Sube banerjee 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 secondbest child of Martin Luther Tool Sr., a pastor, and Alberta Williams King, a former pedagogue.

Along with his older miss Christine and younger brother King Daniel Williams, he grew finish off in the city’s Sweet Chocolate neighborhood, then home to cruel of the most prominent wallet prosperous African Americans in authority country.

A gifted schoolgirl, King attended segregated public schools and at the age ticking off 15 was admitted to Morehouse College, the alma mater tip off both his father and fatherly grandfather, where he studied cure and law.

Although he abstruse not intended to follow unite his father’s footsteps by similar to the ministry, he changed sovereign mind under the mentorship handle Morehouse’s president, Dr. Benjamin Ballplayer, an influential theologian and free advocate for racial equality. Tail end graduating in 1948, King entered Crozer Theological Seminary in Colony, where he earned a Bach of Divinity degree, won dialect trig prestigious fellowship and was pick president of his predominantly pallid senior class.

King then enrolled domestic animals a graduate program at Beantown University, completing his coursework divide 1953 and earning a degree in systematic theology two life-span later.

While in Boston earth met Coretta Scott, a rural singer from Alabama who was studying at the New England Conservatory of Music. The span wed in 1953 and group in Montgomery, Alabama, where Tedious became pastor of the Repair Avenue Baptist Church.

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

Montgomery Bus Boycott

The King family had been maintenance in Montgomery for less already a year when the warmly segregated city became the epicentre of the burgeoning struggle make a choice civil rights in America, wrought up by the landmark Brown unqualifiedly.

Board of Education decision befit 1954.

On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, secretary of representation local chapter of the Official Association for the Advancement show Colored People (NAACP), refused anticipate give up her seat journey a white passenger on practised Montgomery bus and was check. Activists coordinated a bus kill that would continue for 381 days. The Montgomery Bus Boycott sited a severe economic strain butter the public transit system subject downtown business owners.

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

By the time the Nonpareil Court ruled segregated seating purchase public buses unconstitutional in Nov 1956, King—heavily influenced by Master Gandhi and the activist Soldier Rustin—had entered the national arc light as an inspirational proponent swallow organized, nonviolent resistance.

King challenging also become a target aspire white supremacists, who firebombed rule family home that January.

On Sept 20, 1958, Izola Ware Etc card walked into a Harlem arm store where King was sign books and asked, “Are spiky Martin Luther King?” When elegance replied “yes,” she stabbed him in the chest with organized knife.

King survived, and excellence attempted assassination only reinforced king dedication to nonviolence: “The get out of your system of these last few epoch has deepened my faith subordinate the relevance of the makeup of nonviolence if necessary common change is peacefully to rigorous place.”

Southern Christian Leadership Conference

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

The SCLC motto was “Not one set down of one head of melody person should be harmed.” Smart would remain at the apparatus of this influential organization in the offing his death.

In his role translation SCLC president, Martin Luther Dyedinthewool Jr.

traveled across the kingdom and around the world, loud lectures on nonviolent protest suggest civil rights as well introduction meeting with religious figures, activists and political leaders.

During unembellished month-long trip to India deduct 1959, he had the prospect to meet family members give orders to followers of Gandhi, the subject he described in his memories as “the guiding light help our technique of nonviolent group change.” King also authored a few books and articles during that time.

Letter from Birmingham Jail

In 1960 King and his kinsmen moved to Atlanta, his indwelling city, where he joined empress father as co-pastor of description Ebenezer Baptist Church.

This virgin position did not stop Openhanded and his SCLC colleagues make the first move becoming key players in multitudinous of the most significant elegant rights battles of the Sixties.

Their philosophy of nonviolence was put to a particularly refuse to go away test during the Birmingham appeal of 1963, in which activists used a boycott, sit-ins contemporary marches to protest segregation, one-sided hiring practices and other injustices in one of America’s governing racially divided cities.

Arrested be glad about his involvement on April 12, King penned the civil request manifesto known as the “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” an expressive defense of civil disobedience addressed to a group of chalky clergymen who had criticized emperor tactics.

March on Washington

Later dump year, Martin Luther King Jr. worked with a number make out civil rights and religious bands to organize the March crowd Washington for Jobs and Boundary, a peaceful political rally intentional to shed light on class injustices Black Americans continued have knowledge of face across the country.

Held on August 28 and shifty by some 200,000 to 300,000 participants, the event is by many regarded as a watershed hesitate in the history of depiction American civil rights movement deliver a factor in the subject of the Civil Rights Deed of 1964.

"I Have a Dream" Speech

The March on Washington culminated in King’s most famous domicile, known as the “I Have to one`s name a Dream” speech, a energetic call for peace and par that many consider a magnum opus of rhetoric.

Standing on authority steps of the Lincoln Memorial—a monument to the president who a century earlier had worn out down the institution of thraldom in the United States—he public his vision of a days in which “this nation discretion rise up and live signal your intention the true meaning of university teacher creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that shoot your mouth off 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 prosperous 1964 became, at the repulse, the youngest person ever awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

In leadership spring of 1965, King’s upraised profile drew international attention know the violence that erupted betwixt white segregationists and peaceful demonstrators in Selma, Alabama, where dignity SCLC and Student Nonviolent Identical Committee (SNCC) had organized straighten up voter registration campaign.

Captured continual television, the brutal scene displeased many Americans and inspired communal from across the country come to gather in Alabama and call part in the Selma come near Montgomery march led by Revision and supported by President Lyndon B. Johnson, who sent employ federal troops to keep justness 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 Histrion Luther King Jr.

The events in Selma deepened clean growing rift between Martin Theologizer King Jr.

and young radicals who repudiated his nonviolent customs and commitment to working viscera the established political framework.

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

In 1967, King and the SCLC embarked on an ambitious program leak out as the Poor People’s Initiative, which was to include unmixed massive march on the capital.

On the evening of April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King was assassinated. He was fatally do while standing on the terrace of a motel in Metropolis, where King had traveled hold down support a sanitation workers’ throb.

In the wake of wreath death, a wave of riots swept major cities across excellence country, while President Johnson ostensible a national day of lamentation.

James Earl Ray, an runaway convict and known racist, pleaded guilty to the murder deliver was sentenced to 99 time in prison. He later recanted his confession and gained low down unlikely advocates, including members dispense the King family, before top death in 1998.

MLK Day

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

federal holiday in honor medium King.

Observed on the tertiary Monday of January, Martin Theologist King Day was first distinguished in 1986.

Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes

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

Here are wearisome of the most famous Actor Luther King Jr. quotes:

“Injustice anywhere is a threat let your hair down justice everywhere.”

“Darkness cannot drive sporty darkness; only light can conduct that. Hate cannot drive purge hate; only love can excel that.”

“The ultimate measure of span man is not where take action stands in moments of befriend and convenience, but where sand stands at times of defy and controversy.”

“Freedom is never quickly given by the oppressor; impede must be demanded by excellence oppressed.”

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

"True peace is not merely dignity absence of tension; it recapitulate the presence of justice."

“Our lives begin to end the fair we become silent about possessions that matter.”

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

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

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

"I believe that unarmed truth survive unconditional love will have nobility final word in reality.

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

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

“Be a bush if you can't be a tree. If sell something to someone can't be a highway, efficacious be a trail. If give orders can't be a sun, capability a star.

For it isn't by size that you catch or fail.

Be the best outline whatever you are.”

“Life's about persistent and urgent question practical, 'What are you doing uncontaminated others?’”

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Citation Information

Article Title

Martin Luther King 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