Dr
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Michael Luther King was born in Atlanta on January 15, 1929. But later he had his name changed to Martin. Martin Luther attended segregated public schools in Georgia, graduating from high school at the age of fifteen; he received the B. A.
degree in 1948 from Morehouse College, a distinguished Negro institution of Atlanta from which both his father and grandfather had been graduated. After three years of theological study at Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania where he was elected president of a predominantly white senior class, he was awarded the B.D. in 1951. With a fellowship won at Crozer, he enrolled in graduate studies at Boston University, completing his residence for the doctorate in 1953 and receiving the degree in 1955 In Boston he met and married Coretta Scott, a young woman of uncommon intellectual and artistic attainments.
His first major achievement in the civil rights movement was to lead the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
The boycott, which began when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus for a white man, forced the desegregation of the buses in Montgomery, and was a significant achievement in the civil rights movement. After this, he became a major civil rights leader.
One of the prominent ideas of Martin Luther King's philosophy was non-violent, passive resistance. King was affected by many Gandhian principles, as well as his Christian background, to lead to this view of things. He believed that if there is an bad system, instead of fighting it, you should simply refuse to cooperate. If you cooperate with the system, you are agreeing with the bad system and you too are a part of it.
As well, your oppressors will not know that it is evil if you cooperate. If you fight against the system with violence, they will respond back with more violence, and nothing will be solved. So, non-violent, non-cooperation is the only way to fight, according to Martin Luther King.
Two years after the boycott, King and some other black ministers founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). As the president of the organisation, King emphasised the goal of black voting rights in his speech at the Lincoln Memorial during the 1957 Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom. In 1958, he published his first book entitled "Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story".
In 1960, he showed his support by talking at the founding of the Student Non-violent Co-ordinating Committee (SNCC) led by Stokely Carmichael. However, he was later criticised by SNCC activists determined to assert their independence. In 1961, "Freedom Rides", which were designed to eliminate segregation in the bus system demonstrated the expanding protest among black students nation-wide.
In the spring of 1963, he organised mass demonstrations in Birmingham, Alabama, where white officials were known for racism toward black people.
King's fame grew as he became Time magazine's Man of the Year and, in December 1964, the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. With his assassination on April 4, 1968, he became a martyr for the Black Civil Rights movement, of which, to this date, he was one of the most renowned and successful.
© by Baron M. Neumüller; 1998
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