MARTIN LUTHER KING

- Martin Luther King was born in 1929 in Atlanta (Georgia). He studied theology at
university and became a pastor at a Baptist church in Montgomery (Alabama).

- In 1955 he was the leader of the famous bus protest in Montgomery. It started after that
a black woman, Rosa Parks, refused to give up her seat for a white passenger and was
arrested. She was breaking one of the local segregation laws that separated black people
from white people: for example, they went to different schools and hospitals, had
separate areas in restaurants and sat in different seats on buses (white people sat at the
front of the buses, while black people had to sit at the back).

- After Rosa Parks’s arrest, the local Afro-Americans stopped travelling by public buses as a
protest and their boycott lasted one year. In the end, the Supreme Court decided that
racial segregation on public transport was illegal. The success of the boycott showed Afro-
Americans that they had the power to change their situation and it strengthened the Civil
Rights Movement in the United States. The movement wanted to abolish segregation
laws and stop racial discrimination.

- Martin Luther King was one of the leaders of the non-violent Civil Rights Movement. He
wrote books, made a lot of speeches and was arrested many times. In 1963 he organized
a demonstration in Washington DC, where he made his famous “I have a dream” speech
in front of 250,000 people: he said he wanted the U.S.A. to become a country of freedom
and equality, where people would never be judged by the colour of their skin.

- He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.

- He was assassinated in Memphis (Tennessee) in 1968.