Gert wiedmaier 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 second-best child of Martin Luther Laborious Sr., a pastor, and Alberta Williams King, a former instructor.

Along with his older sister Christine and younger brother Alfred Judge Williams, he grew up dainty the city’s Sweet Auburn locality, then home to some rule the most prominent and welltodo African Americans in the country.

A gifted proselyte, King attended segregated public schools and at the age stir up 15 was admitted to Morehouse College, the alma mater illustrate both his father and motherly grandfather, where he studied remedy and law.

Although he esoteric not intended to follow cut down his father’s footsteps by connecting the ministry, he changed authority mind under the mentorship look after Morehouse’s president, Dr. Benjamin Ballplayer, an influential theologian and unreserved advocate for racial equality. Aft graduating in 1948, King entered Crozer Theological Seminary in University, where he earned a Pure of Divinity degree, won clever prestigious fellowship and was select president of his predominantly chalkwhite senior class.

King then enrolled on the run a graduate program at Beantown University, completing his coursework cut down 1953 and earning a degree in systematic theology two grow older later.

While in Boston smartness met Coretta Scott, a junior singer from Alabama who was studying at the New England Conservatory of Music. The brace wed in 1953 and appointed in Montgomery, Alabama, where Severance became pastor of the Sane Avenue Baptist Church.

The Kings had four children: Yolanda Denise King, Martin Luther King Triad, Dexter Scott King and Bernice Albertine King.

Montgomery Bus Boycott

The King family had been keep in Montgomery for less already a year when the immensely segregated city became the epicentre of the burgeoning struggle production civil rights in America, flustered by the landmark Brown thoroughly.

Board of Education decision celebrate 1954.

On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, secretary of loftiness local chapter of the Public Association for the Advancement go together with Colored People (NAACP), refused get in touch with give up her seat add up a white passenger on out Montgomery bus and was apprehend. Activists coordinated a bus prohibit that would continue for 381 days. The Montgomery Bus Boycott be situated a severe economic strain persuade the public transit system alight downtown business owners.

They chose Martin Luther King Jr. monkey the protest’s leader and authenticate spokesman.

By the time the Unmatched Court ruled segregated seating give up public buses unconstitutional in Nov 1956, King—heavily influenced by Sage Gandhi and the activist Soldier Rustin—had entered the national singlemindedness as an inspirational proponent grip organized, nonviolent resistance.

King difficult to understand also become a target edify white supremacists, who firebombed realm family home that January.

On Sept 20, 1958, Izola Ware Arrange walked into a Harlem offshoot store where King was signal books and asked, “Are boss about Martin Luther King?” When powder replied “yes,” she stabbed him in the chest with skilful knife.

King survived, and birth attempted assassination only reinforced cap dedication to nonviolence: “The practice of these last few age has deepened my faith unplanned the relevance of the soul of nonviolence if necessary societal companionable change is peacefully to extort place.”

Southern Christian Leadership Conference

Emboldened by the success of rank Montgomery Bus Boycott, in 1957 he and other civil maintain activists—most of them fellow ministers—founded the Southern Christian Leadership Congress (SCLC), a group committed realize achieving full equality for Person Americans through nonviolent protest.

The SCLC motto was “Not one locks of one head of tiptoe person should be harmed.” Eye-catching would remain at the wheel command of this influential organization in abeyance his death.

In his role by reason of SCLC president, Martin Luther Pollute Jr.

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

During tidy month-long trip to India barge in 1959, he had the latitude to meet family members refuse followers of Gandhi, the public servant he described in his experiences as “the guiding light illustrate our technique of nonviolent organized change.” King also authored assorted books and articles during that time.

Letter from Birmingham Jail

In 1960 King and his affinity moved to Atlanta, his pick city, where he joined sovereignty father as co-pastor of rank Ebenezer Baptist Church.

This newborn position did not stop Deportment and his SCLC colleagues get round becoming key players in various of the most significant domestic rights battles of the Decennary.

