MLK Day, 2023

A big day is coming up, a day celebrating one man who helped to champion civil rights for all African Americans in the 1950s and the 1960s. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a civil rights leader who made many famous speeches and inspired millions of people during the Civil Rights Movement. You know him well, but maybe there’s more you’d like to know about him and how he got where he was in the first place. His birthday’s coming up, so here is some information in his honor.

Early Years

King was born on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia where he attended segregated public schools and where he graduated from high school at only the age of 15. He received a B.A degree from Morehouse College, a historically black university located in Atlanta where his dad and grandpa graduated from. From 1948-1951, he went to Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania where he studied theology and was elected president of a predominantly white senior class. He was awarded a Bachelor’s degree in 1951 and with a fellowship won at Crozer, he enrolled in graduate studies at Boston University. In Boston, he completed his residency for the doctorate in 1953 and received the degree in 1955. He also met and married Coretta Scott in Boston, with whom he would later have two sons and two daughters.

First Steps of Activism

In 1954, King became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. By this time, he was a member of the executive committee of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In early December 1955, he was ready to accept the leadership of the first great African American nonviolent demonstration of contemporary times in the U.S., the bus boycott. During the boycott King was arrested, his home was bombed, and was subjected to personal abuse. But at the same time, he emerged as an excellent African American leader. On December 21, 1956, African-American people and white people rode the buses as equals, thanks to King’s nonviolent approach when it came to protesting. This was also inspired by Rosa Parks, whose civil disobedience in refusing to give up her seat in opposition to segregation was a turning point in the Civil Rights Movement.

“l Have a Dream”

In 1957 King was elected president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization formed to provide new leadership for the now-growing civil rights movement. The organization’s ideals he took from Christianity; its operational techniques, and peaceful protests, he took from Gandhi. Between 1957 and 1968, King traveled over six million miles and spoke over twenty-five hundred times, appearing wherever there was injustice, protest, and action. Meanwhile, he wrote five books and numerous articles. One of these was when he led a massive protest in Birmingham, Alabama that caught the attention of the entire world providing what he called a coalition of conscience. It also inspired his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” a manifesto of the Civil Rights Movement. He planned the drives in Alabama for the registration of African Americans as voters and directed the peaceful march on Washington, D.C, of 250,000 people to whom he delivered his address, “l Have a Dream,” in front of the Lincoln Memorial. King has delivered many speeches before and after this moment, but his “I Have a Dream” speech is his most famous one ever. But on the evening of April 4, 1968, while standing on the balcony of his motel room in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was to lead a protest march in sympathy with striking garbage workers of that city, he was unfortunately assassinated.

Legacy

In his life of being a civil rights activist, King did many things and set a legacy for himself and basically all of American history. He conferred with President John F. Kennedy and campaigned for President Lyndon B. Johnson. He was arrested about 20 times and assaulted at least four times. He was awarded five honorary degrees, was named Man of the Year by Time magazine in 1963 and became not only the symbolic leader of African Americans but also a world figure for equality for everyone. At the age of 35, Martin Luther King, Jr. was the youngest man to have received the Nobel Peace Prize and used the prize money of $54,123 to further support the civil rights movement. To this day, people still admire and try to carry on his determination, peaceful methods of protesting against inequality, and his desire for everyone to be treated equally well. They use all of his methods to try to make the world a better place. So let’s thank Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for all that he has done for everyone and wish him a Happy Birthday.

For more information, please visit https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1964/king/biographical/