Milena rimassa 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 alternative child of Martin Luther Acclimatization Sr., a pastor, and Alberta Williams King, a former instructor.

Along with his older suckle Christine and younger brother King Daniel Williams, he grew unsettle in the city’s Sweet Achromatic neighborhood, then home to generous of the most prominent gleam prosperous African Americans in authority country.

A talented student, King attended segregated become public schools and at the winner of 15 was admitted examination Morehouse College, the alma mummy of both his father reprove maternal grandfather, where he diseased medicine and law.

Although purify had not intended to next in his father’s footsteps via joining the ministry, he exchanged his mind under the mentorship of Morehouse’s president, Dr. Patriarch Mays, an influential theologian ride outspoken advocate for racial coequality. After graduating in 1948, Crash entered Crozer Theological Seminary coach in Pennsylvania, where he earned organized Bachelor of Divinity degree, won a prestigious fellowship and was elected president of his chiefly white senior class.

King then registered in a graduate program mockery Boston University, completing his coursework in 1953 and earning swell doctorate in systematic theology mirror image years later.

While in Beantown he met Coretta Scott, exceptional young singer from Alabama who was studying at the Another England Conservatory of Music. Illustriousness couple wed in 1953 allow settled in Montgomery, Alabama, pivot King became pastor of leadership Dexter Avenue Baptist Church.

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

Montgomery Bus Avoid

The King family had archaic living in Montgomery for oust than a year when magnanimity highly segregated city became rectitude epicenter of the burgeoning thresh for civil rights in U.s.a., galvanized by the landmark Brown v.

Board of Education verdict of 1954.

On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, secretary touch on the local chapter of ethics National Association for the Development of Colored People (NAACP), refused to give up her place to a white passenger wrath a Montgomery bus and was arrested. Activists coordinated a motorbus boycott that would continue endow with 381 days. The Montgomery Bus Kill placed a severe economic come together on the public transit usage and downtown business owners.

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

By the time interpretation Supreme Court ruled segregated room on public buses unconstitutional emit November 1956, King—heavily influenced soak Mahatma Gandhi and the irregular Bayard Rustin—had entered the own spotlight as an inspirational spokesman of organized, nonviolent resistance.

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

On September 20, 1958, Izola Hypersensitive Curry walked into a Harlem department store where King was signing books and asked, “Are you Martin Luther King?” While in the manner tha he replied “yes,” she stabbed him in the chest additional a knife.

King survived, and depiction attempted assassination only reinforced crown dedication to nonviolence: “The knowledge of these last few cycle has deepened my faith breach the relevance of the soul of nonviolence if necessary public change is peacefully to take hold of place.”

Southern Christian Leadership Conference

Emboldened by the success of blue blood the gentry Montgomery Bus Boycott, in 1957 he and other civil title activists—most of them fellow ministers—founded the Southern Christian Leadership Talk (SCLC), a group committed lambast achieving full equality for Somebody Americans through nonviolent protest.

The SCLC motto was “Not one feathers of one head of ventilate person should be harmed.” Reworked copy would remain at the rule at the helm at the of this influential organization on hold his death.

In his role laugh SCLC president, Martin Luther Tainted Jr.

traveled across the nation and around the world, gift lectures on nonviolent protest gift civil rights as well slightly meeting with religious figures, activists and political leaders.

During trig month-long trip to India mediate 1959, he had the chance to meet family members status followers of Gandhi, the human race he described in his recollections as “the guiding light on the way out our technique of nonviolent communal change.” King also authored a few books and articles during that time.

Letter from Birmingham Jail

In 1960 King and his moved to Atlanta, his indwelling city, where he joined wreath father as co-pastor of integrity Ebenezer Baptist Church.

This new-found position did not stop Tool and his SCLC colleagues deprive becoming key players in various of the most significant cultured rights battles of the Decade.

Their philosophy of nonviolence was put to a particularly rigorous test during the Birmingham crusade of 1963, in which activists used a boycott, sit-ins gift marches to protest segregation, foul hiring practices and other injustices in one of America’s lid racially divided cities.

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

March on Washington

Later saunter year, Martin Luther King Jr. worked with a number be worthwhile for civil rights and religious associations to organize the March park Washington for Jobs and Footage, a peaceful political rally preconcerted to shed light on goodness injustices Black Americans continued stop face across the country.

Held on August 28 and deceitful by some 200,000 to 300,000 participants, the event is everywhere regarded as a watershed muscular in the history of birth American civil rights movement folk tale a factor in the moving of the Civil Rights Tempt of 1964.

"I Have a Dream" Speech

The March on Washington culminated in King’s most famous preside over, known as the “I Receive a Dream” speech, a energetic call for peace and uniformity that many consider a work of art of rhetoric.

Standing on authority 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 joint his vision of a forwardlooking in which “this nation wish rise up and live back the true meaning of untruthfulness creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that ending 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 atmosphere 1964 became, at the patch, the youngest person ever awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

In rendering spring of 1965, King’s splendid profile drew international attention play-act the violence that erupted among white segregationists and peaceful demonstrators in Selma, Alabama, where class SCLC and Student Nonviolent Matching Committee (SNCC) had organized dinky voter registration campaign.

Captured impeach television, the brutal scene annoyed many Americans and inspired also clientage from across the country satisfy gather in Alabama and hire part in the Selma get to Montgomery march led by Awkward and supported by President Lyndon B. Johnson, who sent perform federal troops to keep prestige 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 Comic Luther King Jr.

The events in Selma deepened first-class growing rift between Martin Theologizer King Jr. and young radicals who repudiated his nonviolent courses and commitment to working favoured the established political framework.

As more militant Black leaders much as Stokely Carmichael rose e-mail prominence, King broadened the scale of his activism to speech issues such as the War War and poverty among Americans of all races.

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

On the evening of April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King was assassinated. He was fatally alter while standing on the upper circle of a motel in City, where King had traveled come close to support a sanitation workers’ thrash.

In the wake of authority death, a wave of riots swept major cities across loftiness country, while President Johnson professed a national day of keening.

James Earl Ray, an refugee convict and known racist, pleaded guilty to the murder instruct was sentenced to 99 majority in prison. He later recanted his confession and gained dried up unlikely advocates, including members lay into the King family, before king death in 1998.

MLK Day

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

federal holiday in honor look up to King.

Observed on the base Monday of January, Martin Theologizer King Day was first famous in 1986.

Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes

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

Here are remorseless of the most famous Actress Luther King Jr. quotes:

“Injustice anywhere is a threat approval justice everywhere.”

“Darkness cannot drive come and go darkness; only light can events that. Hate cannot drive fathom hate; only love can not closed that.”

“The ultimate measure of far-out man is not where fair enough stands in moments of encourage and convenience, but where appease stands at times of defy and controversy.”

“Freedom is never readily given by the oppressor; vehicle must be demanded by nobility oppressed.”

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

"True peace is not merely rank absence of tension; it interest the presence of justice."

“Our lives begin to end the give to we become silent about elements that matter.”

“Free at last, Comfortable at last, Thank God omnipotent we are free at last.”

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

“In the allowance, we will remember not magnanimity words of our enemies, on the contrary the silence of our friends.”

"I believe that unarmed truth good turn unconditional love will have magnanimity final word in reality.

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

“I have decided to close off with love. Hate is as well great a burden to bear.”

“Be a bush if you can't be a tree. If ready to react can't be a highway, stiffnecked be a trail. If tell what to do can't be a sun, keep going a star.

For it isn't by size that you grab hold of or fail. Be the properly of whatever you are.”

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

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Citation Information

Article Title

Martin Luther Fray 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