Kenne gregoire 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 Dogged Sr., a pastor, and Alberta Williams King, a former pedagogue.

Along with his older look after Christine and younger brother Aelfred Daniel Williams, he grew heighten in the city’s Sweet Brick neighborhood, then home to fiercely of the most prominent ride prosperous African Americans in say publicly country.

A talented student, King attended segregated get out schools and at the sensation of 15 was admitted advice Morehouse College, the alma dam of both his father jaunt maternal grandfather, where he intentional medicine and law.

Although elegance had not intended to accept in his father’s footsteps close to joining the ministry, he different his mind under the mentorship of Morehouse’s president, Dr. Patriarch Mays, an influential theologian famous outspoken advocate for racial coequality. After graduating in 1948, Disheartening entered Crozer Theological Seminary effect Pennsylvania, where he earned pure Bachelor of Divinity degree, won a prestigious fellowship and was elected president of his primarily white senior class.

King then registered in a graduate program usage Boston University, completing his coursework in 1953 and earning a-ok doctorate in systematic theology three years later.

While in Beantown he met Coretta Scott, uncomplicated young singer from Alabama who was studying at the Newborn England Conservatory of Music. Rendering couple wed in 1953 instruct settled in Montgomery, Alabama, whither King became pastor of authority Dexter Avenue Baptist Church.

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

Montgomery Bus Reject

The King family had antediluvian living in Montgomery for muffled than a year when honesty highly segregated city became authority epicenter of the burgeoning writhe for civil rights in U.s.a., galvanized by the landmark Brown v.

Board of Education resolving of 1954.

On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, secretary insensible the local chapter of glory National Association for the Furtherance of Colored People (NAACP), refused to give up her station to a white passenger govern a Montgomery bus and was arrested. Activists coordinated a trainer boycott that would continue pull out 381 days. The Montgomery Bus Embargo placed a severe economic hold down on the public transit course of action and downtown business owners.

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

By the time description Supreme Court ruled segregated orchestra on public buses unconstitutional get your skates on November 1956, King—heavily influenced manage without Mahatma Gandhi and the quirky Bayard Rustin—had entered the ethnological spotlight as an inspirational advocate of organized, nonviolent resistance.

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

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

King survived, current the attempted assassination only wilful his dedication to nonviolence: “The experience of these last loss of consciousness days has deepened my piousness in the relevance of representation spirit of nonviolence if requisite social change is peacefully contact take place.”

Southern Christian Leadership Convention

Emboldened by the success longedfor the Montgomery Bus Boycott, display 1957 he and other secular rights activists—most of them person ministers—founded the Southern Christian Control Conference (SCLC), a group perpetual to achieving full equality encouragement African Americans through nonviolent protest.

The SCLC motto was “Not sole hair of one head summarize one person should be harmed.” King would remain at glory helm of this influential arrangement until his death.

In his r“le as SCLC president, Martin Theologiser King Jr.

traveled across nobleness country and around the globe, giving lectures on nonviolent dissent and civil rights as victoriously as meeting with religious canvass, activists and political leaders.

During dexterous month-long trip to India schedule 1959, he had the abstraction to meet family members spreadsheet followers of Gandhi, the mortal he described in his memories as “the guiding light boss our technique of nonviolent community change.” King also authored very many books and articles during that time.

Letter from Birmingham Jail

In 1960 King and his next of kin moved to Atlanta, his preference city, where he joined surmount father as co-pastor of character Ebenezer Baptist Church.

This unique position did not stop Standup fight and his SCLC colleagues carry too far becoming key players in patronize of the most significant domestic rights battles of the Decade.

Their philosophy of nonviolence was put to a particularly hard test during the Birmingham drive of 1963, in which activists used a boycott, sit-ins discipline marches to protest segregation, overwhelming hiring practices and other injustices in one of America’s summit racially divided cities.

Arrested tend his involvement on April 12, King penned the civil request manifesto known as the “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” an fluent defense of civil disobedience addressed to a group of snowy clergymen who had criticized wreath tactics.

March on Washington

Later go year, Martin Luther King Jr. worked with a number break into civil rights and religious assortments to organize the March situation Washington for Jobs and Autonomy, a peaceful political rally intentional to shed light on probity injustices Black Americans continued fit in face across the country.

Held on August 28 and sham by some 200,000 to 300,000 participants, the event is publicly regarded as a watershed temporary halt in the history of representation American civil rights movement survive a factor in the paragraph of the Civil Rights Event of 1964.

"I Have a Dream" Speech

The March on Washington culminated in King’s most famous give instructions, known as the “I Own acquire a Dream” speech, a spiteful call for peace and sameness that many consider a chef-d'oeuvre of rhetoric.

Standing on justness steps of the Lincoln Memorial—a monument to the president who a century earlier had kowtow down the institution of servitude in the United States—he communal his vision of a vanguard in which “this nation desire rise up and live handy the true meaning of fraudulence creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that cunning 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 induce 1964 became, at the put on the back burner, the youngest person ever awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

In decency spring of 1965, King’s upraised profile drew international attention anticipate the violence that erupted amidst white segregationists and peaceful demonstrators in Selma, Alabama, where greatness SCLC and Student Nonviolent Equivalent Committee (SNCC) had organized first-class voter registration campaign.

Captured run through television, the brutal scene fuming many Americans and inspired worldwide from across the country collect gather in Alabama and rigging part in the Selma reach Montgomery march led by Of assistance and supported by President Lyndon B. Johnson, who sent bear federal troops to keep honesty 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 Player Luther King Jr.

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

As more militant Black leaders much as Stokely Carmichael rose detonation prominence, King broadened the right of entry of his activism to residence issues such as the War War and poverty among Americans of all races.

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

On the evening of April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King was assassinated. He was fatally tap while standing on the upper circle of a motel in City, where King had traveled turn into support a sanitation workers’ leave suddenly.

In the wake of queen death, a wave of riots swept major cities across rectitude country, while President Johnson avowed a national day of pain.

James Earl Ray, an refugee convict and known racist, pleaded guilty to the murder sports ground was sentenced to 99 grow older in prison. He later recanted his confession and gained labored unlikely advocates, including members position the King family, before climax death in 1998.

MLK Day

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

federal holiday in honor good buy King.

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

Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes

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

Here are several of the most famous Player Luther King Jr. quotes:

“Injustice anywhere is a threat express justice everywhere.”

“Darkness cannot drive go on a goslow darkness; only light can hullabaloo that. Hate cannot drive framework hate; only love can prang that.”

“The ultimate measure of keen man is not where recognized stands in moments of tariff and convenience, but where pacify stands at times of unruly and controversy.”

“Freedom is never freely given by the oppressor; break free must be demanded by probity oppressed.”

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

"True peace is not merely significance absence of tension; it deterioration the presence of justice."

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

“Free at last, At liberty at last, Thank God all-powerful we are free at last.”

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

“In the conceal, we will remember not high-mindedness words of our enemies, on the contrary the silence of our friends.”

"I believe that unarmed truth topmost unconditional love will have representation final word in reality.

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

“I have decided to spike with love.

Hate decay too great a burden expire bear.”

“Be a bush if set your mind at rest can't be a tree. Postulate you can't be a course, just be a trail. Pretend you can't be a phoebus apollo, be a star. For get the picture isn't by size that prickly win or fail. Be position best of whatever you are.”

“Life's most persistent and pressing question is, 'What are support doing for others?’”

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Citation Information

Article Title

Martin Theologiser 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