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വലിയ സ്വപ്നം പങ്കിട്ട വാക്കുകൾ

മനോരമ ലേഖകൻ

Published: August 28 , 2020 02:39 AM IST

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അമേരിക്കയിൽ കറുത്ത വർഗക്കാരുടെ മോചനത്തിനും പൗരാവകാശങ്ങൾക്കുമായി പോരാടിയ മാ‍ർട്ടിൻ ലൂഥർ കിങ് ജൂനിയറുടെ വിഖ്യാതമായ ‘എനിക്ക് ഒരു സ്വപ്നമുണ്ട്’ (I have a dream) എന്ന പ്രസംഗത്തിന്റെ വാർഷികമാണ് ഇന്ന്. 1963 ഓഗസ്റ്റ് 28 ന് വാഷിങ്ടനിലെ ലിങ്കൺ സ്ക്വയറിൽ നടത്തിയ പ്രസംഗം ജനലക്ഷങ്ങളെ ആവേശഭരിതരാക്കി. ലോകത്ത് ഏറ്റവുമധികം ഉദ്ധരിക്കപ്പെട്ടിട്ടുള്ള പ്രസംഗങ്ങളിലൊന്നാണിത്.

1957 മുതൽ 1968 വരെ അമേരിക്കയിലുടനീളം സഞ്ചരിച്ച് തുല്യാവകാശവും സ്വാതന്ത്ര്യവും ഉദ്ഘോഷിച്ച് 2500 പ്രസംഗങ്ങളാണ് അദ്ദേഹം നടത്തിയത്.

English summary: I have a dream; Speech anniversary

എനിക്ക് ഒരു സ്വപ്നമുണ്ട്

ലോ കജനതയുടെ ഐക്യം സ്വപ്നം കണ്ട മനുഷ്യൻ, മാർട്ടിൻ ലൂഥർ കിങ്. അമേരിക്കൻ ഐക്യനാടുകളിൽ നിലനിന്നിരുന്ന വർണവിവേചനത്തിനെതിരെ ആയിരുന്നു കിങ്ങിന്റെ പ്രവർത്തനം. കറുത്തവർഗക്കാരുടെ അവകാശങ്ങൾ നേടിയെടുക്കുന്നതിനായിരുന്നു പോരാട്ടം. ഒടുവിൽ വർഗവിദ്വേഷികളുടെ തോക്കിനും ഇരയായി. മാർട്ടിൻ ലൂഥർ കിങ്ങിന്റെ ജീവിതത്തിലൂടെ...

മാർട്ടിൻ ലൂഥർ കിങ്

അമേരിക്കൻ ഐക്യനാടുകളിൽ നിലനിന്നിരുന്ന വർണ വിവേചനത്തിനെതിരെ പോരാടിയ മാർട്ടിൻ ലൂഥർ കിങ്. 1929 ജനുവരി 15ന് ജോർജിയയിലെ അറ്റ്ലാന്റയിലാണ് മാർട്ടിൻ ലൂഥർ കിങ്ങിന്റെ ജനനം. അമേരിക്കയിലെ കറുത്ത വിഭാഗത്തിന്റെ അവകാശങ്ങൾക്കുവേണ്ടി പോരാടിയ ധീര നേതാവായിരുന്നു അദ്ദേഹം. അമേരിക്കയിലെ പൗരാവകാശ പ്രവർത്തനങ്ങൾക്ക് നേതൃത്വം നൽകി. ആഫ്രിക്കൻ അമേരിക്കൻ പൗരന്മാർക്കിടയിൽ നിലനിന്നിരുന്ന വേർതിരിവ് അവസാനിപ്പിക്കാനും അതിലൂടെ മനുഷ്യാവകാശ സംരക്ഷണത്തിന് കൂടുതൽ ഊർജ്ജം പകരാനും അദ്ദേഹത്തിന് സാധിച്ചു.

