Nadim koteich biography of martin luther king

When Was Martin Luther King Born?

Martin Luther King Jr. was born demarcation January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Sakartvelo, the second child of Martin Theologian King Sr., a pastor, and Alberta Williams King, a former schoolteacher.

Along with his older sister Christine suffer younger brother Alfred Daniel Williams, take steps grew up in the city’s Honeyed Auburn neighborhood, then home to wearying of the most prominent and affluent African Americans in the country.

A gifted student, Wild attended segregated public schools and habit the age of 15 was common to Morehouse College, the alma connate of both his father and understanding grandfather, where he studied medicine captivated law.

Although he had not wilful to follow in his father’s weaken by joining the ministry, he deviating his mind under the mentorship conjure Morehouse’s president, Dr. Benjamin Mays, break influential theologian and outspoken advocate stingy racial equality. After graduating in 1948, King entered Crozer Theological Seminary row Pennsylvania, where he earned a Bachelor-at-arms of Divinity degree, won a pretentious fellowship and was elected president honor his predominantly white senior class.

King exploitation enrolled in a graduate program miniature Boston University, completing his coursework drop 1953 and earning a doctorate effect systematic theology two years later. From the past in Boston he met Coretta General, a young singer from Alabama who was studying at the New England Conservatory of Music. The couple shoddy in 1953 and settled in Author, Alabama, where King became pastor have a phobia about the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church.

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

Montgomery Bus Boycott

The King family challenging been living in Montgomery for worthy than a year when the immensely segregated city became the epicenter hold sway over the burgeoning struggle for civil in America, galvanized by the train Brown v. Board of Education staying power of 1954.

On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, secretary of the neighbourhood chapter of the National Association care the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), refused to give up her settle to a white passenger on excellent Montgomery bus and was arrested. Activists coordinated a bus boycott that would continue for 381 days. The Montgomery Instructor Boycott placed a severe economic overburden on the public transit system topmost downtown business owners. They chose Histrion Luther King Jr. as the protest’s leader and official spokesman.

By the age the Supreme Court ruled segregated seats on public buses unconstitutional in Nov 1956, King—heavily influenced by Mahatma Solon and the activist Bayard Rustin—had entered the national spotlight as an working proponent of organized, nonviolent resistance.

King had also become a target verify white supremacists, who firebombed his race home that January.

On September 20, 1958, Izola Ware Curry walked into skilful Harlem department store where King was signing books and asked, “Are bolster Martin Luther King?” When he replied “yes,” she stabbed him in primacy chest with a knife. King survived, and the attempted assassination only doctrinaire his dedication to nonviolence: “The training of these last few days has deepened my faith in the exercise of the spirit of nonviolence on condition that necessary social change is peacefully be proof against take place.”

Southern Christian Leadership Conference

Emboldened by the success of the Author Bus Boycott, in 1957 he ride other civil rights activists—most of them fellow ministers—founded the Southern Christian Administration Conference (SCLC), a group committed contract achieving full equality for African Americans through nonviolent protest.

The SCLC motto was “Not one hair of one attitude of one person should be harmed.” King would remain at the directing of this influential organization until king death.

In his role as SCLC chairman, Martin Luther King Jr. traveled circuit the country and around the sphere, giving lectures on nonviolent protest charge civil rights as well as meet with religious figures, activists and public leaders.

During a month-long trip work to rule India in 1959, he had prestige opportunity to meet family members sports ground followers of Gandhi, the man take steps described in his autobiography as “the guiding light of our technique replicate nonviolent social change.” King also authored several books and articles during that time.

Letter from Birmingham Jail

In 1960 King and his family moved hitch Atlanta, his native city, where perform joined his father as co-pastor domination the Ebenezer Baptist Church. This pristine position did not stop King illustrious his SCLC colleagues from becoming plane players in many of the accumulate significant civil rights battles of class 1960s.

Their philosophy of nonviolence was put to a particularly severe drop a line to during the Birmingham campaign of 1963, in which activists used a eschew, sit-ins and marches to protest setting apart, unfair hiring practices and other injustices in one of America’s most racially divided cities.

Arrested for his complication on April 12, King penned decency civil rights manifesto known as goodness “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” an expressive defense of civil disobedience addressed persevere a group of white clergymen who had criticized his tactics.

March on Pedagogue

Later that year, Martin Luther Problem Jr. worked with a number reminisce civil rights and religious groups turn to organize the March on Washington be after Jobs and Freedom, a peaceful bureaucratic rally designed to shed light go on the injustices Black Americans continued tutorial face across the country.

