Martin Luther King, Jr., (January 15, 1929-April 4, 1968) was born Michael Luther King, Jr., but later had his name changed to Martin. dynasty
His grandfather began the family's long tenure as pastors of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, serving from 1914 to 1931; his father has served from then until the present, and from 1960 until his death Martin Luther acted as co-pastor.
Martin Luther attended segregated public schools in Georgia, graduating from high school at the age of fifteen; he received the B. A. degree in 1948 from Morehouse College, a distinguished Negro institution of Atlanta from which both his father and grandfather had graduated.
After three years of theological study at Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania where he was elected president of a predominantly white senior class, he was awarded the B.D. in 1951.
With a fellowship won at Crozer, he enrolled in graduate studies at Boston University, completing his residence for the doctorate in 1953 and receiving the degree in 1955.
In Boston he met and married lovely Coretta Scott, a strong spirited woman.
Two sons and two daughters were born into the family.
In 1954, Martin Luther King became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist
Church in Montgomery, Alabama. Always a strong worker for civil rights
for members of his race, King was, by this time, a member of the executive
committee of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People,
the leading organization of its kind in the nation.
He was ready, then, early in
December, 1955, to accept the leadership of the first great Negro nonviolent
demonstration of contemporary times in the United States, the bus boycott
in Alabama where the press got hold of the story and ran with it
nationwise stirring up the hearts of the American people in the favor of
justice for the oppressed.
King taught his followers to use the same technques Mohatma Gandhi used.
On December 21, 1956, the Supreme Court
of the United States declared unconstitutional the laws requiring segregation
on buses. African Americans were now able to ride the buses as equals with all
other Americans so long as the law protected them, and as many of them
soon discovered; they were now able to slug it out if they did not like the way
they were treated.
During the boycott, King was arrested, his home bombed, and he was subjected to personal abuse, but each difficulty worked to build his fame even more because of his practice of non violence. The American people could clearly see via the miracle of media film and photographs that King and his followers were innocent.
Bigotry was increasingly exposed for its inherent wickedness.
In 1957 King was elected president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization formed to provide new guidance for the growing Civil rights movement. The ideals for this organization he took from Christianity; its operational techniques from Gandhi.
In the eleven-year period between 1957 and 1968, King
traveled almost continually and spoke over twenty-five hundred times, appearing
wherever there was injustice, protest, and action while writing five
books and numerous articles.
In these years, he led a massive protest in Birmingham, Alabama, catching the attention of the entire world, providing what he called a coalition of conscience. King knew he was knocking on the conscience of America that had been hidden in the dark corner of ignorance as to the reality of oppression against African Americans. Americans of every faith and color were now marching with him against bigotry and racial oppression.
King wrote his inspired "Letter from a Birmingham Jail", as a manifesto of the freedom movement in 1963. King was a powerful man with a powerful pen.
Here is a quote from his manifesto:
"Before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, we were here. Before the pen of Jefferson etched across the pages of history the majestic words of the Declaration of Independence, we were here. If the inexpressible cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail. We will win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands.""
He planned drives in Alabama for the registration of Negroes as voters.
He directed the peaceful march on Washington,
D.C., of 250,000 people to whom he delivered his address, "l Have a Dream".
Kennedy tried to talk him out of it in the name of peace, but King knew
there was no other way to defeat bigotry than to organize and march,
and what better place was there, than Washington D.C. within sight
of the White House.
He conferred with President John F. Kennedy and campaigned for President Lyndon B. Johnson and was arrested at least twenty times and assaulted four or more times, sometimes with snarling police dogs and sometimes with high powered water hoses.
King, representing SCLC, was among the leaders of the so-called "Big Six"
civil rights organizations who were instrumental in the organization of the
March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, which took place on August 28,
1963. A quarter of a million people attended the event to hear one of greater
speeches an American leader has ever made in our history. We know it as
Martin Luther King's, "I have a dream."
But always he was the peacemaker. He didn't carry a gun or a weapon. Neither did he raise a fist to defend himself or talk trash to his captors; some of whom were won over to his cause. Neither did he bow to the increasingly threatening presence of black power adherents infiltrating his marches to disrupt them. Here is what Martin Luther King had to say about black power activism in 1967:
"Today's despair is a poor chisel to carve out tomorrow's justice. Black Power is an implicit and often explicit belief in black separatism. Yet behind Black Power's legitimate and necessary concern for group unity and black identity lies the belief that there can be a separate black road to power and fulfillment. Few ideas are more unrealistic. There is no salvation for the Negro through isolation."
King was an intellectual giant. But Black Power leaders tried to make him out to be a cowardly Uncle Tom. In the long run it is King we all remember while the remembrance of Black Power leaders continues to fade away.
King was awarded five honorary degrees. Schools in America were now glad to have such a man of dignity and renown attract attention to their institutions. His presence was good advertising.
King was named Man of the Year by Time magazine in 1963. It is doubtful anyone ever worked as hard or suffered as much as he did to earn the honour.
At the age of thirty-five, Martin Luther King, Jr., was the youngest man to win the Nobel Peace Prize. When notified of his selection, he announced that he would turn over the prize money of $54,123 to the furtherance of the Civil rights movement. An example of sacrifice for others to follow.
King lived with death threats. He knew he was living on borrowed time. His movement was so strong, change was guaranteed when he came to stand with striking African American garbage workers. King knew his enemies would suppose they could wreck the Civil Rights movement if they cut the head off of it. So he said the night before he was murdered:
"We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now.
Because I've been to the mountaintop. I won't mind. Like anybody, I would like to
live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now.
I just want to do God's will. And he's allowed me to go up to the mountain.
And I've looked over, and I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there
with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the
Promised Land. So I'm happy tonight. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes
have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. "
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, King was martyred. Gunned down by a sniper on the roof top. The coward thought he could make Martin Luther King go away, but Martin Luther King is here to stay as a martyr for the greatness of America.
His example will live on as long as there is a world of sin to overcome for people of every race and nationality to live non-violent lives as peacemakers.
What Abraham Lincoln started, Martin Luther King finished. The chains that bound African Americans were broken off and freedom spread from here to other parts of this world such as South Africa where Apartheid was defeated.
God did not give you great strength as a people to start wars, but instead, to overcome
evil where-ever you find it, by exhibiting the intellectual and spiritual virtues of Jesus
Christ that King displayed as the greatest man of the 19th Century. Freedom loving
Americans are happy to say Jesus died for us, and so did Martin Luther King Jr.