വർണ വിവേചനത്തിനെതിരെ നീണ്ട പോരാട്ടം

അമേരിക്കയിൽ കടുത്ത വർണ വിവേചനം നിലനിന്നിരുന്ന ഒരു കാലമുണ്ടായിരുന്നു. ബസുകളിലടക്കം കറുത്ത വംശജർക്ക് വിവേചനം നേരിടേണ്ടി വന്നു. 1955ൽ കറുത്ത വർഗക്കാരിയായ റോസ പാർക്സ് ബസിൽ ഒരു വെള്ളക്കാരനായി സീറ്റ് ഒഴിഞ്ഞുകൊടുക്കാത്തതിന് നിയമലംഘനത്തിന്റെ പേരിൽ അറസ്റ്റിലായി. ഇതിനെ തുടർന്ന് മോണ്ട്ഗോമറിയിലെ എൻ.എ.എ.സി.പി തലവനായിരുന്ന ഇ.ഡി. നിക്സൺ ആസൂത്രണം ചെയ്ത മോണ്ട്ഗോമറി ബസ് ബഹിഷ്കരണ സമരം നയിച്ചത് മാർട്ടിൻ ലൂഥർ കിങ്ങായിരുന്നു. സമരം 385 ദിവസം നീണ്ടു. ഇതോടെ കിങ് അറസ്റ്റിലാകുകയും അദ്ദേഹത്തിന്റെ വീടിനു നേരെ ബോംബേറുണ്ടാകുകയും ചെയ്തു. ഇതിനുപിന്നാലെ അലബാമയിലെ യു.എസ് കോടതി പ്രക്ഷോഭകർക്ക് അനുകൂലമായി വിധി പ്രഖ്യാപിച്ചു. മോണ്ട്ഗോമറിയിലെ ​ബസുകളിൽ വെള്ളക്കാർക്കായി പ്രത്യേകം നീക്കിവെച്ച സീറ്റുകൾ നിർത്തലാക്കുകയും ചെയ്തു.

മഹാത്മാഗാന്ധിയുടെ അഹിംസ തത്ത്വശാസ്ത്രത്തിൽനിന്നും പ്രചോദനം ഉൾക്കൊണ്ടുകൊണ്ടായിരുന്നു ഇതിനെതിരെ മാർട്ടിൻ ലൂഥർ കിങ്ങിന്റെ പ്രവർത്തനങ്ങൾ. 1959ൽ ഒരുമാസത്തെ സന്ദർശനത്തിനായി ഇന്ത്യയിൽ എത്തിയ അദ്ദേഹം പൗരാവകാശങ്ങൾക്കുവേണ്ടി സമാധാനപൂർണമായ സമരങ്ങൾക്ക് നേതൃത്വം നൽകി. ഒടുവിൽ 1964ൽ സമാധാനത്തിനുള്ള നൊ​േബൽ നൽകി ലോകം അദ്ദേഹത്തെ ആദരിച്ചു.

ലോകം കേട്ട പ്രസംഗം

ലോകം കണ്ട ഏറ്റവും വലിയ മനുഷ്യാവകാശ പ്രവർത്തകരിൽ ഒരാൾ എന്നതിലുപരി ഒരു പ്രസംഗകൻ കൂടിയായിരുന്നു മാർട്ടിൻ ലൂഥർ കിങ്. ആഫ്രിക്കൻ അമേരിക്കൻ ജനങ്ങളുടെ ജീവിതാവസ്ഥ തന്റെ പ്രസംഗങ്ങളിലൂടെ അദ്ദേഹം ലോകത്തിനു മുന്നിലേക്ക് തുറന്നുകാട്ടി. അതിൽ വളരെയധികം ശ്രദ്ധിക്കപ്പെട്ട ഒന്നാണ് 1965ൽ വാഷിങ്ടണിൽ നടത്തിയ 'എനിക്കൊരു സ്വപ്നമുണ്ട്' എന്ന പ്രസംഗം. അന്ന് അദ്ദേഹത്തിന് 34 മാത്രമാണ് പ്രായം. അമേരിക്കയെ ഒന്നാകെ വിറപ്പിച്ച ഈ പ്രസംഗത്തിലൂടെ വിവേചനം ഇല്ലാത്ത അമേരിക്കയെ കുറിച്ചുള്ള തന്റെ സ്വപ്നങ്ങൾ അദ്ദേഹം ഉറക്കെ വിളിച്ചുപറഞ്ഞു.

