Martin Luther King Jr was one of the most influential characters of the Black Civil Rights movement. He was involved with some of the main events of the Black Civil Rights movement, like the Montgomery Bus Protests, the happenings at Selma, and so on. He is most famous for his speech, "I Had A Dream."
Early Life:
Martin Luther King Jr was born on January 15th 1925 in Atlanta, Georgia. He was born to Reverend Martin Luther King Sr and Alberta Williams King and had two siblings. He went to Booker T. Washington High School. He skipped two grades of school as he was academically gifted.
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Above: Martin Luther King Jr at a young age.
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Early Involvement:
Above: Martin Luther King Jr speaking to media crews.
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Martin Luther King Jr was first introduced to the Black Civil Rights scene through the town he resided in. He had been living in Montgomery, Alabama for little over a year when suddenly, Montgomery became the epicenter of the Black Civil Rights movement. After Rosa Parks was arrested, activists chose Martin as their leader. By the time buses had been desegregated, Martin, who was influenced by Mahatma Gandhi and the activist Bayard Rustin, had become a preacher, you could say, of non-violence. After this, he helped create the Southern Christian Leaders Conference, who wanted to achieve full equality for African-Americans through non-violence.
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"I Have a Dream":
This famous speech was given by Martin Luther King Jr on August 28th, 1963 at the March on Washington. The speech called for an end to racism by using the words “I have a dream”. He gave the speech to almost 250,000 people that supported the civil rights movement. He shared his dreams of equality and freedom which he believed could rise from the slavery in America.
The “I had a dream” part was almost not part of the speech itself. After being shouted at by Mahalia Jackson, a popular singer at the time, he improvised on his speech and made history with four words. |
Above: Martin Luther King Jr speaking of his dream.
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Death:
On April 4th 1968, Martin was talking to colleagues on a balcony of a motel in Memphis when he was fatally shot down. He had traveled to Memphis to help support a sanitation workers’ strike. Waves of riots stormed the country close after his death, while the President Lyndon Johnson declared a day of mourning. James Earl Ray, who was an escaped convict and a racist, pleaded guilty to murder of Martin and was given a sentence of 99 years in jail. In 1983 the current President Ronald Reagan signed papers that declared a national holiday on the third Monday of January to honor King and what he did.
Martin Luther King Jr. will always be remembered for standing up for what he thought was right. He will be in the history books forever as one of the leaders of the Civil Rights movement.