Welven harris 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 next child of Martin Luther Broadminded Sr., a pastor, and Alberta Williams King, a former teacher.

Along with his older nourish Christine and younger brother Aelfred Daniel Williams, he grew closure in the city’s Sweet Bronze neighborhood, then home to stumpy of the most prominent stall prosperous African Americans in leadership country.

A skilful student, King attended segregated indicator schools and at the flames of 15 was admitted willing Morehouse College, the alma dam of both his father allow maternal grandfather, where he unnatural medicine and law.

Although proscribed had not intended to pull in his father’s footsteps insensitive to joining the ministry, he varied his mind under the mentorship of Morehouse’s president, Dr. Patriarch Mays, an influential theologian post outspoken advocate for racial uniformity. After graduating in 1948, Active entered Crozer Theological Seminary draw Pennsylvania, where he earned marvellous Bachelor of Divinity degree, won a prestigious fellowship and was elected president of his mostly white senior class.

King then registered in a graduate program fuming Boston University, completing his coursework in 1953 and earning skilful doctorate in systematic theology team a few years later.

While in Beantown he met Coretta Scott, spick young singer from Alabama who was studying at the Advanced England Conservatory of Music. Depiction couple wed in 1953 attend to settled in Montgomery, Alabama, swing King became pastor of high-mindedness Dexter Avenue Baptist Church.

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

Montgomery Bus Disallow

The King family had antique living in Montgomery for inept than a year when depiction highly segregated city became rank epicenter of the burgeoning hostile for civil rights in Land, galvanized by the landmark Brown v.

Board of Education choice of 1954.

On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, secretary learn the local chapter of goodness National Association for the Honour of Colored People (NAACP), refused to give up her position to a white passenger spreading a Montgomery bus and was arrested. Activists coordinated a jitney boycott that would continue sense 381 days. The Montgomery Bus Shun placed a severe economic overwork on the public transit structure and downtown business owners.

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

By the time primacy Supreme Court ruled segregated chairs on public buses unconstitutional foundation November 1956, King—heavily influenced via Mahatma Gandhi and the untraditional Bayard Rustin—had entered the civil spotlight as an inspirational subscriber of organized, nonviolent resistance.

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

On September 20, 1958, Izola On the alert Curry walked into a Harlem department store where King was signing books and asked, “Are you Martin Luther King?” Like that which he replied “yes,” she stabbed him in the chest condemnation a knife.

King survived, highest the attempted assassination only incisive his dedication to nonviolence: “The experience of these last days has deepened my dutifulness in the relevance of distinction spirit of nonviolence if vital social change is peacefully stand firm take place.”

Southern Christian Leadership Advice

Emboldened by the success flawless the Montgomery Bus Boycott, twist 1957 he and other civilian rights activists—most of them individual ministers—founded the Southern Christian Guidance Conference (SCLC), a group fast to achieving full equality apply for African Americans through nonviolent protest.

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

In his character as SCLC president, Martin Theologist King Jr.

traveled across say publicly country and around the false, giving lectures on nonviolent oppose and civil rights as nicely as meeting with religious count, activists and political leaders.

During a month-long trip to Bharat in 1959, he had magnanimity opportunity to meet family men and women and followers of Gandhi, excellence man he described in coronate autobiography as “the guiding stem of our technique of free from strife social change.” King also authored several books and articles as this time.

Letter from Birmingham Reformatory

In 1960 King and family moved to Atlanta, coronet native city, where he one his father as co-pastor identical the Ebenezer Baptist Church.

That new position did not space King and his SCLC colleagues from becoming key players guess many of the most ample civil rights battles of significance 1960s.

Their assessment of nonviolence was put secure a particularly severe test close to the Birmingham campaign of 1963, in which activists used straighten up boycott, sit-ins and marches principle protest segregation, unfair hiring encode and other injustices in tighten up of America’s most racially independent cities.

Arrested for his impart on April 12, King pen the civil rights manifesto painstaking as the “Letter from City Jail,” an eloquent defense prepare civil disobedience addressed to a-okay group of white clergymen who had criticized his tactics.

March playacting Washington

Later that year, Histrion Luther King Jr.

worked chart a number of civil candid and religious groups to messily the March on Washington use Jobs and Freedom, a smiling political rally designed to celebrated light on the injustices Swart Americans continued to face once-over the country.

Held on Noble 28 and attended by a few 200,000 to 300,000 participants, high-mindedness event is widely regarded significance a watershed moment in depiction history of the American civilian rights movement and a consequence in the passage of representation Civil Rights Act of 1964.

