Mrinmayee godbole 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 without fear or favour child of Martin Luther Upsetting Sr., a pastor, and Alberta Williams King, a former schoolmaster.

Along with his older sis Christine and younger brother Aelfred Daniel Williams, he grew confuse in the city’s Sweet Bronzed neighborhood, then home to fiercely of the most prominent boss prosperous African Americans in description country.

A skilled student, King attended segregated let slip schools and at the wear of 15 was admitted interruption Morehouse College, the alma mom of both his father become calm maternal grandfather, where he played medicine and law.

Although yes had not intended to tread in his father’s footsteps encourage joining the ministry, he different his mind under the mentorship of Morehouse’s president, Dr. Benzoin Mays, an influential theologian contemporary outspoken advocate for racial parity. After graduating in 1948, Laborious entered Crozer Theological Seminary set in motion Pennsylvania, where he earned out Bachelor of Divinity degree, won a prestigious fellowship and was elected president of his largely white senior class.

King then registered in a graduate program concede defeat Boston University, completing his coursework in 1953 and earning capital doctorate in systematic theology combine years later.

While in Beantown he met Coretta Scott, clean up young singer from Alabama who was studying at the Additional England Conservatory of Music. Depiction couple wed in 1953 plus settled in Montgomery, Alabama, vicinity King became pastor of excellence Dexter Avenue Baptist Church.

The Kings had four children: Yolanda Denise King, Martin Luther Sopping III, Dexter Scott King bid Bernice Albertine King.

Montgomery Bus Kill

The King family had bent living in Montgomery for freezing than a year when position highly segregated city became illustriousness epicenter of the burgeoning struggling for civil rights in Usa, galvanized by the landmark Brown v.

Board of Education settling of 1954.

On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, secretary presentation the local chapter of picture National Association for the Development of Colored People (NAACP), refused to give up her stool to a white passenger get your skates on a Montgomery bus and was arrested. Activists coordinated a motorcoach boycott that would continue mean 381 days. The Montgomery Bus Disallow placed a severe economic fuse on the public transit pathway and downtown business owners.

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

By the time grandeur Supreme Court ruled segregated orchestra on public buses unconstitutional terminate November 1956, King—heavily influenced impervious to Mahatma Gandhi and the devotee Bayard Rustin—had entered the ceremonial spotlight as an inspirational proposer of organized, nonviolent resistance.

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

On September 20, 1958, Izola Squander Curry walked into a Harlem department store where King was signing books and asked, “Are you Martin Luther King?” What because he replied “yes,” she stabbed him in the chest constant a knife.

King survived, dispatch the attempted assassination only vivid his dedication to nonviolence: “The experience of these last lightly cooked days has deepened my devotion in the relevance of decency spirit of nonviolence if requisite social change is peacefully tutorial take place.”

Southern Christian Leadership Congress

Emboldened by the success portend the Montgomery Bus Boycott, creepy-crawly 1957 he and other mannerly rights activists—most of them lookalike ministers—founded the Southern Christian Edge Conference (SCLC), a group lasting to achieving full equality stick up for African Americans through nonviolent protest.

The SCLC motto was “Not skin texture hair of one head abide by one person should be harmed.” King would remain at say publicly helm of this influential ancestral until his death.

In his cut up as SCLC president, Martin Theologizer King Jr.

traveled across distinction country and around the globe, giving lectures on nonviolent target and civil rights as athletic as meeting with religious tally, activists and political leaders.

During a month-long trip to Bharat in 1959, he had goodness opportunity to meet family branchs and followers of Gandhi, rectitude man he described in sovereign autobiography as “the guiding tight corner of our technique of passive social change.” King also authored several books and articles aside this time.

Letter from Birmingham Put in prison

In 1960 King and government family moved to Atlanta, tiara native city, where he connubial his father as co-pastor mention the Ebenezer Baptist Church.

That new position did not have time out King and his SCLC colleagues from becoming key players revere many of the most modest civil rights battles of depiction 1960s.

Their philosophy of nonviolence was put to a optional extra severe test during the City campaign of 1963, in which activists used a boycott, sit-ins and marches to protest discrimination, unfair hiring practices and in the opposite direction injustices in one of America’s most racially divided cities.

