Martin Luther King Jr. Biography

Martin Luther King Jr. was born in Atlanta, Georgia, on January 15, 1929, and died in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968. He was an activist for the human rights of African-American communities in the United States and less favored, as well as an activist against the Vietnam War. Unlike Malcolm X and some radical movements, Luther King was characterized by fighting the injustices of these communities through peaceful discourse. In addition, he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964

Martin was born into a religious family: his father, Martin Luther King, Sr., was a Baptist pastor and his mother, Alberta Williams King, played the organ in the church. They had two more children: Alfred and Christine. At the Booker T. Washington High School, he graduated alternately, having not finished ninth or eleventh grade. Despite this, he managed to graduate from Sociology in 1948 from a special university for African-Americans, Morehouse College. He would obtain a degree in Theology in 1951 at Crozer Theological Seminary and later received a doctorate in Philosophy from Boston University in 1955. The same year he had the first of his children, Yolanda, with Coretta Scott, a woman he had married two years before, and with whom he had three more children: Martin Luther King III, Dexter Scott King, and Bernice King.

Being 25 years old, Martin Luther King

was named pastor of the Baptist Church of Dexter Avenue. Thanks to this position, he was able to react to the discrimination that Rosa Parks suffered on December 1, 1955, on one of Montgomery’s buses. These buses were governed by the segregationist laws of Jim Crow, according to which black people had to give up their seat to white people. Since Rosa Parks refused to do so, as a way of protesting the murder of three African-Americans committed that same year, she was arrested. Then Martin Luther King, along with Ralph Abernathy and Edgar Nixon, initiated a bus boycott to end these discriminatory practices.

“Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would disintegrate, I would still plant my apple tree.”  Martin Luther King Jr

The boycott was for blacks to stop using buses and use alternative means of transport, such as bicycles, walking or even using mules. This protest was joined by several black taxi drivers, who lower their fares to the price of the bus ride, as well as several people, black and white, who began to offer rides in their own cars. After 382 days of protest, in which the house of King and that of other pastors were attacked with incendiary bombs, in which several activists were attacked and even Martin Luther King himself was arrested, the Supreme Court of the United States declared illegal the segregationist law in 1956

, which was applied not only on buses, but also in schools, restaurants, parks and other public places.

In Albany, he joined the Nonviolent Student Coordinating Committee and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People to carry out protests of all kinds, without resorting to violence. However, because the results were unsuccessful, part of the movements began to make violent protests. For this reason, King was arrested several times. Despite this, in 1962 the city abolished segregationist laws.

Similar protests took place in Birmingham, a city that showed obvious discrimination in both low-paid jobs that black people received, and in their rights in general. In this city, Martin Luther King and his group launched “project c” which consisted of occupying spaces where only whites could be to provoke multitudinous arrests. In these demonstrations children also attended, which were of great help to evidence the segregationist practices in the south of the country. All this produced that the city underwent a collapse, which would take the resignation of the Major, the relief of the local police chief and the dissolution of sympathetic groups of the segregation. Thus, on May 21, 1963, blacks were able to return to public places in Birmingham.

“I believe that disarmed truth and unconditional love will have the last word” Martin Luther King Jr

On August 28, Luther King led a march of 250,000 people to the capitol in Washington where he gave his speech “I have a dream” which has been considered one of the best speeches given in the history of the United States. In it, he asked for an equal salary to whites and blacks, protection for the rights activists of these communities, and the end of segregation in schools, work, and public environments.

The following year, in 1964, Luther King would be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his constant fight for the rights of the African Americans. In 1965, Martin Luther King led a march in Montgomery with the objective of claiming the right to vote for black citizens, but this was violently received by authorities and some white people, so this date is known as Bloody Sunday. However, five months later, President Johnson passed a law giving black people the right to vote without any obstacles. This was followed by different marches in the cities of Chicago, Selma, New York and Birmingham with reason no longer only in favor of the rights of the black people, but also to present their rejection against the Vietnam War and the poverty conditions of several Americans. Finally, in 1968, Martin Luther King was shot dead by a segregationist on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in the city of Memphis while delivering a speech.