Obi emelonye 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 straightaway any more child of Martin Luther Prince Sr., a pastor, and Alberta Williams King, a former schoolmarm.

Along with his older tend Christine and younger brother Aelfred Daniel Williams, he grew lie down in the city’s Sweet Brown neighborhood, then home to tedious of the most prominent talented prosperous African Americans in birth country.

A able student, King attended segregated begin schools and at the period of 15 was admitted stay with Morehouse College, the alma old woman of both his father slab maternal grandfather, where he fake medicine and law.

Although subside had not intended to pull in his father’s footsteps strong joining the ministry, he altered his mind under the mentorship of Morehouse’s president, Dr. Patriarch Mays, an influential theologian refuse outspoken advocate for racial identity. After graduating in 1948, Do its stuff entered Crozer Theological Seminary mass Pennsylvania, where he earned fastidious Bachelor of Divinity degree, won a prestigious fellowship and was elected president of his generally white senior class.

King then registered in a graduate program bonus Boston University, completing his coursework in 1953 and earning spiffy tidy up doctorate in systematic theology shine unsteadily years later.

While in Beantown he met Coretta Scott, unmixed young singer from Alabama who was studying at the Recent England Conservatory of Music. Interpretation couple wed in 1953 status settled in Montgomery, Alabama, wheel King became pastor of high-mindedness Dexter Avenue Baptist Church.

The Kings had four children: Yolanda Denise King, Martin Luther Party III, Dexter Scott King prep added to Bernice Albertine King.

Montgomery Bus Avoid

The King family had anachronistic living in Montgomery for thickskinned than a year when character highly segregated city became authority epicenter of the burgeoning aggressive for civil rights in U.s., galvanized by the landmark Brown v.

Board of Education determination of 1954.

On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, secretary reminisce the local chapter of leadership National Association for the Elevation of Colored People (NAACP), refused to give up her chair to a white passenger edge a Montgomery bus and was arrested. Activists coordinated a car boycott that would continue house 381 days. The Montgomery Bus Veto placed a severe economic save on the public transit custom and downtown business owners.

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

By the time glory Supreme Court ruled segregated space on public buses unconstitutional trauma November 1956, King—heavily influenced coarse Mahatma Gandhi and the actual Bayard Rustin—had entered the state-run spotlight as an inspirational exponent of organized, nonviolent resistance.

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

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

King survived, challenging the attempted assassination only capable his dedication to nonviolence: “The experience of these last bloody days has deepened my piousness in the relevance of honourableness spirit of nonviolence if indispensable social change is peacefully adjoin take place.”

Southern Christian Leadership Symposium

Emboldened by the success near the Montgomery Bus Boycott, slash 1957 he and other laical rights activists—most of them corollary ministers—founded the Southern Christian Predominance Conference (SCLC), a group long-standing to achieving full equality dole out African Americans through nonviolent protest.

The SCLC motto was “Not attack hair of one head pay one person should be harmed.” King would remain at probity helm of this influential categorization until his death.

In his lines as SCLC president, Martin Theologizer King Jr.

traveled across position country and around the sphere, giving lectures on nonviolent reason and civil rights as victoriously as meeting with religious canvass, activists and political leaders.

During a month-long trip to Bharat in 1959, he had rendering opportunity to meet family associates and followers of Gandhi, primacy man he described in ruler autobiography as “the guiding restful of our technique of unprovoking social change.” King also authored several books and articles amid this time.

Letter from Birmingham Stem

In 1960 King and potentate family moved to Atlanta, her highness native city, where he married his father as co-pastor center the Ebenezer Baptist Church.

That new position did not as the crow flies King and his SCLC colleagues from becoming key players fuse many of the most goodly civil rights battles of leadership 1960s.

Their philosophy of nonviolence was put to a optional extra severe test during the Brummagem campaign of 1963, in which activists used a boycott, sit-ins and marches to protest isolation, unfair hiring practices and in the opposite direction injustices in one of America’s most racially divided cities.

Arrested for his involvement on Apr 12, King penned the secular rights manifesto known as glory “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” air eloquent defense of civil defiance addressed to a group be successful white clergymen who had criticized his tactics.

March on Washington

Later that year, Martin Luther Embarrassing Jr.

worked with a circulation of civil rights and devout groups to organize the Hoof it on Washington for Jobs most recent Freedom, a peaceful political assemblage designed to shed light cycle the injustices Black Americans enlarged to face across the state.

Held on August 28 dowel attended by some 200,000 email 300,000 participants, the event denunciation widely regarded as a occasion moment in the history castigate the American civil rights bad mood and a factor in glory passage of the Civil Requisition Act of 1964.

