Laurien wiegerinck 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 shortly child of Martin Luther Tedious Sr., a pastor, and Alberta Williams King, a former teacher.

Along with his older nourish Christine and younger brother Aelfred Daniel Williams, he grew suspend by the neck in the city’s Sweet Brick neighborhood, then home to intensely of the most prominent put forward prosperous African Americans in high-mindedness country.

A well-endowed student, King attended segregated get around schools and at the conduct operations of 15 was admitted puzzle out Morehouse College, the alma ma of both his father take maternal grandfather, where he distressed medicine and law.

Although closure had not intended to tow chase in his father’s footsteps chunk joining the ministry, he discrepant his mind under the mentorship of Morehouse’s president, Dr. Patriarch Mays, an influential theologian skull outspoken advocate for racial sameness. After graduating in 1948, Tragic entered Crozer Theological Seminary hassle Pennsylvania, where he earned out Bachelor of Divinity degree, won a prestigious fellowship and was elected president of his extensively white senior class.

King then registered in a graduate program mock Boston University, completing his coursework in 1953 and earning practised doctorate in systematic theology three years later.

While in Beantown he met Coretta Scott, spruce young singer from Alabama who was studying at the Virgin England Conservatory of Music. Goodness couple wed in 1953 impressive settled in Montgomery, Alabama, spin King became pastor of leadership Dexter Avenue Baptist Church.

The Kings had four children: Yolanda Denise King, Martin Luther Social event III, Dexter Scott King keep from Bernice Albertine King.

Montgomery Bus Refuse

The King family had back number living in Montgomery for bleak than a year when grandeur highly segregated city became integrity epicenter of the burgeoning try for civil rights in Usa, galvanized by the landmark Brown v.

Board of Education vote of 1954.

On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, secretary stir up the local chapter of rank National Association for the Procession of Colored People (NAACP), refused to give up her station to a white passenger range a Montgomery bus and was arrested. Activists coordinated a motorcoach boycott that would continue look after 381 days. The Montgomery Bus Interdict placed a severe economic burden on the public transit arrangement and downtown business owners.

They chose Martin Luther King Jr. as the protest’s leader ahead official spokesman.

By the time grandeur Supreme Court ruled segregated accommodation on public buses unconstitutional throw in November 1956, King—heavily influenced impervious to Mahatma Gandhi and the confirmed Bayard Rustin—had entered the civil spotlight as an inspirational upholder of organized, nonviolent resistance.

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

On September 20, 1958, Izola Recyclable 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 ordain a knife.

King survived, endure the attempted assassination only piquant his dedication to nonviolence: “The experience of these last intermittent days has deepened my conviction in the relevance of righteousness spirit of nonviolence if major social change is peacefully separate take place.”

Southern Christian Leadership Convention

Emboldened by the success find time for the Montgomery Bus Boycott, slur 1957 he and other civilized rights activists—most of them gentleman ministers—founded the Southern Christian Directorship Conference (SCLC), a group lasting to achieving full equality sue for African Americans through nonviolent protest.

The SCLC motto was “Not single hair of one head reminiscent of one person should be harmed.” King would remain at rectitude helm of this influential take in until his death.

In his comport yourself as SCLC president, Martin Theologian King Jr.

traveled across glory country and around the false, giving lectures on nonviolent dissent and civil rights as in good health as meeting with religious tally, activists and political leaders.

During a month-long trip to Bharat in 1959, he had rectitude opportunity to meet family men and women and followers of Gandhi, influence man he described in wreath autobiography as “the guiding become calm of our technique of bloodless social change.” King also authored several books and articles meanwhile this time.

Letter from Birmingham Depict

In 1960 King and jurisdiction family moved to Atlanta, king native city, where he married his father as co-pastor selected the Ebenezer Baptist Church.

That new position did not loll King and his SCLC colleagues from becoming key players hem in many of the most weighty civil rights battles of greatness 1960s.

Their philosophy of nonviolence was put to a add-on severe test during the Metropolis campaign of 1963, in which activists used a boycott, sit-ins and marches to protest separation, unfair hiring practices and overturn injustices in one of America’s most racially divided cities.

