Martin Luther King

Early life
Martin Luther King, Jr., original name Michael King, Jr., was born January 15th
1929 in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.A. He was the middle child of Michael King Sr. and
Alberta Williams King. He grew up experiencing extreme racism in rural Georgia
along with his older sister, Willie Christine, and a younger brother, Alfred Daniel
Williams King.
King attended Booker T. Washington High School, where he was said to be an
advanced student. He skipped both the ninth and eleventh grades, and entered
Morehouse College in Atlanta at age 15, in 1944, to study law and medicine. In his
final year at Morehouse he decided to become a minister, like his father and his
grandfather. Martin Luther graduated from Morehouse in 1948.

King spent the next three years at Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester,
Pennsylvania, where he was taught Mohandas Gandhi’s philosophy of nonviolence
as well as contemporary Protestant theology. He earned a Bachelor of Divinity
degree in 1951. He was elected student body president at Crozer; something special
as most of the students at Crozer were white and racism was high at that time in the
southern states of the USA.
King went to Boston University where he studied man’s relationship to God and
received a doctorate (1955) for a dissertation titled “A Comparison of the
Conceptions of God in the Thinking of Paul Tillich and Henry Nelson Wieman”. He
was just 25 years old when he earned his Phd. While in Boston, King met Coretta
Scott, who was studying at the New England Conservatory of Music. They married in
1953 and had four children.

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The Montgomery bus boycott
Martin Luther King’s first job as a minister was at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church
in Montgomery, Alabama. He was there for a little over a year when he was asked to
lead the Montgomery Improvement Association – a small group of activists
protesting the racial segregation laws in Alabama, after Rosa Parks was arrested,
tried and found guilty of breaking the law when she refused to give up her bus seat
to a white passenger.
In his first speech to the group as its president, King declared:
“We have no alternative but to protest. For many years we have shown an
amazing patience. We have sometimes given our white brothers the feeling
that we liked the way we were being treated. But we come here tonight to be
saved from that patience that makes us patient with anything less than
freedom and justice.”
The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a huge success, lasting for 381 days. The city's
buses were almost empty. Some people shared cars and others rode in African-
American-operated cabs, but most of the estimated 40,000 African-American
commuters living in the city at the time had opted to walk to work - some as far as 20
miles! But Martin Luther King was attacked during the boycott, to try to stop it. His
house was blown up, though luckily he, his wife and their 4 children were unhurt.

Further activist activities

In January 1957, King, Ralph Abernathy and 60 ministers and civil rights activists
founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to control the moral authority
and organise the power of black churches. They would help manage non-violent
protests to promote civil rights reform. The organization felt the best place to start to
give African Americans a voice was to get them the right to vote. In February 1958,
the SCLC sponsored more than 20 mass meetings in key southern cities to register
black voters in the South. King met with religious and civil rights leaders and lectured
all over the country on race-related issues.
In February 1960, a group of African American students in North Carolina began
what became known as the Greensboro sit-in movement. By August of 1960, the sit-
ins had been successful in ending segregation at lunch counters in 27 southern
cities. Around this time Martin Luther returned to Atlanta to become co-pastor with
his father at Ebenezer Baptist Church while continuing his civil rights efforts. On
October 19, 1960, King and 75 students entered a local department store and
requested lunch-counter service but were denied. When they refused to leave the
counter area, King and 36 others were arrested. 
Realizing the incident would hurt the city's reputation, Atlanta's mayor negotiated a
truce and charges were eventually dropped. But soon after, King was imprisoned for
violating his probation on a traffic conviction. The news of his imprisonment entered
the 1960 presidential campaign when candidate, and future president, John F.

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Kennedy made a phone call to Coretta Scott King. Kennedy expressed his concern
for King's harsh treatment for the traffic ticket and political pressure was quickly set
in motion. King was soon released.
In the spring of 1963, King organized a demonstration in downtown Birmingham,
Alabama. With entire families in attendance, city police turned dogs and fire hoses
on demonstrators.  King was jailed along with large numbers of his supporters, but
the event drew nationwide attention. However, King was personally criticized by
black and white clergy alike for taking risks and endangering the children who
attended the demonstration. In his famous Letter from Birmingham Jail, King
explained his theory of non-violence:
" You may well ask: “Why direct action? Why sit-ins, marches and so forth?
Isn’t negotiation a better path?” You are quite right in calling for negotiation.
Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Non-violent direct action
seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community,
which has constantly refused to negotiate, is forced to confront the issue."