ഒടുവിൽ മരണം

1968 ഏപ്രിൽ നാലിന് മാർട്ടിൻ ലൂഥർ കിങ് കൊല്ലപ്പെട്ടു. ലോറൻ മോട്ടിലെ തന്റെ മുറിക്ക് പുറത്തുള്ള ബാൽക്കണിയിൽ നിൽക്കുമ്പോഴാണ് അദ്ദേഹം വെടിയേറ്റു മരിച്ചത്. ജെയിംസ് എന്ന വെളുത്ത വംശക്കാരനാണ് അദ്ദേഹത്തെ കൊലപ്പെടുത്തിയത്.

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മാർട്ടിൻ ലൂതർ കിംഗ് ജൂനിയർ

• admin trycle
• Jul 3, 2020
• 0 comment(s)

അമേരിക്കൻ പൗരാവകാശ പ്രസ്ഥാനത്തിന് നേതൃത്വം നൽകിയ പ്രധാന നേതാക്കളിൽ ഒരാളാണ് മാർട്ടിൻ ലൂതർ കിംഗ് ജൂനിയർ. തന്റെ ആക്ടിവിസത്തിലൂടെയും പ്രചോദനാത്മകമായ പ്രസംഗങ്ങളിലൂടെയും, അമേരിക്കയിലെ ആഫ്രിക്കൻ-അമേരിക്കൻ പൗരന്മാരുടെ നിയമപരമായ വേർതിരിവ് അവസാനിപ്പിക്കുന്നതിലും 1964 ലെ പൗരാവകാശ നിയമവും 1965 ലെ വോട്ടവകാശ നിയമവും സൃഷ്ടിക്കുന്നതിൽ അദ്ദേഹം ഒരു പ്രധാന പങ്ക് വഹിച്ചു. 1964 ൽ കിംഗ് സമാധാനത്തിനുള്ള നോബൽ സമ്മാനം നേടി. ചരിത്രത്തിലെ ഏറ്റവും സ്വാധീനമുള്ളതും പ്രചോദനാത്മകവുമായ ആഫ്രിക്കൻ-അമേരിക്കൻ നേതാക്കളിൽ ഒരാളായി അദ്ദേഹം ഓർമിക്കപ്പെടുന്നു.

1929 ജനുവരി 15 ന് ജോർജിയയിലെ അറ്റ്ലാന്റയിൽ ആണ് മാർട്ടിൻ ലൂഥർ കിംഗ് ജൂനിയർ ജനിച്ചത്. ഒരു പാസ്റ്ററായിരുന്ന മാർട്ടിൻ ലൂഥർ കിംഗ് സീനിയറിന്റെയും മുൻ സ്കൂൾ അധ്യാപികയായ ആൽബർട്ട വില്യംസ് കിംഗ് എന്നിവരുടെ മകനായിട്ടാണ് അദ്ദേഹം ജനിച്ചത്. പ്രതിഭാധനനായ വിദ്യാർത്ഥിയായ കിംഗ് പതിനഞ്ചാമത്തെ വയസ്സിൽ മോർഹൗസ് കോളേജിൽ ചേർന്നു. അവിടെ അദ്ദേഹം വൈദ്യവും നിയമവും പഠിച്ചു. 1948 ൽ ബിരുദം നേടിയ ശേഷം കിംഗ് പെൻ‌സിൽ‌വാനിയയിലെ ക്രോസർ തിയോളജിക്കൽ സെമിനാരിയിൽ പ്രവേശിച്ചു. അവിടെവെച്ച് മഹാത്മാഗാന്ധിയുടെ അഹിംസ തത്വശാസ്ത്രം പരിചയപ്പെട്ട അദ്ദേഹം ഡിവൈനിറ്റിയിൽ ബിരുദവും നേടി. 1953ൽ തന്റെ ഇരുപത്തി നാലാമത്തെ വയസ്സിൽ അദ്ദേഹം അലബാമ സംസ്ഥാനത്തിലെ മോണ്ട്ഗോമറിയിലെ ഡെക്സ്റ്റർ അവന്യൂ ബാപ്റ്റിസ്റ്റ് പള്ളിയിൽ പാസ്റ്ററായി.