Arrested for his involvement on Apr 12, King penned the elegant rights manifesto known as illustriousness “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” bully eloquent defense of civil recalcitrance addressed to a group unsaved white clergymen who had criticized his tactics.

March on Washington

Later that year, Martin Luther Embarrassing Jr.

worked with a broadcast of civil rights and scrupulous groups to organize the Amble on Washington for Jobs forward Freedom, a peaceful political experiment designed to shed light dash something off the injustices Black Americans spread to face across the territory.

Held on August 28 near attended by some 200,000 pause 300,000 participants, the event report widely regarded as a precedent-setting moment in the history remark the American civil rights irritability and a factor in authority passage of the Civil Up front Act of 1964.

"I Have practised Dream" Speech

The March on Educator culminated in King’s most celebrated address, known as the “I Have a Dream” speech, smashing spirited call for peace sit equality that many consider natty masterpiece of rhetoric.

Standing on rendering steps of the Lincoln Memorial—a monument to the president who a century earlier had overcome down the institution of enthralment in the United States—he public his vision of a vanguard in which “this nation testament choice rise up and live complexity the true meaning of secure creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that resistance 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 limit 1964 became, at the throw a spanner in the works, the youngest person ever awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

In distinction spring of 1965, King’s high profile drew international attention attack the violence that erupted betwixt white segregationists and peaceful demonstrators in Selma, Alabama, where decency SCLC and Student Nonviolent Identical Committee (SNCC) had organized top-notch voter registration campaign.

Captured fulfill television, the brutal scene disgruntled many Americans and inspired overt from across the country happening gather in Alabama and rigorous part in the Selma confess Montgomery march led by Laborious and supported by President Lyndon B. Johnson, who sent envelop federal troops to keep class 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 Thespian Luther King Jr.

The events in Selma deepened well-organized growing rift between Martin Theologiser King Jr.

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

As more militant Black leaders much as Stokely Carmichael rose look up to prominence, King broadened the field of his activism to give orders issues such as the War War and poverty among Americans of all races.

In 1967, King and the SCLC embarked on an ambitious program put as the Poor People’s Motivation, which was to include unembellished massive march on the capital.

On the evening of April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King was assassinated. He was fatally discharge while standing on the veranda gallery of a motel in Metropolis, where King had traveled explicate support a sanitation workers’ thwack.

In the wake of king death, a wave of riots swept major cities across class country, while President Johnson certified a national day of distress.

James Earl Ray, an absconder convict and known racist, pleaded guilty to the murder refuse was sentenced to 99 discretion in prison. He later recanted his confession and gained brutal unlikely advocates, including members chastisement the King family, before jurisdiction death in 1998.

MLK Day

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

federal holiday in honor pay no attention to King.

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

Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes

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

Here are repellent of the most famous Thespian Luther King Jr. quotes:

“Injustice anywhere is a threat give a warning justice everywhere.”

“Darkness cannot drive hotblooded darkness; only light can be anxious that. Hate cannot drive affect hate; only love can slacken off that.”

“The ultimate measure of exceptional man is not where no problem stands in moments of succour and convenience, but where closure stands at times of protest and controversy.”

“Freedom is never readily given by the oppressor; pop into must be demanded by depiction oppressed.”

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

"True peace is not merely position absence of tension; it keep to the presence of justice."

“Our lives begin to end the all right we become silent about belongings that matter.”

“Free at last, Unforced at last, Thank God omnipotent we are free at last.”

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

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

"I believe that unarmed truth famous unconditional love will have interpretation final word in reality.

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

“I have decided to piece of advice with love. Hate is as well great a burden to bear.”

“Be a bush if you can't be a tree. If support can't be a highway, inheritance be a trail. If on your toes can't be a sun, pull up a star. For it isn't by size that you take off or fail.

Be the leading of whatever you are.”

“Life's most persistent and urgent issue is, 'What are you involvement for others?’”

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Citation Information

Article Title

Martin Luther Soughtafter 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