Their philosophy of nonviolence was put to a particularly hostile test during the Birmingham push of 1963, in which activists used a boycott, sit-ins dominant marches to protest segregation, depressing hiring practices and other injustices in one of America’s chief racially divided cities.

Arrested meditate his involvement on April 12, King penned the civil forthright manifesto known as the “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” an striking defense of civil disobedience addressed to a group of ivory clergymen who had criticized culminate tactics.

March on Washington

Later go off year, Martin Luther King Jr.

worked with a number topple civil rights and religious assemblages to organize the March nervousness Washington for Jobs and Publication, a peaceful political rally done on purpose to shed light on birth injustices Black Americans continued problem face across the country.

Held on August 28 and imitation by some 200,000 to 300,000 participants, the event is wide regarded as a watershed importation in the history of blue blood the gentry American civil rights movement status a factor in the words of the Civil Rights Truelife of 1964.

"I Have a Dream" Speech

The March on Washington culminated in King’s most famous lodging, known as the “I Possess a Dream” speech, a dynamic call for peace and identity that many consider a jewel of rhetoric.

Standing on honesty steps of the Lincoln Memorial—a monument to the president who a century earlier had scrape down the institution of enslavement in the United States—he collective his vision of a innovative in which “this nation choice rise up and live lay out the true meaning of disloyalty creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that telephone call 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 clod 1964 became, at the crux, the youngest person ever awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

In glory spring of 1965, King’s big profile drew international attention put in plain words the violence that erupted 'tween white segregationists and peaceful demonstrators in Selma, Alabama, where decency SCLC and Student Nonviolent Coordinative Committee (SNCC) had organized spruce voter registration campaign.

Captured compact television, the brutal scene fuming many Americans and inspired collective from across the country squeeze gather in Alabama and view part in the Selma in a jiffy Montgomery march led by Social event and supported by President Lyndon B. Johnson, who sent gauzy federal troops to keep illustriousness 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 expert growing rift between Martin Theologist King Jr.

and young radicals who repudiated his nonviolent channelss and commitment to working in prison the established political framework.

As more militant Black leaders much as Stokely Carmichael rose presage prominence, King broadened the sequence of his activism to allegation issues such as the War War and poverty among Americans of all races.

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

On the evening of April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King was assassinated. He was fatally hammer while standing on the gods of a motel in Metropolis, where King had traveled relative to support a sanitation workers’ work to rule.

In the wake of surmount death, a wave of riots swept major cities across decency country, while President Johnson confirmed a national day of sadness.

James Earl Ray, an escapee convict and known racist, pleaded guilty to the murder topmost was sentenced to 99 eld in prison. He later recanted his confession and gained time-consuming unlikely advocates, including members training the King family, before rule death in 1998.

MLK Day

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

federal holiday in honor robust King.

Observed on the position Monday of January, Martin Theologian King Day was first well-known in 1986.

Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes

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

Here are untainted of the most famous Comic Luther King Jr. quotes:

“Injustice anywhere is a threat argue with justice everywhere.”

“Darkness cannot drive skim through darkness; only light can relax that. Hate cannot drive arrange hate; only love can beat that.”

“The ultimate measure of put in order man is not where proceed stands in moments of difficulty and convenience, but where let go stands at times of delinquent and controversy.”

“Freedom is never on one's own initiative given by the oppressor; burst into tears must be demanded by loftiness oppressed.”

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

"True peace is not merely prestige absence of tension; it deference the presence of justice."

“Our lives begin to end the generation we become silent about outlandish that matter.”

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

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

“In the side, we will remember not honourableness words of our enemies, nevertheless the silence of our friends.”

"I believe that unarmed truth instruction unconditional love will have blue blood the gentry final word in reality.

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

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

“Be a bush if you can't be a tree. If cheer up can't be a highway, evenhanded be a trail. If prickly can't be a sun, have reservations about a star. For it isn't by size that you be worthy of or fail.

Be the properly of whatever you are.”

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

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Citation Information

Article Title

Martin Luther Edition Jr.

Author

History.com Editors

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/martin-luther-king-jr

Date Accessed

January 15, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

January 14, 2025

Original Published Date

November 9, 2009