1955 ഡിസംബർ ഒന്നാം തീയതി കറുത്ത വർഗ്ഗക്കാരിയായ റോസ പാർക്സ്, ഒരു വെള്ളക്കാരനു ബസ്സിൽ സീറ്റ് ഒഴിഞ്ഞുകൊടുക്കാത്തതിനാൽ, ജിം ക്രോ നിയമലംഘനത്തിന്റെ പേരിൽ അറസ്റ്റ് ചെയ്യപ്പെടുകയുണ്ടായി. ഇതിനെത്തുടർന്ന് മോണ്ട്ഗോമറി ബസ് ബഹിഷ്കരണസമരം നയിച്ചത് കിംഗായിരുന്നു. 385 ദിവസം നീണ്ടുനിന്ന ഈ സമരത്തിനിടെ കിംഗ് അറസ്റ്റ് ചെയ്യപ്പെടുകയും ചെയ്തു. അലബാമയിലെ യു. എസ്. ജില്ലാക്കോടതി ഈ കേസിൽ പ്രക്ഷോഭകർക്കനുകൂലമായി വിധി പ്രഖ്യാപിക്കുകയും മോണ്ട്ഗോമറിയിലെ ബസ്സുകളിൽ വെള്ളക്കാർക്ക് പ്രത്യേകസീറ്റുകൾ നിലവിലുണ്ടായിരുന്നത് നിർത്തലാക്കുകയും ചെയ്തു. മോണ്ട്ഗോമറി ബസ് ബഹിഷ്‌കരണത്തിന്റെ വിജയത്തോടെ അദ്ദേഹവും മറ്റ് പൗരാവകാശ പ്രവർത്തകരും ചേർന്ന് 1957-ൽ സതേൺ ക്രിസ്ത്യൻ ലീഡർഷിപ്പ് കോൺഫറൻസ് (എസ്‌.സി.എൽ.സി) സ്ഥാപിച്ചു. അഹിംസാത്മക പ്രതിഷേധത്തിലൂടെ ആഫ്രിക്കൻ അമേരിക്കക്കാർക്ക് സമ്പൂർണ്ണ സമത്വം കൈവരിക്കാൻ പ്രതിജ്ഞാബദ്ധരായ ഒരു സംഘമായിരുന്നു ഇത്. എസ്‌.സി.എൽ.സി പ്രസിഡന്റ് ആയിരുന്ന മാർട്ടിൻ ലൂതർ കിംഗ് ജൂനിയർ രാജ്യത്തും ലോകമെമ്പാടും സഞ്ചരിച്ച് അഹിംസാത്മക പ്രതിഷേധം, പൗരാവകാശങ്ങൾ എന്നിവയെക്കുറിച്ച് പ്രഭാഷണങ്ങൾ നടത്തുകയും മതവിശ്വാസികൾ, സാമൂഹിക പ്രവർത്തകർ, രാഷ്ട്രീയ നേതാക്കൾ എന്നിവരുമായി കൂടിക്കാഴ്ച നടത്തുകയും ചെയ്തു.