Near the end of the Birmingham campaign, in an effort to draw together the multiple
forces for peaceful change and to dramatize to the country and to the world the
importance of solving the U.S. racial problem, King joined other civil rights leaders in
organizing the historic March on Washington. On August 28th 1963, an interracial
assembly of more than 200,000 gathered peacefully in front of the Lincoln Memorial
to demand equal justice for all citizens under the law. Here the crowds were uplifted
by the emotional strength and prophetic quality of King’s famous “I Have a Dream”
speech, in which he emphasized his faith that all men, someday, would be brothers.
The continuing efforts of the civil rights activists had a strong effect on public opinion.
Many people in cities not experiencing racial tension began to question the nation's
Jim Crow laws and the near-century of second-class treatment of African American
citizens. This resulted in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, authorizing the
federal government to enforce desegregation of public accommodations and
outlawing discrimination in publicly owned facilities. This also led to King receiving
the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.
On March 9, 1965, a procession of 2,500 marchers, both black and white, set out
once again to cross the Pettus Bridge and confronted barricades and state troopers.
Instead of forcing a confrontation, King led his followers to kneel in prayer and they
then turned back. Alabama governor George Wallace continued to try to prevent
another march until President Lyndon B. Johnson gave his support and ordered U.S.
Army troops and the Alabama National Guard to protect the protestors. 
On March 21, approximately 2,000 people began a march from Selma to
Montgomery, the state capitol. On March 25, the number of marchers, which had
grown to an estimated 25,000, gathered in front of the state capitol where King
delivered a televised speech. Five months after the historic peaceful protest,
President Johnson signed the 1965 Voting Rights Act. 

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Assassination

By 1968, the years of demonstrations and confrontations were beginning to wear on

King. He had grown tired of marches, going to jail, and living under the constant
threat of death. He was becoming discouraged at the slow progress of civil rights in
America and the increasing criticism from other African American leaders.  Plans
were being made for another march on Washington to revive his movement and
bring attention to a widening range of issues. In the spring of 1968, a labour strike by
Memphis sanitation workers drew King to one last crusade. 

On April 3rd 1968, he gave his final speech, “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop,” in which
he told supporters at the Mason Temple in Memphis, "I've seen the promised land. I
may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we, as a people, will
get to the promised land." The next day, while standing on the second-story balcony
of the Lorraine Motel, where he and his friends were staying, King was killed by a
sniper’s bullet. The killing sparked riots in over 100 cities across the country. On
March 10, 1969, the accused assassin, a white man, James Earl Ray, pleaded guilty
to the murder and was sentenced to 99 years in prison.

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 Martin Luther King was born on January 8th 1929 T / F
Martin had always wanted to be a minster T / F
He married Coretta Scott in Boston in 1954 T / F
Martin Luther King was 28 when he got his Phd T / F
He was the minister at Dexter Baptist church, where the bus protest T / F
was organised
Martin Luther King’s house was bombed in response to the boycott T / F
He gave his ‘I have a dream speech’ on July 28 th 1963 T / F
Martin was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1965 T / F
He was arrested on October 19th 1960 for refusing to leave a lunch T / F
service at a department store
The Montgomery Bus Boycott lasted 281 and was a huge success T / F
His philosophy of non-violence came from the teachings of Mohandas T / F
Gandhi’s
The man who murdered Martin Luther King was African-American T / F

1. What were the racial segregation laws called?

Jim Crow laws.

2. Why was his election as student body president something special?

Because at the time it was usual that only the white participated in those kinds of
things. Most of the students at Crozer were white and racism was high at that time in
the southern states of the USA.

3. Who murdered Martin Luther King and how long was he sentenced to
prison for?
A white men killed him. He was called James Earl Ray and was sentenced to 99
years in prison.

4. Who helped to get Martin Luther king released after his arrest in 1960?
The time in which he was imprisoned was the time of the presidential campaign of
John F. Kennedy. He made a phone call with King’s wife. Then, Kennedy expressed
his concern about the harsh treatment King was receiving and soon after, King was
released.

5. Which state did Martin Luther King group in and what is the name of the
high school he attended?
It was

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 6. How many protesters were at Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963 and
what was the name of the speech Martin Luther King gave?
King gave the speech of “I have a Dream” and around 200,000 people assisted. This
was with the purpose of demanding equal justice for all citizens under the law and
during his speech, he emphasized his faith in which one day all men will become
brothers.

7. In what year did President Johnson sign the Voting Act and was Martin
Luther King alive to see it?
In 1965 the president Johnson signed the Voting Rights act and Martin Luther King
did live in that period of time. This document was signed five month after the
historical peaceful protest in the state capitol where King gave a televised speech.

8. What did Southern Christian Leadership Conference think was the most
important thing to gain for African-Americans?
To control the moral authority and organise the power of black church. They would
help manage non-violent protests to promote civil rights reform.  “The organization
felt the best place to start to give African Americans a voice was to get them the right
to vote.”

9. What was the name given to the final speech Martin Luther King gave?
“I’ve Been To The Mountaintop” where he says that he has hope to arrive the
promised land even though he might not be there with them (the community).

10. What date did Martin Luther King give a televised speech in front of the
state capitol in Montgomery?
On March 25, 1965.

11. What is the name of the law which stopped discrimination in public
facilities?
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 “Jim Crow Laws”.

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