| "I have a dream that my four little children will one day | | | | in Northern churches. |
| live in a nation where they will not be judged by the | | | | In January 1960, he resigned his Montgomery pastorate |
| color of their skin but by the content of their | | | | and moved to Atlanta, Georgia, where the SCLC had |
| character." | | | | its headquarters. SCLC sought to complement the |
| Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. | | | | NAACP's legal efforts to dismantle segregation |
| March on Washington Speech, August, 1963 | | | | through the courts, with King and other SCLC leaders |
| Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968), American clergyman | | | | encouraging the use of nonviolent direct action to |
| and Nobel Prize winner, one of the principal leaders of | | | | protest discrimination. These activities included |
| the American civil rights movement and a prominent | | | | marches, demonstrations, and boycotts. The violent |
| advocate of nonviolent protest was born on January | | | | responses that direct action provoked from some |
| 15, 1929, the second of three children. His father was a | | | | whites eventually forced the federal government to |
| Baptist minister and served as pastor of a large | | | | confront the issues of injustice and racism in the South. |
| Atlanta church, Ebenezer Baptist, which had been | | | | King's challenges to segregation and racial |
| founded by Martin Luther King, Jr.'s, maternal | | | | discrimination in the 1950s and 1960s helped convince |
| grandfather. Martin was ordained as a Baptist minister | | | | many white Americans to support the cause of civil |
| at age 18. | | | | rights in the United States. |
| He attended public elementary and high schools as | | | | In 1963 Wrote 'Letter from Birmingham Jail,' arguing that |
| well as the private Laboratory High School of Atlanta | | | | it was his moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws, in |
| University. King entered Morehouse College at age 15 | | | | the every year he had Delivered his 'I Have a Dream' |
| in September 1944 as a special student. He received a | | | | speech to civil rights marchers at the Lincoln Memorial |
| bachelor's degree in sociology in 1948. In the fall of that | | | | in Washington, D.C. In 1964, King became the first black |
| year, King enrolled at Crozier Theological Seminary in | | | | American to be honored as Time magazine's Man of |
| Chester, Pennsylvania, and received his Bachelor of | | | | the Year and also won the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, |
| Divinity degree three years later. King's public-speaking | | | | Norway; Accepting the award on behalf of the civil |
| abilities-which would become renowned as his stature | | | | rights movement, Dr. King said, "Sooner or later, all the |
| grew in the civil rights movement-developed slowly | | | | people of the world will have to discover a way to live |
| during his collegiate years. He won a second-place | | | | together in peace, and thereby transform this pending |
| prize in a speech contest while an undergraduate at | | | | cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood.". |
| Morehouse, but received Cs in two public-speaking | | | | King's efforts were not limited to securing civil rights; he |
| courses in his first year at Crozer. By the end of his | | | | also spoke out against poverty and the Vietnam War; |
| third year at Crozer, however, professors were | | | | throughout 1966 and 1967 King increasingly turned the |
| praising King for the powerful impression he made in | | | | focus of his civil rights activism throughout the country |
| public speeches and discussions. King was awarded a | | | | to economic issues. |
| doctorate by Boston University in 1955. Throughout his | | | | He began to argue for redistribution of the nation's |
| education, King was exposed to influences that related | | | | economic wealth to overcome entrenched black |
| Christian theology to the struggles of oppressed | | | | poverty. In 1967 he began planning a Poor People's |
| peoples. At Morehouse, Crozer, and Boston University, | | | | Campaign to pressure national lawmakers to address |
| he studied the teachings on nonviolent protest of Indian | | | | the issue of economic justice. After his assassination in |
| leader Mohandas Gandhi. King also read and heard the | | | | April 4, 1968 at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, |
| sermons of white Protestant ministers who preached | | | | Tennessee by a sniper then realized named James |
| against American racism. Benjamin E. Mays, president | | | | Earl Ray and sentenced for 99 years imprisonment. |
| of Morehouse and a leader in the national community | | | | The FBI had believing that King had been associating |
| of racially liberal clergymen, was especially important in | | | | with Communists and other radicals, but King became |
| shaping King's theological development. | | | | a symbol of protest in the struggle for racial justice; |
| While in Boston, King met Coretta Scott, a music | | | | and at last President Ronald Reagan signs legislation |
| student and native of Alabama. They were married in | | | | designating Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday a national |
| June 18, 1953 and would have four children. In 1954 | | | | holiday in 1983 (the 3rd Monday of every new year). |
| King accepted his first pastorate at the Dexter | | | | King's nonviolent doctrine was strongly influenced by |
| Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, a | | | | the teachings of Indian leader Mohandas Gandhi. Unlike |
| church with a well-educated congregation that had | | | | the great majority of civil rights activists who have |
| recently been led by a minister who had protested | | | | regarded nonviolence as a convenient tactic. King |
| against segregation. | | | | followed Gandhi's principles of pacifism. In King's view, |
| He had been a resident in Montgomery less than one | | | | civil rights demonstrators, who were beaten and jailed |
| year when Rosa Parks defied the ordinance regulating | | | | by hostile whites, educated and transformed their |
| segregated seating on municipal transportation. King | | | | oppressors through the redemptive character of their |
| was soon chosen as president of the Montgomery | | | | unmerited suffering. |
| Improvement Association (MIA), the organization that | | | | The SCLC helped the students organize the Student |
| directed the bus boycott. King's serious demeanor and | | | | Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), at a |
| consistent appeal to Christian brotherhood and | | | | meeting held at Shaw University in Raleigh, North |
| American idealism made a positive impression on | | | | Carolina, to coordinate the protests. As a direct result |
| whites outside the South. Incidents of violence against | | | | of the sit-ins, lunch counters across the South began to |
| black protesters, including the bombing of King's home, | | | | serve blacks, and other public facilities were |
| focused media attention on Montgomery. In February | | | | desegregated. |
| 1956 an attorney for the MIA filed a lawsuit in federal | | | | An important interplay of action and response |
| court seeking an injunction against Montgomery's | | | | developed between government and civil rights |
| segregated seating practices. The federal court ruled | | | | advocates. And it was this interplay that did so much |
| in favor of the MIA, ordering the city's buses to be | | | | to quicken the pace of social change. |
| desegregated, but the city government appealed the | | | | The most critical direct action demonstration began in |
| ruling to the United States Supreme Court. For 12 | | | | Birmingham, Alabama, on April 3, 1963, under the |
| months, makeshift car pools substituted for public | | | | leadership of Dr. King and the Southern Christian |
| transportation. At first the bus company scoffed at the | | | | Leadership Conference. The demonstrators |
| black protest, but as the economic effects of the | | | | demanded fair employment opportunities, |
| boycott were felt, the company sought a settlement. | | | | desegregation of public facilities and the creation of a |
| Meanwhile, legal action ended the bus segregation | | | | committee to plan desegregation. King was arrested |
| policy. On June 5, 1956, a federal district court ruled | | | | and, while imprisoned, wrote his celebrated "Letter |
| that the bus segregation policy violated the Fourteenth | | | | from a Birmingham jail" to fellow clergymen critical of |
| Amendment, which forbids the states from denying | | | | his tactics of civil. King was arrested more than seven |
| equal rights to any citizen. The boycott ended, and it | | | | times during his many civil rights campaigns throughout |
| thrust into national prominence a person who clearly | | | | the South. |
| possessed charismatic leadership, Martin Luther King, | | | | On August 28, 1963, more than 250,000 Americans |
| Jr. | | | | from many religious and ethnic backgrounds |
| By the time the Supreme Court upheld the lower court | | | | converged on Washington, staging the largest |
| decision in November 1956, King was a national figure. | | | | demonstration in the history of the nation's capital. The |
| His memoir of the bus boycott, Stride Toward | | | | orderly procession moved from the Washington |
| Freedom (1958), provided a thoughtful account of that | | | | Monument to the Lincoln Memorial, where King |
| experience and further extended King's national | | | | electrified the demonstrators with an eloquent |
| influence. | | | | articulation of the American dream (I have a Dream) |
| King, urged by prominent black Baptist ministers in the | | | | and his hope that it would be fully realized. In one of |
| South to assume a larger role in the struggle for black | | | | the most famous passages from the speech, King |
| civil rights following the successful boycott, accepted | | | | declared: |
| the presidency of the newly formed Southern Christian | | | | "When we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring |
| Leadership Conference (SCLC) -an organization of | | | | from every village and every hamlet, from every state |
| black churches and ministers that aimed to challenge | | | | and every city, we will be able to speed up that day |
| racial segregation. As SCLC's president, King became | | | | when all God's children, black men and white men, |
| the organization's dominant personality and its primary | | | | Jews and gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be |
| intellectual influence. He was responsible for much of | | | | able to join hands and sing in the words of the old |
| the organization's fund-raising, which he frequently | | | | Negro spiritual 'Free at last. Free at last. |
| conducted in conjunction with preaching engagements | | | | |