Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was born in Atlanta, Georgia on January 15, 1929 to a middle-class African-American family. His father was a well-known black minister. Dr. King grew up in a segregated society. As a child he attended segregated schools, drank water from fountains labeled “colored,” and used different restrooms simply because he was black. In the South, the “separate but equal policy,” as espoused by the U.S. Supreme Court and as embodied in Jim Crow laws and customs, rarely meant equal conditions. The schools, textbooks and equipment that society relegated to African Americans were usually inferior to those enjoyed by whites.
At the age of fifteen, Dr. King entered Morehouse College, a historically black school in Atlanta. King graduated from Morehouse in 1948 with a degree in sociology, and then enrolled in Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania where he received a Bachelors of Divinity degree in 1951. King completed his Ph.D. in systematic theology at Boston University in 1955.
In 1953, at the age of 24 and while completing his dissertation, King became the pastor at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. He married Coretta Scott two years later. On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to comply with Jim Crow laws that required her to give up her seat on the bus to a white man. The NAACP and local African-American churches helped organize their community members in the famous Montgomery Bus Boycott. Dr. King soon emerged as a thoughtful and articulate leader.
Members of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and other white supremacists threatened Dr. King’s life. His house was bombed. Nonetheless, King and other leaders continued to insist on a peaceful movement to achieve social change. On November 13, 1956, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that segregated buses were unconstitutional and forced Montgomery’s bus system to desegregate.
King’s choice of non-violent resistance defined much of the civil rights activities over the next decade and reflected his admiration of Mohandas “Mahatma” Gandhi. In helping India gain its independence from British rule, Gandhi implemented what he termed Satyagraha, a form of nonviolent resistance that combined combination love and force. Gandhi argued that when dealing with inherently civilized people, nonviolence was more powerful because it revealed the humanity of the protesters while exposing the intrinsic inhumanity of segregation or other debasing practices.
Dr. King’s participation in the bus boycotts earned him national attention. In 1957, he was instrumental in founding the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), a group which harnessed the organizing power and moral authority of black churches in the name of civil rights. Throughout the early 1960s, King helped direct massive non-violent demonstrations across the U.S. South. Some of the more famous campaigns involved protests in Birmingham and Selma, Alabama. A note orator, King made a notable speech during the March on Washington in 1963, telling the world, “I Have a Dream.” His work and the efforts of thousands of often nameless activists helped force Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, designed to guarantee the basic civil liberties of black citizens.
By 1966, however, a growing number of young African Americans grew weary of the slow pace of change and challenged Dr. King’s teachings. They favored policies of black separatism or “Black Power” that called for the legitimate use of violent resistance in response to violent action. Dr. King also faced sharp criticism from other directions, including the FBI, the New York Times, labor leaders, and even President Lyndon B. Johnson, once King spoke out against U.S. participation in the Vietnamese conflict.
By 1967, Dr. King hoped to initiate a new national movement against poverty. As part of this effort, in 1968, he agreed to support a strike by black sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee.
In the early evening of April 4, an assassin’s bullet found Dr. King as he stood on the balcony at a Memphis hotel. He was pronounced dead less than one hour later. The assassination sparked riots in sixty of the nation’s cities. Five days later, President Johnson declared a national day of mourning as 300,000 people gathered for his funeral in Atlanta.
During his lifetime, King received a number of honors, including the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. Although President Ronald Reagan had opposed the proposition, in 1983, he signed a law creating a national holiday to honor King. Reagan signed the law because Congress had passed the bill with a veto-proof majority. The Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday is now observed on the third Monday of January.
Next Biography: Dr. William King
Retun to: Civil Rights Campaigns Across the Nation and in Houston