Martin Luther King Jr It takes an amazing individual to be the only United States citizen to have a national holiday in his honor, and perhaps Martin Luther King Jr knew he was meant for such distinction someday. So anxious was he to proceed with his greatness, that he skipped his freshman and senior years of high school, never graduating formally, and went straight to college. Born January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia, King was the son of Rev. Martin Luther King Sr., and Alberta Williams King. He began his education at Morehouse College at just fifteen years old, and after graduating at eighteen with a B.A. in Sociology, he moved on to Crozer Theological Seminary and received his Ph.D. in Sytemic Theology at Boston College in 1955. It was two years earlier that he had become the pastor at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama.
It was Rosa Parks's plight in 1955 that first inspired King to become active in civil rights. Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, to a white person, in accordance with the Jim Crow laws. She outright refused the bus driver's request. King organized the Montgomery Bus Boycott, asking blacks to not ride the buses at all, because of Parks's arrest. Because King thrust himself to the forefront of this issue, his house was bombed and he was also arrested for hindering a bus. The boycott, which lasted one year, led to organized car pools. The city transit system's finances were harmed, and eventually the bus segregation laws were considered unconstitutional. Through this success, King organized the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957, and used Mahatma Ghandi's strategies of non-violent civil disobedience. The FBI feared that communists would become involved in this movement, and began wire-tapping his phone. King used his power to fight for voting rights, desegregation, and labor rights for blacks, and he became one of the Big Six who organized the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The others were Roy Wilkins, Whitney Young, Jr., A. Philip Randolph, John Lewis, and James Farmer. Malcom X and President John F Kennedy were against the march, with Malcolm X referring to it as the Farce on Washington, yet the march was nonetheless very successful accomplishing what it intended to do, becoming the largest protest in Washington, D.C. up until that time. With more than a quarter of a million people in attendance, including Jackie Robinson, Paul Newman, Marlon Brando, Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte, Charlton Heston, and Bob Dylan, King delivered his infamous I Have a Dream speech. After hearing the speech, President Kennedy was won over. Because of this, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, encompassing many of things King had been fighting for, and later he was recognized as well, winning the Nobel Peace Prize.
In 1966, after having been so successful in the South, King and other leaders hoped they could do the same thing in the North, and moved into the slums of Chicago to show their support to the poor and disadvantaged. The SCLC joined the Coordinating Committee of Coordinating Organizations (CCCO), and became the Chicago Freedom Movement (CFO). Their marches didn't go well though; they didn’t find as much sympathy as they had in the South, and they experienced groups of people throwing bottles at them, and King receiving death threats. When King and the other leaders moved out, they left a young seminary student, Jesse Jackson, in charge of what they started. Through his, Jackson eventually organized Operation PUSH. King continued to take on many causes of civil rights, including his disagreement with the U.S. involvement in Vietnam. He traveled to Memphis, Tennessee in March of 1968 to help the black garbage workers who were on strike seeking better working conditions and more money. On April 3, he delivered his I've Been to the Mountaintop speech to the crowd gathered at the Mason Temple. The following day, King was in his hotel room, about to leave and have dinner with the others in his coalition, such as Ralph Abernathy and Jackson. Jackson was downstairs waiting with others, and Abernathy went to his room to put on more cologne. King stepped out of his room, and everyone heard a shot ring out, as King fell, having been shot in the jaw. As an ambulance was called, an undercover police officer helped stop the bleeding. King was was still alive, but unresponsive. After being transferred to the hospital, it was determined that the injury was too extensive, as it had traveled through his jaw, neck, and into his spinal chord. The thirty-nine-year-old was pronounced dead. The assassination of such an influential leader led to many riots throughout the country, and President Johnson declared a national day of mourning. Escaped convict James Earl Ray, became a suspect in the assassination, and was captured on June 8, at London's Heathrow Airport. He was extradited back to Tennessee, and charged with the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Ray confessed, but recanted a few days later. Nonetheless, he was sentenced to ninety-nine years in prison after pleading guilty to avoid the capital punishment. In 1977, Ray and six others escaped the Tennessee prison, but he was recaptured just a few days later. He continued his attempts to be re-tried for the crime, and has since admitted guilt to try to get another trial. In 1997, King's son, Dexter, joined the fight. King's family actually does not believe Ray was responsible for the assassination, and believes there was a larger conspiracy in place. Ray died in prison at the age of seventy, from kidney disease after he was stabbed in prison. Left behind was King's widow, Coretta Scott King, who continued to fight for civil rights in her husband's honor. She died from respiratory failure on January 30, 2006. Of their four children, Yolanda Denise works for human rights, just as her parents did, and is also an actress. Martin Luther, III took over the leadership of the SCLC in 1997. Dexter Scott is an actor and documentary film maker. Bernice Albertine is the only one of King's four children to become a minister. King continues to be an influence on the country, even after his death. In 1977, President Jimmy Carter posthumously awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his work to bring down the "great wall of segregation." In 1983, President Ronald Reagan signed the bill to create a holiday in honor of King. It is to be observed on the third Monday in January, coinciding with his birth, and was observed the first time in 1986. President George W Bush, believing that King held the nation to its own standards, dedicated the Martin Luther King Memorial in November of 2006. The hope is that the memorial will be completed in 2008, and the plan is for it to be near the memorials of other famous Americans, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, and Franklin D. Roosevelt, in view of where King delivered his famous I Have a Dream speech. At the dedication ceremony, talk-show host Oprah Winfrey declared, “I am who I am because of the struggles of Dr. King. My life is what it is because of his work.” South Africa's Nelson Mandela sent a letter stating that King's work "transcends a single nation," and poet Maya Angelou called him an American hero. Senator Barack Obama, who is considering running for president in 2008, promised to bring his two young children to see the memorial after its completion. He added that while King never did see the promised land from the mountain top, "he pointed the way for us." YUDDY |
