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The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (January 15, 1929 - April 4, 1968) was a Nobel Laureate Baptist minister and African American civil rights activist. He is regarded
as one of the greatest leaders and heroes in America's history, and in the modern history of nonviolence.
Biography
King was born in Atlanta, Georgia to the Rev. Martin Luther King, Sr. and Alberta Williams King. He graduated from Morehouse College with a B.A. degree in 1948 and from Crozer
Theological Seminary with a B.D. in 1951. He received his Ph.D. from Boston University in 1955.
In 1954, King became the pastor of the Dexter Avenue
Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. He was a leader
of the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott, which began when
Rosa Parks refused to cede her seat to a white person. Dr. King was arrested
during this campaign, which ended with a United States Supreme Court decision outlawing segregation on intrastate buses.
Following the campaign, King was instrumental in the founding of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957, a group created to organise Civil Rights activism. He continued to dominate the organisation to his death,
a position criticised by the more radical and democratic Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). The SCLC derived its membership
principally from black communities associated with Baptist churches. King was an adherent of the philosophies of nonviolent
civil disobedience used successfully in India by Mohandas Gandhi, and he applied this
philosophy to the protests organised by the SCLC. King correctly identified that organised, non-violent protest against the
racist system of Southern separation known as Jim Crow, when violently attacked by
racist authorities and covered extensively by the media, would create a wave of pro-Civil Rights public opinion, and this was the
key relationship which brought Civil Rights to the forefront of American politics in the early 1960s.
He organized and led marches for the right to vote, desegregation,
fair hiring, and other basic civil rights. Most of these rights were later successfully enacted into United States law with the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act.
King and the SCLC applied the principles of nonviolent protest with astonishing success by choosing the method of protest, and
the places in which protests were carried out, in order to provoke the harshest and most shocking retaliation from racist
authorities. King and the SCLC were instrumental in the unsuccessful protest movement in Albany in 1961-2, where splits
within the black community and the canny, low-key response by local government defeated the movement, in the Birmingham protests in the summer of 1963, and in the protest in
St. Augustine, Florida in 1964. King and SCLC joined SNCC in the city of Selma,
Alabama in December 1964; SNCC had already been there working on voter registration for a number of months.
King and SCLC, in partial collaboration with SNCC, then attempted to organise a march which was intended to go from Selma to
the state capital Montgomery starting on March 25, 1965. The first attempt to march, on
March 7, was aborted due to mob and police violence against the demonstrators. The
day has since become known as Bloody Sunday. Bloody
Sunday was a major turning point in the effort to gain public support for the Civil Rights movement, the clearest demonstration
so far of the dramatic potential of King's techniques of nonviolence. King,
however, was not present; after meeting with President Lyndon Johnson, he had attempted to delay the march until March 8, and the march was carried out against his wishes and without his presence by local
civil rights workers. The footage of the police brutality against
the protestors was broadcast extensively across the nation, and aroused a national sense of public outrage.
The second attempt at the march, on March 9, was ended when King stopped the march
at the Pettus bridge on the outskirts of Selma, an action which he seems to have negotiated with city leaders beforehand. This
unexpected action aroused the surprise and anger of many within the local movement. The march finally went ahead fully on
March 25, with the agreement and support of President Johnson, and it was during
this march that Stokely Carmichael coined the phrase "Black Power".
King was instrumental in the organisation of the March on Washington in 1963. This role was another which courted controversy,
as King was one of the key figures who helped President John F.
Kennedy change the intent of the march. Conceived as a further part of the Civil Rights protest, it became more of a
celebration of the achievements of the movement - and the government - so far, a development which angered activists who were
more radical than King.
King wrote and spoke frequently, drawing on his long experience as a preacher.
His "Letter from Birmingham Jail", written in
1963, is a passionate statement of his crusade for justice.
On October 14, 1964, King became the
youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, which was awarded to
him for leading non-violent resistance to end racial prejudice in the United
States. Starting in 1965, King began to express doubts about the United States' role in the Vietnam War. In February and again in April of 1967, King spoke out strongly against the US's role in the
war. In 1968, King and the SCLC organized the "Poor People's Campaign" to address issues of economic justice. The campaign
culminated in a march on Washington, D.C. demanding economic aid to the poorest communities of the United States.
Along the way, King also had an impact on popular
entertainment. He met Nichelle Nichols who mentioned that she
was going to leave the cast of the television series,
Star Trek, since she felt was being mistreated by the studio. King
personally persuaded her to remain with the series for the sake of being an excellent role model for African Americans on television.
King was hated by many white southern segregationists. King was assassinated before the march on April 4,
1968, on the balcony of the Lorraine
Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, while preparing to lead a
local march in support of the heavily-black Memphis sanitation workers' union. James Earl Ray confessed to the shooting and was convicted, though he later recanted his confession.
Coretta Scott King, King's widow and also a civil rights
leader, along with the rest of King's family won a wrongful death civil trial against Loyd Jowers, who
claimed to have received $100,000 to arrange King's assassination.
Since his death, King's reputation has grown to become one of the most revered names in American history to the point where
his popular esteem has described him as effectively the 20th Century's equivalent of Abraham Lincoln. Supporters of this idea point out that both were leaders credited with strongly advancing
human rights against poor odds in a nation divided against itself on the issue and were assassinated in part for it.
In 1986, a U.S. national holiday was
established in honor of Martin Luther King Jr., which is called Martin Luther King Day. It is observed on the third Monday of January each year, around the time of
King's birthday. On January 18, 1993, for
the first time, Martin Luther King Day was officially observed in all 50 U.S.
states.
King and the FBI
King had a mutually antagonistic relationship with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), especially its director, J. Edgar Hoover. The FBI began tracking King and the SCLC in 1961. Its
investigations were largely superficial until 1962, when it learned that one of King's most trusted advisers was Stanley Levison.
Stanley Levison was a man whom the bureau suspected of involvement with the Communist Party, USA. The bureau placed wiretaps on Levison and King's home and office phones, and
bugged King's rooms in hotels as he traveled across the country. The bureau also informed then-Attorney General Robert Kennedy and then-President John F. Kennedy, both of whom unsuccessfully tried to persuade King to dissociate himself from Levison.
Later, the focus of the bureau's investigations changed from King's relationship with Levison to "discrediting" King through
revelations regarding his private life. The bureau distributed reports regarding King's extramarital sexual affairs to the
executive branch, friendly reporters, potential coalition partners and funding sources of the SCLC, and King's family. The Bureau
also sent anonymous letters to King threatening to reveal information if he didn't cease his civil rights work. Finally, the
Bureau's investigation shifted away from King's personal life to intelligence and counterintelligence work on the direction of the SCLC and the "racial" movement.
See also
Reference
- The FBI and Martin Luther King, Jr., David Garrow, Penguin Books: New York, New York, 1981. ISBN 0140064869
External links
Video and audio material
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