Martin Luther King was born on January 15, 1929, He organized a number of marches and protests and was a key figure in the American civil rights movement. He was instrumental in the Memphis sanitation workers’ strike, the Montgomery bus boycott, and the March on Washington.
In the mid-1950s, Martin Luther King Jr. – a Baptist minister and civil rights activist – led the non-violent protest movement to end segregation and racial inequality in the United States. Under his leadership, Black Americans gained access to education and employment that had long been denied to them.
In 1944, as many young Black men were enlisted into the war
King has since become a legendary figure in civil rights hist and his powerful speaches mark him as one
…show more content…
He graduated at the age of 19 with a BA in Sociology.
King then decided to enter the ministry, where he felt he could best answer his “inner urge to serve humanity”. He would later go on to achieve a Ph.D. in theology in 1955, becoming Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Coretta met King while he was studying in Boston. In 1953 they were married in Alabama and would go on to have 4 children together.
Despite being attracted to her involvement in civil rights activism, after they married King restricted Coretta’s involvement in the movement. He believed her energy was best spent as a housewife and mother, demonstrating how the intersection of race and gender shaped Black women’s fight for civil rights.
Inspired by Biblical stories of Jesus ‘turning the other cheek’ and the Indian independence activist Mahatma Gandhi’s principle of ‘satyagraha’, King believed civil disobedience and non-violence were the only ways to sustainably advance the cause of Black
…show more content…
Led by King, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) occupied public spaces to protest segregation, hoping that mass arrests would provoke negotiations with officials.
From his jail cell, he composed the now-famous “Letter from Birmingham Jail”, rejecting calls to pursue legal channels for social change, referencing the illegal and revolutionary 1773 Boston Tea Party.
On 28 August 1963, between 200,000 and 300,000 people marched on Washington DC advocating for the civil and economic rights of Black Americans. King was the event’s final speaker and gave his “I Have A Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, describing his dreams of equality within a land built upon slavery and inequity.
King was fatally shot by James Earl while standing outside his room at the Lorraine Motel in Tennessee. Rushed to the hospital, King died later that day. With the news of his death, uprisings erupted across the country, particularly in Washington DC, Baltimore, Louisville, Kansas City, and Chicago. These events came to be known as the Holy Week Uprisings and continued into May