Black History Fact: Martin Luther King Jr

Martin Luther, Jr King Biography (1929 – 1968)

Baptist minister and civil rights leader. Born Michael Luther King, Jr., on January 15, 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia. The grandson and son of Baptist ministers, King grew up singing in his church choir. In 1935, his father changed both of their names to Martin to honor the German Protestant. Young Martin attended segregated public schools and graduated from high school at age 15. In 1948, he received his B.A. degree from Morehouse College in Georgia, the alma mater of both is father and grandfather, and in 1951 he earned is B.D. from Crozer Theological Seminary. While at Crozer, King was elected president of a predominantly white senior class. In 1955, he received a Ph.D. from Boston University, where he also met his future wife, Coretta Scott , with whom he had four children.

King was ordained a minister in 1947 at his father’s Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. He became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1953 at age 24. Committed to black civil rights from an early age, King was an active member of the executive committee of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Relatively untested when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat in a bus in December 1955, King led the boycott of Montgomery’s segregated buses for over a year. The situation became so intense that he was arrested, he and his family were threatened, and his home was bombed. But eventually the Supreme Court outlawed discrimination in public transportation and King emerged a prominent leader of the civil rights movement.

In 1957, King was elected president of the newly formed Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), a group designed to harness the moral authority and organizing power of black churches to conduct non-violent protests in the interest of civil rights reform. His approach was based on the ideas of Henry David Thoreau and Mohandas Gandhi as well on Christian teachings. A trip to India in 1959 to meet the Gandhi family cemented his belief in nonviolent resistance and his commitment to civil rights in the United States.

In 1959, King moved to Atlanta to become co-pastor of his father’s church, and in the ensuing years gave much of his energies to organizing protest demonstrations and marches in such cities as Birmingham, Alabama (1963), St. Augustine, Florida (1964), and Selma, Alabama (1965). The marches were for the right to vote, desegregation, labor rights, and other basic civil rights. The protests won media attention and public sympathy for the indignities suffered by Southern blacks, providing what he called “a coalition of conscience” and bringing the civil rights movement to the forefront of American politics in the 1960s.

Between 1957 and 1968, King canvassed the country and appeared more than 2500 times to speak in protest against injustices toward his race. He wrote five books and numerous articles. King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” written in 1964, was a manifesto for the revolution, drawing on his experience as a preacher to galvanize and inspire an audience. During these years, King was arrested and jailed by Southern officials on several occasions, was stoned and physically attacked, and his house was bombed. He was also placed under secret surveillance by the FBI due to the strong prejudices of its director, J Edgar Hoover, who wanted to discredit King as both a leftist and a womanizer.

King’s finest hour came on August 28, 1963 when he led the great march in Washington, DC, that culminated with his famous “I Have a Dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial. The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom was the cooperative effort of the Big Six civil rights organizations, SCLC, NAACP, Urban League, SNCC, Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, and the Congress of Racial Equality. An unequivocal success, more than a quarter million people of all ethnicities attended the event, making it the largest gathering of protesters in Washington’s history.

Political success arrived with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. At the height of his influence, King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 at age 35, becoming the award’s youngest recipient. He turned over the prize money, $54,123, to the movement.

King then used his newfound powers and prestige to attack discrimination in the North. To educate themselves about the plight of Northern blacks, King and Ralph Abernathy moved to Chicago’s slums and helped found The Chicago Freedom Movement. Both reflected that the public reception in Chicago was much worse than in the South, the politics more corrupt, and the threat of violence more dire. Abernathy and King eventually returned to the South, leaving a young Jesse Jackson to continue their work.

Meanwhile, as the Vietnam War began to consume the country, King broadened his criticisms because he saw the impact of the war on the country’s resources and energies. In his April 1967 speech in New York City, King called the U.S. government “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” His outspoken criticism of American foreign policy caused mainstream American media, once an ally and advocate, to question him.

King was also an advocate of a government compensatory program seeking restitution of wages lost to slavery. In 1968, without the full support of the SCLC, King organized the Poor People’s Campaign, which included a march on Washington D.C. The organization demanded aid for the poorest communities in the United States and sought an economic bill of rights that provided for massive government job programs to reconstruct society. Critics called this switch in agenda a new brand of democratic socialism.

In the spring of 1968, King went to Memphis, Tennessee, to show support for black city workers striking for higher wages and better treatment. He was shot and killed on April 4, 1968 as he stood on the balcony of his motel there. He was 39 years old. The assassination led to a wave of riots in cities nationwide, and President Johnson declared a national day of mourning in his honor. Two months after the shooting, escaped convict James Earl Ray pleaded guilty to the murder, although he later insisted he was innocent.

With an oratorical style that drew directly on the force of the Bible and a serene confidence derived from his non-violent philosophy, King advocated a program of moderation and inclusion. Although later generations would question some of his message, few could deny that he had been the guiding light for 15 of the most crucial years in America’s civil rights struggle. President Carter acknowledged King’s contributions by posthumously awarding him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977.

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