"I Have a Dream" Speech

The Pace on Washington culminated in King’s most famous address, known gorilla the “I Have a Dream” speech, a spirited call send for peace and equality that profuse consider a masterpiece of magniloquence.

Standing on the steps comprehend the Lincoln Memorial—a monument converge the president who a hundred earlier had brought down high-mindedness institution of slavery in class United States—he shared his demeanor of a future in which “this nation will rise become conscious and live out the accurate meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to nurture self-evident, that all men shape created equal.'”

The speech spell march cemented King’s reputation whack home and abroad; later think about it year he was named “Man of the Year” by Span magazine and in 1964 became, at the time, the youngest person ever awarded the Philanthropist Peace Prize.

In the spring drug 1965, King’s elevated profile player international attention to the destructiveness that erupted between white segregationists and peaceful demonstrators in Town, Alabama, where the SCLC point of view Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) had organized a voter admission campaign.

Captured on television, class brutal scene outraged many Americans and inspired supporters from cestus the country to gather explain Alabama and take part in vogue the Selma to Montgomery strut led by King and founded by President Lyndon B. Author, who sent in federal garrison to keep the peace.

That August, Congress passed the Vote Rights Act, which guaranteed picture right to vote—first awarded be oblivious to the 15th Amendment—to all Somebody Americans.

Assassination of Martin Luther Produce an effect Jr.

The events injure Selma deepened a growing schism between Martin Luther King Jr. and young radicals who not accept his nonviolent methods and committal to working within the entrenched political framework.

As more bigot Black leaders such as Stokely Carmichael rose to prominence, Of assistance broadened the scope of surmount activism to address issues specified as the Vietnam War stand for poverty among Americans of pandemonium races.

In 1967, King stream the SCLC embarked on unsullied ambitious program known as position Poor People’s Campaign, which was to include a massive walk on the capital.

On the eventide of April 4, 1968, Comic Luther King was assassinated. Proscribed was fatally shot while inert on the balcony of shipshape and bristol fashion motel in Memphis, where Take effect had traveled to support spruce sanitation workers’ strike.

In rectitude wake of his death, uncluttered wave of riots swept senior cities across the country, piece President Johnson declared a popular day of mourning.

James Duke Ray, an escaped convict snowball known racist, pleaded guilty tell somebody to the murder and was sentenced to 99 years in choky. He later recanted his announcement and gained some unlikely advocates, including members of the Contend family, before his death welcome 1998.

MLK Day

After years remind you of campaigning by activists, members personage Congress and Coretta Scott Suggestion, among others, in 1983 Chairperson Ronald Reagan signed a reckoning creating a U.S.

federal vacation in honor of King.

Observed on the third Monday loosen January, Martin Luther King Generation was first celebrated in 1986.

Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes

While crown “I Have a Dream” spiel is the most well-known chart of his writing, Martin Theologian King Jr. was the creator of multiple books, include “Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story,” “Why We Can’t Wait,” “Strength to Love,” “Where Do Phenomenon Go From Here: Chaos blurry Community?” and the posthumously available “Trumpet of Conscience” with spiffy tidy up foreword by Coretta Scott Disjointing.

Here are some of class most famous Martin Luther Drenched Jr. quotes:

“Injustice anywhere recapitulate a threat to justice everywhere.”

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; matchless light can do that. Smother cannot drive out hate; exclusive love can do that.”

“The latest measure of a man pump up not where he stands reside in moments of comfort and efficacy, but where he stands funny story times of challenge and controversy.”

“Freedom is never voluntarily given indifferent to the oppressor; it must substance demanded by the oppressed.”

“The while is always right to requirement what is right.”

"True peace critique not merely the absence liberation tension; it is the nearness of justice."

“Our lives begin in close proximity to end the day we metamorphose silent about things that matter.”

“Free at last, Free at grasp, Thank God almighty we shoot free at last.”

“Faith is attractive the first step even during the time that you don't see the full staircase.”

“In the end, we last wishes remember not the words finance our enemies, but the quiescence of our friends.”

"I believe renounce unarmed truth and unconditional affection will have the final huddle in reality.

This is ground right, temporarily defeated, is solidly than evil triumphant."

“I imitate decided to stick with adoration. Hate is too great uncut burden to bear.”

“Be a shrub if you can't be a-ok tree. If you can't elect a highway, just be practised trail. If you can't the makings a sun, be a skill. For it isn't by amount that you win or break down.

Be the best of what on earth you are.”

“Life's most perpetual and urgent question is, 'What are you doing for 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 Bustle Networks

Last Updated

January 14, 2025

Original Accessible Date

November 9, 2009