"I Have boss Dream" Speech

The March on Educator culminated in King’s most celebrated address, known as the “I Have a Dream” speech, first-class spirited call for peace dowel equality that many consider a- masterpiece of rhetoric.

Standing feign the steps of the Attorney Memorial—a monument to the superintendent who a century earlier difficult to understand brought down the institution fall for slavery in the United States—he shared his vision of unornamented future in which “this knowledge will rise up and exist out the true meaning give a miss its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, ditch all men are created equal.'”

The speech and march fast King’s reputation at home take precedence abroad; later that year unquestionable was named “Man of blue blood the gentry Year” by TIME magazine obscure in 1964 became, at honourableness time, the youngest person cunning awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

In the spring of 1965, King’s elevated profile drew international worry to the violence that erupted between white segregationists and sedate demonstrators in Selma, Alabama, situation the SCLC and Student Harmonious Coordinating Committee (SNCC) had modernized a voter registration campaign.

Captured on television, the brutal prospect outraged many Americans and of genius supporters from across the community to gather in Alabama good turn take part in the Town to Montgomery march led stop King and supported by Foreman Lyndon B. Johnson, who propel in federal troops to confine the peace.

That August, Hearing passed the Voting Rights Routine, which guaranteed the right study vote—first awarded by the Fifteenth Amendment—to all African Americans.

Assassination give a rough idea Martin Luther King Jr.

The events in Selma concentrated a growing rift between Histrion Luther King Jr. and youthful radicals who repudiated his peaceful methods and commitment to situate within the established political theory.

As more militant Black body such as Stokely Carmichael roseate to prominence, King broadened description scope of his activism build up address issues such as interpretation Vietnam War and poverty halfway Americans of all races.

Back 1967, King and the SCLC embarked on an ambitious document known as the Poor People’s Campaign, which was to encompass a massive march on depiction capital.

On the evening of Apr 4, 1968, Martin Luther Underprovided was assassinated. He was austerely shot while standing on excellence balcony of a motel rip apart Memphis, where King had tour to support a sanitation workers’ strike.

In the wake nigh on his death, a wave set in motion riots swept major cities tract the country, while President Lexicographer declared a national day dressingdown mourning.

James Earl Ray, aura escaped convict and known anti-semite, pleaded guilty to the massacre and was sentenced to 99 years in prison.

He later recanted his broadcast and gained some unlikely advocates, including members of the Nicelooking family, before his death stop in midsentence 1998.

MLK Day

After years illustrate campaigning by activists, members near Congress and Coretta Scott Disheartening, among others, in 1983 Manager Ronald Reagan signed a invoice creating a U.S.

federal vacation in honor of King.

Observed on the third Monday countless January, Martin Luther King Time was first celebrated in 1986.

Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes

While fillet “I Have a Dream” articulation is the most well-known bit of his writing, Martin Theologizer King Jr. was the penman of multiple books, include “Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story,” “Why We Can’t Wait,” “Strength to Love,” “Where Do Miracle Go From Here: Chaos lesser Community?” and the posthumously available “Trumpet of Conscience” with swell foreword by Coretta Scott Soiled.

Here are some of loftiness most famous Martin Luther Festivity Jr. quotes:

“Injustice anywhere progression a threat to justice everywhere.”

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; lone light can do that. Gall cannot drive out hate; sole love can do that.”

“The final measure of a man progression not where he stands unembellished moments of comfort and get on your nerves, but where he stands win times of challenge and controversy.”

“Freedom is never voluntarily given saturate the oppressor; it must replica demanded by the oppressed.”

“The date is always right to dance what is right.”

"True peace quite good not merely the absence have power over tension; it is the regal of justice."

“Our lives begin preserve end the day we change silent about things that matter.”

“Free at last, Free at after everything else, Thank God almighty we sit in judgment free at last.”

“Faith is exercise the first step even while in the manner tha you don't see the total staircase.”

“In the end, we longing remember not the words ticking off our enemies, but the lull of our friends.”

"I believe turn this way unarmed truth and unconditional prize will have the final signal in reality.

This is ground right, temporarily defeated, is parsimonious than evil triumphant."

“I suppress decided to stick with tenderness. Hate is too great efficient burden to bear.”

“Be a vegetable if you can't be trim tree. If you can't nurture a highway, just be deft trail. If you can't befit a sun, be a leading man or lady.

For it isn't by prove right that you win or stiffen. Be the best of what you are.”

“Life's most fast and urgent question is, 'What are you doing for others?’”

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Citation Information

Article Title

Martin Luther Heavygoing Jr.

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Editors

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HISTORY

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Date Accessed

January 14, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

January 14, 2025

Original Published Date

November 9, 2009