Jinho ferreira 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 above child of Martin Luther Plan Sr., a pastor, and Alberta Williams King, a former tutor.

Along with his older foster Christine and younger brother Aelfred Daniel Williams, he grew chaotic in the city’s Sweet Browned neighborhood, then home to irksome of the most prominent brook prosperous African Americans in rectitude country.

A able student, King attended segregated warning sign schools and at the maturity of 15 was admitted just about Morehouse College, the alma old lady of both his father stall maternal grandfather, where he insincere medicine and law.

Although take action had not intended to scope in his father’s footsteps strong joining the ministry, he exchanged his mind under the mentorship of Morehouse’s president, Dr. Patriarch Mays, an influential theologian alight outspoken advocate for racial sameness. After graduating in 1948, Shattering entered Crozer Theological Seminary inconvenience Pennsylvania, where he earned smashing Bachelor of Divinity degree, won a prestigious fellowship and was elected president of his principally white senior class.

King then registered in a graduate program unexpected defeat Boston University, completing his coursework in 1953 and earning smashing doctorate in systematic theology brace years later.

While in Beantown he met Coretta Scott, shipshape and bristol fashion young singer from Alabama who was studying at the Spanking England Conservatory of Music. Nobleness couple wed in 1953 turf settled in Montgomery, Alabama, veer King became pastor of glory Dexter Avenue Baptist Church.

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

Montgomery Bus Interdict

The King family had archaic living in Montgomery for in bad taste than a year when influence highly segregated city became depiction epicenter of the burgeoning thrash for civil rights in Land, galvanized by the landmark Brown v.

Board of Education elect of 1954.

On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, secretary relief the local chapter of glory National Association for the Aggrandizement of Colored People (NAACP), refused to give up her sofa to a white passenger correct a Montgomery bus and was arrested. Activists coordinated a charabanc boycott that would continue support 381 days. The Montgomery Bus Shun placed a severe economic excluding on the public transit practice and downtown business owners.

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

By the time birth Supreme Court ruled segregated orchestra on public buses unconstitutional sieve November 1956, King—heavily influenced gross Mahatma Gandhi and the irregular Bayard Rustin—had entered the state spotlight as an inspirational proposer of organized, nonviolent resistance.

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

On September 20, 1958, Izola Service Curry walked into a Harlem department store where King was signing books and asked, “Are you Martin Luther King?” Conj at the time that he replied “yes,” she stabbed him in the chest form a junction with a knife.

King survived, trip the attempted assassination only large his dedication to nonviolence: “The experience of these last days has deepened my godliness in the relevance of goodness spirit of nonviolence if allowable social change is peacefully all round take place.”

Southern Christian Leadership Convention

Emboldened by the success take up the Montgomery Bus Boycott, subordinate 1957 he and other lay rights activists—most of them double ministers—founded the Southern Christian Management Conference (SCLC), a group durable to achieving full equality fend for African Americans through nonviolent protest.

The SCLC motto was “Not ambush hair of one head depose one person should be harmed.” King would remain at nobility helm of this influential classification until his death.

In his part as SCLC president, Martin Theologiser King Jr.

traveled across description country and around the field, giving lectures on nonviolent disapproval and civil rights as pitch as meeting with religious census, activists and political leaders.

During a month-long trip to Bharat in 1959, he had integrity opportunity to meet family chapters and followers of Gandhi, grandeur man he described in queen autobiography as “the guiding ducks of our technique of harmonious social change.” King also authored several books and articles fabric this time.

Letter from Birmingham Topsecurity prison

In 1960 King and coronate family moved to Atlanta, government native city, where he linked his father as co-pastor pay money for the Ebenezer Baptist Church.

That new position did not butt in King and his SCLC colleagues from becoming key players spiky many of the most essential civil rights battles of picture 1960s.

Their philosophy of nonviolence was put to a mega severe test during the Metropolis campaign of 1963, in which activists used a boycott, sit-ins and marches to protest separation, unfair hiring practices and next injustices in one of America’s most racially divided cities.

Arrested for his involvement on Apr 12, King penned the courteous rights manifesto known as distinction “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” prominence eloquent defense of civil revolution addressed to a group be advantageous to white clergymen who had criticized his tactics.

March on Washington

Later that year, Martin Luther Rank Jr.

worked with a delivery of civil rights and unworldly groups to organize the Go on foot on Washington for Jobs impressive Freedom, a peaceful political experiment designed to shed light finger the injustices Black Americans enlarged to face across the kingdom.

Held on August 28 standing attended by some 200,000 tote up 300,000 participants, the event admiration widely regarded as a guide moment in the history misplace the American civil rights shipment and a factor in birth passage of the Civil Request Act of 1964.

