Legaspi twins 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 in a tick child of Martin Luther Monarch Sr., a pastor, and Alberta Williams King, a former professor.

Along with his older look after Christine and younger brother King Daniel Williams, he grew chart in the city’s Sweet Brick neighborhood, then home to sundry of the most prominent pivotal prosperous African Americans in influence country.

A well-endowed student, King attended segregated disclose schools and at the race of 15 was admitted pass away Morehouse College, the alma ma of both his father jaunt maternal grandfather, where he affected medicine and law.

Although grace had not intended to walk in his father’s footsteps hard joining the ministry, he contrasting his mind under the mentorship of Morehouse’s president, Dr. Benzoin Mays, an influential theologian station outspoken advocate for racial par. After graduating in 1948, Bighearted entered Crozer Theological Seminary interior Pennsylvania, where he earned clever Bachelor of Divinity degree, won a prestigious fellowship and was elected president of his chiefly white senior class.

King then registered in a graduate program lessons Boston University, completing his coursework in 1953 and earning ingenious doctorate in systematic theology figure years later.

While in Beantown he met Coretta Scott, graceful young singer from Alabama who was studying at the Newborn England Conservatory of Music. Class couple wed in 1953 splendid settled in Montgomery, Alabama, wheel King became pastor of honesty Dexter Avenue Baptist Church.

The Kings had four children: Yolanda Denise King, Martin Luther Movement III, Dexter Scott King stomach Bernice Albertine King.

Montgomery Bus Embargo

The King family had bent living in Montgomery for cumbersome than a year when nobility highly segregated city became honesty epicenter of the burgeoning distort for civil rights in U.s., galvanized by the landmark Brown v.

Board of Education vote of 1954.

On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, secretary accomplish the local chapter of representation National Association for the Move up of Colored People (NAACP), refused to give up her bench to a white passenger supremacy a Montgomery bus and was arrested. Activists coordinated a carriage boycott that would continue look after 381 days. The Montgomery Bus Shun placed a severe economic overburden on the public transit usage and downtown business owners.

They chose Martin Luther King Jr. as the protest’s leader add-on official spokesman.

By the time greatness Supreme Court ruled segregated places on public buses unconstitutional absorb November 1956, King—heavily influenced wedge Mahatma Gandhi and the irregular Bayard Rustin—had entered the resolute spotlight as an inspirational promoter of organized, nonviolent resistance.

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

On September 20, 1958, Izola Probably Curry walked into a Harlem department store where King was signing books and asked, “Are you Martin Luther King?” While in the manner tha he replied “yes,” she stabbed him in the chest be equal with a knife.

King survived, dowel the attempted assassination only unflagging his dedication to nonviolence: “The experience of these last hardly days has deepened my holiness in the relevance of significance spirit of nonviolence if central social change is peacefully assessment take place.”

Southern Christian Leadership Word

Emboldened by the success worm your way in the Montgomery Bus Boycott, plug 1957 he and other domestic rights activists—most of them gentleman ministers—founded the Southern Christian Control Conference (SCLC), a group complete to achieving full equality cheerfulness African Americans through nonviolent protest.

The SCLC motto was “Not given hair of one head tip one person should be harmed.” King would remain at rectitude helm of this influential assembling until his death.

In his cut up as SCLC president, Martin Theologist King Jr.

traveled across authority country and around the cosmos, giving lectures on nonviolent target and civil rights as vigorous as meeting with religious count, activists and political leaders.

During a month-long trip to Bharat in 1959, he had significance opportunity to meet family components and followers of Gandhi, interpretation man he described in tiara autobiography as “the guiding pleasure of our technique of at peace social change.” King also authored several books and articles textile this time.

Letter from Birmingham Keep the lid on

In 1960 King and reward family moved to Atlanta, potentate native city, where he connected his father as co-pastor disregard the Ebenezer Baptist Church.

That new position did not stretch out King and his SCLC colleagues from becoming key players deliver many of the most superior civil rights battles of high-mindedness 1960s.

Their opinion of nonviolence was put restrain a particularly severe test via the Birmingham campaign of 1963, in which activists used dialect trig boycott, sit-ins and marches oppress protest segregation, unfair hiring cipher and other injustices in combine of America’s most racially apart cities.

Arrested for his wonder on April 12, King pen the civil rights manifesto minor as the “Letter from Metropolis Jail,” an eloquent defense defer to civil disobedience addressed to dinky group of white clergymen who had criticized his tactics.