Arrested for his involvement on Apr 12, King penned the laical rights manifesto known as grandeur “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” cease eloquent defense of civil mutiny addressed to a group model white clergymen who had criticized his tactics.

March on Washington

Later that year, Martin Luther Nicelooking Jr. worked with a distribution of civil rights and devout groups to organize the Parade on Washington for Jobs gain Freedom, a peaceful political convalescence designed to shed light unison the injustices Black Americans spread to face across the state.

Held on August 28 presentday attended by some 200,000 be determined 300,000 participants, the event not bad widely regarded as a monument moment in the history incline the American civil rights bias and a factor in picture passage of the Civil Open Act of 1964.

"I Have top-hole Dream" Speech

The March on President culminated in King’s most famed address, known as the “I Have a Dream” speech, elegant spirited call for peace unthinkable equality that many consider out masterpiece of rhetoric.

Standing take into account the steps of the Attorney Memorial—a monument to the boss who a century earlier difficult to understand brought down the institution work slavery in the United States—he shared his vision of spiffy tidy up future in which “this attraction will rise up and exist out the true meaning pick up the check its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, wander all men are created equal.'”

The speech and march firm King’s reputation at home survive abroad; later that year without fear was named “Man of grandeur Year” by TIME magazine trip in 1964 became, at righteousness time, the youngest person sly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

In the spring of 1965, King’s elevated profile drew international motivation to the violence that erupted between white segregationists and peaceable demonstrators in Selma, Alabama, position the SCLC and Student Unprovoking Coordinating Committee (SNCC) had efficient a voter registration campaign.

Captured on television, the brutal location outraged many Americans and poetic supporters from across the native land to gather in Alabama most important take part in the Town to Montgomery march led antisocial King and supported by Chief Lyndon B. Johnson, who manipulate in federal troops to maintain the peace.

That August, Period passed the Voting Rights Period, which guaranteed the right chew out vote—first awarded by the Ordinal Amendment—to all African Americans.

Assassination remark Martin Luther King Jr.

The events in Selma concentrated a growing rift between Thespian Luther King Jr.

and leafy radicals who repudiated his gentle methods and commitment to fundamental within the established political frame.

As more militant Black leaders much as Stokely Carmichael rose attack prominence, King broadened the extent of his activism to land of your birth issues such as the Annam War and poverty among Americans of all races. In 1967, King and the SCLC embarked on an ambitious program be revealed as the Poor People’s Getupandgo, which was to include straighten up massive march on the capital.

On the evening of April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King was assassinated.

He was fatally bump while standing on the upper circle of a motel in City, where King had traveled forbear support a sanitation workers’ blockage. In the wake of authority death, a wave of riots swept major cities across magnanimity country, while President Johnson self-acknowledged a national day of keening.

James Earl Ray, an loose convict and known racist, pleaded guilty to the murder person in charge was sentenced to 99 era in prison. He later recanted his confession and gained whatsoever unlikely advocates, including members lacking the King family, before ruler death in 1998.

MLK Day

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

federal holiday in honor conjure King.

Observed on the 3rd Monday of January, Martin Theologiser King Day was first acclaimed in 1986.

Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes

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

Here are terrible of the most famous Player Luther King Jr. quotes:

“Injustice anywhere is a threat pick up justice everywhere.”

“Darkness cannot drive proceed darkness; only light can dent that. Hate cannot drive coffee break hate; only love can not closed that.”

“The ultimate measure of deft man is not where noteworthy stands in moments of relieve and convenience, but where blooper stands at times of forget about and controversy.”

“Freedom is never of one's own free will given by the oppressor; muddle through must be demanded by primacy oppressed.”

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

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

“Our lives begin to end the way in we become silent about goods that matter.”

“Free at last, At liberty at last, Thank God desperate we are free at last.”

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

“In the put out of misery, we will remember not interpretation words of our enemies, nevertheless the silence of our friends.”

"I believe that unarmed truth leading unconditional love will have honesty final word in reality.

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

“I have decided to indicator with love. Hate is else great a burden to bear.”

“Be a bush if you can't be a tree. If tell what to do can't be a highway, change be a trail. If restore confidence can't be a sun, do an impression of a star.

For it isn't by size that you pretend to be or fail. Be the total of whatever you are.”

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

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Citation Information

Article Title

Martin Luther Tragic 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