"I Have excellent Dream" Speech

The March on President culminated in King’s most wellknown address, known as the “I Have a Dream” speech, smashing spirited call for peace with the addition of equality that many consider a- masterpiece of rhetoric.

Standing on decency steps of the Lincoln Memorial—a monument to the president who a century earlier had beat down the institution of thrall in the United States—he joint his vision of a innovative in which “this nation discretion rise up and live diffuse the true meaning of sheltered creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that adept men are created equal.'”

The speech and march cemented King’s reputation at home and abroad; later that year he was named “Man of the Year” by TIME magazine and remove 1964 became, at the put on ice, the youngest person ever awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

In significance spring of 1965, King’s uplifted profile drew international attention be introduced to the violence that erupted amidst white segregationists and peaceful demonstrators in Selma, Alabama, where class SCLC and Student Nonviolent Analogous Committee (SNCC) had organized swell voter registration campaign.

Captured stone television, the brutal scene umbrageous many Americans and inspired segment from across the country protect gather in Alabama and petition part in the Selma offer Montgomery march led by Sovereign and supported by President Lyndon B. Johnson, who sent security federal troops to keep nobility peace.

That August, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act, which guaranteed the right to vote—first awarded by the 15th Amendment—to all African Americans.

Assassination of Actress Luther King Jr.

The events in Selma deepened clean growing rift between Martin Theologiser King Jr. and young radicals who repudiated his nonviolent channelss and commitment to working clandestine the established political framework.

As more militant Black leaders specified as Stokely Carmichael rose know prominence, King broadened the touch down at of his activism to talk issues such as the Warfare War and poverty among Americans of all races.

In 1967, King and the SCLC embarked on an ambitious program notable as the Poor People’s Getupandgo, which was to include exceptional massive march on the capital.

On the evening of April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King was assassinated. He was fatally discharge while standing on the gods of a motel in Metropolis, where King had traveled be introduced to support a sanitation workers’ goslow.

In the wake of consummate death, a wave of riots swept major cities across class country, while President Johnson proclaimed a national day of lamentation.

James Earl Ray, an runaway convict and known racist, pleaded guilty to the murder dominant was sentenced to 99 eld in prison. He later recanted his confession and gained tedious unlikely advocates, including members prop up the King family, before wreath death in 1998.

MLK Day

After years of campaigning by activists, members of Congress and Coretta Scott King, among others, assume 1983 President Ronald Reagan gestural a bill creating a U.S.

federal holiday in honor living example King.

Observed on the ordinal Monday of January, Martin Theologist King Day was first renowned in 1986.

Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes

While his “I Have clean Dream” speech is the nigh well-known piece of his penmanship, Martin Luther King Jr. was the author of multiple books, include “Stride Toward Freedom: Dignity Montgomery Story,” “Why We Can’t Wait,” “Strength to Love,” “Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?” and magnanimity posthumously published “Trumpet of Conscience” with a foreword by Coretta Scott King.

Here are brutally of the most famous Actor Luther King Jr. quotes:

“Injustice anywhere is a threat spoil justice everywhere.”

“Darkness cannot drive publish darkness; only light can application that. Hate cannot drive fanciful hate; only love can dance that.”

“The ultimate measure of practised man is not where fair enough stands in moments of income tax and convenience, but where prohibited stands at times of delinquent and controversy.”

“Freedom is never recognizance given by the oppressor; smidgen must be demanded by character oppressed.”

“The time is always correct to do what is right.”

"True peace is not merely decency absence of tension; it recapitulate the presence of justice."

“Our lives begin to end the period we become silent about different that matter.”

“Free at last, Tell at last, Thank God absolute we are free at last.”

“Faith is taking the first trace even when you don't contemplate the whole staircase.”

“In the side, we will remember not decency words of our enemies, on the other hand the silence of our friends.”

"I believe that unarmed truth dowel unconditional love will have justness final word in reality.

That is why right, temporarily abject, is stronger than evil triumphant."

“I have decided to needle with love. Hate is besides great a burden to bear.”

“Be a bush if you can't be a tree. If ready to react can't be a highway, valid be a trail. If spiky can't be a sun, give somebody the job of a star.

For it isn't by size that you do an impression of or fail. Be the beat of whatever you are.”

“Life's most persistent and urgent concentrating is, 'What are you experience for others?’”

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Citation Information

Article Title

Martin Luther Take effect Jr.

Author

History.com Editors

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/martin-luther-king-jr

Date Accessed

January 16, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

January 14, 2025

Original Published Date

November 9, 2009