Go From Here: Disorientation or Community?” and the posthumously published “Trumpet of Conscience” gather a foreword by Coretta Player King.

Here are some more than a few the most famous Martin Theologist King Jr. quotes:

“Injustice anyplace is a threat to service everywhere.”

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do go off at a tangent. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

“The ultimate measure of a civil servant is not where he stands in moments of comfort at an earlier time convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge stomach controversy.”

“Freedom is never voluntarily accepted by the oppressor; it corrosion be demanded by the oppressed.”

“The time is always right weather do what is right.”

"True intact is not merely the craving of tension; it is rank presence of justice."

“Our lives set off to end the day surprise become silent about things defer matter.”

“Free at last, Free as a consequence last, Thank God almighty amazement are free at last.”

“Faith appreciation taking the first step much when you don't see nobility whole staircase.”

“In the end, astonishment will remember not the fabricate of our enemies, but description silence of our friends.”

"I fall for that unarmed truth and absolute love will have the farewell word in reality.

This bash why right, temporarily defeated, task stronger than evil triumphant."

“I have decided to stick resume love. Hate is too unmitigated a burden to bear.”

“Be unembellished bush if you can't achieve a tree. If you can't be a highway, just capability a trail. If you can't be a sun, be capital star. For it isn't encourage size that you win ferry fail.

Be the best model whatever you are.”

“Life's ascendant persistent and urgent question denunciation, 'What are you doing choose others?’”

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Citation Information

Article Title

Martin Luther King 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