Martin Luther King Jr Research Paper

This biography by James Haskins covers Martin Luther King Jr.’s childhood all the way up to his assassination on April 4, 1968. Haskins also adds the back story on King’s assassin: James Earl Ray and the man hunt that ensued after the assassination. King was born on January 15, 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia. He and his father were both named Michael King at birth. When the family traveled to Germany in 1934 King Senior decided to rename himself and his son after the protestant leader Martin Luther. King Junior grew up in Atlanta and attended Booker T. Washington High School. During the summer he worked at a local tobacco farm where he worked side by side with whites and experienced very little racism. Growing up, his father taught him not to accept

When King Junior was offered the position of assistant pastor at the Ebenezer Church in Atlanta which was run by his father he declined. However he was soon after offered a head pastor position at the Dexter Avenue Baptist church in Montgomery, Alabama. He moved to Montgomery on September 1, 1953 with his new wife Coretta Scott. In December 1955, when Montgomery’s black leaders, formed the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) to protest the arrest of NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People) official Rosa Park for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man, they selected King to lead the new group. In his new role as the primary representative of the year-long Montgomery bus boycott, King utilized the leadership abilities he had gained from his religious background and academic training to create a protest strategy that involved the mobilization of black churches and appeals for white support. Only eight percent of blacks remained taking the buses during the boycott. Since the majority of the passengers were black the companies lost money and eventually decided to lift the segregation. King pulled this off by getting taxis to pick people up at the bus station and eventually buying vehicles for the movement which were paid for with donation money from around the United States. After his success in Montgomery King felt the need

Although King took the job he still wanted to devote most of his time to the SCLC and the freedom struggle. Later that year King was accused of tax fraud and was set to appear in court in front of an all-white jury. To King’s surprise he was found not guilty which was a very rare occurrence for accused black citizens who were generally found guilty without valid evidence. That same year King met John F. Kennedy for the first time, at this time JFK was only a presidential candidate. In 1963 King decided to march on Washington. At the end of the march King delivered his famous speech “I Have a Dream” in front of the Lincoln memorial to over two hundred thousand black and white protestors. The very next year congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which outlawed segregation in public places and discrimination in education and employment. In the same year King was awarded the Nobel Peace prize. In 1965 King and the SCLC joined the voting-rights march from Selma to Montgomery. During this march the protestors were beaten and tear gassed by police. Although the march did not go as planned the actions taken by the police built a tremendous amount of support for the voting-rights movement. Later that year congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Throughout the mid-1960’s King opposed the Vietnam War which caused many white activists to switch