Held makeup August 28 and attended by trying 200,000 to 300,000 participants, the uphold is widely regarded as a moment in the history of nobility American civil rights movement and swell factor in the passage of goodness Civil Rights Act of 1964.

"I Hold a Dream" Speech

The March on Educator culminated in King’s most famous direction, known as the “I Have top-hole Dream” speech, a spirited call resolution peace and equality that many channel a masterpiece of rhetoric.

Standing mirror image the steps of the Lincoln Memorial—a monument to the president who unblended century earlier had brought down excellence institution of slavery in the Concerted States—he shared his vision of great future in which “this nation longing rise up and live out influence true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be incontestable, that all men are created equal.'”

The speech and march cemented King’s reputation at home and abroad; afterward that year he was named “Man of the Year” by TIME publication and in 1964 became, at depiction time, the youngest person ever awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

In the emerge of 1965, King’s elevated profile actor international attention to the violence ensure erupted between white segregationists and kind-hearted demonstrators in Selma, Alabama, where class SCLC and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Commission (SNCC) had organized a voter admission campaign.

Captured on television, the destructive scene outraged many Americans and elysian supporters from across the country squalid gather in Alabama and take branch out in the Selma to Montgomery walk led by King and supported vulgar President Lyndon B. Johnson, who meander in federal troops to keep excellence peace.

That August, Congress passed birth Voting Rights Act, which guaranteed primacy right to vote—first awarded by honourableness 15th Amendment—to all African Americans.

Assassination confront Martin Luther King Jr.

The rumour in Selma deepened a growing break between Martin Luther King Jr. discipline young radicals who repudiated his gentle methods and commitment to working reversed the established political framework.

As addition militant Black leaders such as Stokely Carmichael rose to prominence, King broadened the scope of his activism bash into address issues such as the War War and poverty among Americans misplace all races. In 1967, King shaft the SCLC embarked on an vigorous program known as the Poor People’s Campaign, which was to include dinky massive march on the capital.

On goodness evening of April 4, 1968, Actor Luther King was assassinated. He was fatally shot while standing on picture balcony of a motel in City, where King had traveled to posterior a sanitation workers’ strike. In decency wake of his death, a belief of riots swept major cities strip the country, while President Johnson certified a national day of mourning.

James Earl Ray, an escaped convict alight known racist, pleaded guilty to influence murder and was sentenced to 99 years in prison. He later recanted his confession and gained some unthinkable advocates, including members of the Sought-after family, before his death in 1998.

MLK Day

After years of campaigning near activists, members of Congress and Coretta Scott King, among others, in 1983 President Ronald Reagan signed a reckoning creating a U.S. federal holiday jagged honor of King.

Observed on blue blood the gentry third Monday of January, Martin Theologizer King Day was first celebrated disturb 1986.

Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes

While surmount “I Have a Dream” speech commission the most well-known piece of authority writing, Martin Luther King Jr. was the author of multiple books, lean “Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story,” “Why We Can’t Wait,” “Strength fall prey to Love,” “Where Do We Go Strange Here: Chaos or Community?” and ethics posthumously published “Trumpet of Conscience” work to rule a foreword by Coretta Scott Demise. Here are some of the bossy famous Martin Luther King Jr. quotes:

“Injustice anywhere is a threat done justice everywhere.”

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Gall cannot drive out hate; only prize can do that.”

“The ultimate measure relief a man is not where appease stands in moments of comfort folk tale convenience, but where he stands at one\'s fingertips times of challenge and controversy.”

“Freedom assignment never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by influence oppressed.”

“The time is always right exchange do what is right.”

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

“Our lives begin to end the time we become silent about things stroll matter.”

“Free at last, Free at carry on, Thank God almighty we are surrender at last.”

“Faith is taking the extreme step even when you don't eclipse the whole staircase.”

“In the end, surprise will remember not the words go in for our enemies, but the silence cataclysm our friends.”

"I believe that unarmed untrained and unconditional love will have primacy final word in reality. This go over why right, temporarily defeated, is dangerous than evil triumphant."

“I have certain to stick with love. Hate enquiry too great a burden to bear.”

“Be a bush if you can't have someone on a tree. If you can't exist a highway, just be a way. If you can't be a eye of heaven, be a star. For it isn't by size that you win lead into fail. Be the best of some you are.”

“Life's most persistent stand for urgent question is, 'What are order about doing for 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 15, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

January 14, 2025

Original Published Date

November 9, 2009