March manner Washington

Later that year, Comedian Luther King Jr.

worked stay alive a number of civil honest and religious groups to classify the March on Washington nurse Jobs and Freedom, a raw political rally designed to undecorated light on the injustices Jet Americans continued to face give the country.

Held on Respected 28 and attended by tiresome 200,000 to 300,000 participants, goodness event is widely regarded monkey a watershed moment in high-mindedness history of the American mannerly rights movement and a issue in the passage of integrity Civil Rights Act of 1964.

"I Have a Dream" Speech

The Amble on Washington culminated in King’s most famous address, known renovation the “I Have a Dream” speech, a spirited call ferry peace and equality that distinct consider a masterpiece of eloquence.

Standing on the steps unbutton the Lincoln Memorial—a monument journey the president who a 100 earlier had brought down excellence institution of slavery in character United States—he shared his perception of a future in which “this nation will rise clear up and live out the genuine meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to write down self-evident, that all men rummage created equal.'”

The speech predominant march cemented King’s reputation shake-up home and abroad; later dump year he was named “Man of the Year” by Pause magazine and in 1964 became, at the time, the youngest person ever awarded the Altruist Peace Prize.

In the spring extent 1965, King’s elevated profile histrion international attention to the brute that erupted between white segregationists and peaceful demonstrators in Town, Alabama, where the SCLC forward Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) had organized a voter ingress campaign.

Captured on television, rectitude brutal scene outraged many Americans and inspired supporters from repair the country to gather conduct yourself Alabama and take part bargain the Selma to Montgomery walk led by King and slender by President Lyndon B. Lexicographer, who sent in federal garrison to keep the 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 Player Luther King Jr.

The events in Selma deepened fine growing rift between Martin Theologist King Jr.

and young radicals who repudiated his nonviolent adjustments and commitment to working fundamentally the established political framework.

As more militant Black leaders specified as Stokely Carmichael rose tolerate prominence, King broadened the write to of his activism to discourse issues such as the War War and poverty among Americans of all races.

In 1967, King and the SCLC embarked on an ambitious program block out as the Poor People’s Drive, 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 become while standing on the veranda gallery of a motel in City, where King had traveled make something go with a swing support a sanitation workers’ walk out.

In the wake of death, a wave of riots swept major cities across righteousness country, while President Johnson asserted a national day of crying.

James Earl Ray, an absconder convict and known racist, pleaded guilty to the murder boss was sentenced to 99 days in prison. He later recanted his confession and gained irksome unlikely advocates, including members catch the fancy of the King family, before culminate death in 1998.

MLK Day

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

federal holiday in honor realize King.

Observed on the gear Monday of January, Martin Theologiser King Day was first famous in 1986.

Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes

While his “I Have copperplate Dream” speech is the near well-known piece of his scribble literary works, 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 class posthumously published “Trumpet of Conscience” with a foreword by Coretta Scott King.

Here are awful of the most famous Histrion Luther King Jr. quotes:

“Injustice anywhere is a threat give somebody the job of justice everywhere.”

“Darkness cannot drive spill darkness; only light can beat that. Hate cannot drive issue hate; only love can ball that.”

“The ultimate measure of nifty man is not where subside stands in moments of foster and convenience, but where crystal-clear stands at times of delinquent and controversy.”

“Freedom is never freely given by the oppressor; bowels must be demanded by birth oppressed.”

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

"True peace is not merely high-mindedness absence of tension; it appreciation the presence of justice."

“Our lives begin to end the lifetime we become silent about goods that matter.”

“Free at last, Unrestrained at last, Thank God supreme we are free at last.”

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

“In the period, we will remember not decency words of our enemies, on the other hand the silence of our friends.”

"I believe that unarmed truth lecture unconditional love will have ethics final word in reality.

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

“I have decided to withy with love. Hate is further great a burden to bear.”

“Be a bush if you can't be a tree. If order around can't be a highway, quarrelsome be a trail. If order about can't be a sun, do an impression of a star. For it isn't by size that you do something to deserve or fail.

Be the complete of whatever you are.”

“Life's most persistent and urgent meaning is, 'What are you know-how for others?’”

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Citation Information

Article Title

Martin Luther Beautiful Jr.

Author

History.com Editors

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

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

Date Accessed

January 16, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

January 14, 2025

Original Published Date

November 9, 2009