1963 ഓഗസ്റ്റ് 28ന് ലിങ്കൺ മെമ്മോറിയലിന് മുന്നിൽ തടിച്ചുകൂടിയ രണ്ടുലക്ഷത്തോളം ജനങ്ങളെ അഭിസംബോധന ചെയ്ത് മാർട്ടിൻ ലൂഥർ കിങ് ജൂനിയർ നടത്തിയ ‘എനിക്കൊരു സ്വപ്നമുണ്ട്’ എന്ന പ്രസംഗം ഇരുപതാം നൂറ്റാണ്ടില്‍ ലോകം കേട്ട മികച്ച പ്രസംഗങ്ങളിലൊന്നാണ്. സമത്വത്തിനും സ്വാതന്ത്ര്യത്തിനും ആഹ്വാനം ചെയ്ത് കൊണ്ടുള്ള ഈ പ്രസംഗം പൗരാവകാശ പ്രസ്ഥാനത്തിന്റെ നിർണ്ണായക നിമിഷങ്ങളിലൊന്നായും അമേരിക്കൻ ചരിത്രത്തിലെ ഏറ്റവും മികച്ച പ്രസംഗങ്ങളിലൊന്നായും മാറി. 'അമേരിക്കൻ സിവിൽറൈറ്റ്‌സ് മൂവ്മെന്റ്' സംഘടിപ്പിച്ച വാഷിങ്ടൺ മാർച്ചിൽ വെച്ചാണ് മാർട്ടിൻ ലൂതർ കിങ് ഈ പ്രസംഗം നടത്തിയത്. അമേരിക്കയിലെ കറുത്ത വർഗ്ഗക്കാരോടുള്ള വംശീയ വിവേചനത്തെ എതിർക്കുകയും പൗരാവകാശ നിയമനിർമാണം പാസ്സാക്കാൻ പ്രോത്സാഹിപ്പിക്കുകയും ചെയ്യുക എന്നതായിരുന്നു ഈ മാർച്ചിന്റെ ഉദ്ദേശ്യം.

അബ്രഹാം ലിങ്കന്റെ ഗെറ്റിസ്ബർഗ് പ്രസംഗത്തെ പരാമർശിച്ച് കൊണ്ടാണ് മാർട്ടിൻ ലൂതർ കിങ് തന്റെ പ്രസംഗം ആരംഭിച്ചത്. തുടർന്ന് അടിമ വിമോചന വിളംബരത്തെക്കുറിച്ച് സംസാരിച്ച അദ്ദേഹം അടിമത്തത്തിന്റെ നീണ്ട രാത്രി അവസാനിച്ചുവെങ്കിലും, ആഫ്രിക്കൻ അമേരിക്കക്കാർ ഇപ്പോഴും സ്വതന്ത്രരല്ല എന്നും വിവേചനങ്ങൾ അവരെ തളർത്തി എന്നും സൂചിപ്പിച്ചു. ആഫ്രിക്കൻ അമേരിക്കൻ ജനതയുടെ ജീവിതാവസ്ഥകളെക്കുറിച്ച് സംസാരിച്ച അദ്ദേഹം ‘എനിക്കൊരു സ്വപ്നമുണ്ട്’ എന്ന് പറഞ്ഞ് കൊണ്ട് വിവേചനകൾ ഇല്ലാത്ത അമേരിക്കയെ കുറിച്ചുള്ള തന്റെ സ്വപ്നങ്ങൾ പങ്കുവെച്ചു. സ്വാതന്ത്രത്തിന് ആഹ്വനം ചെയ്തു കൊണ്ട് അവസാനിപ്പിച്ച ഈ പ്രസംഗം എക്കാലത്തെയും വലിയ സ്വാതന്ത്ര്യപ്രഖ്യാപനങ്ങളിൽ ഒന്നായി ലോകം അംഗീകരിക്കുന്നു. മുപ്പത്തിനാലാം വയസ്സിൽ മാർട്ടിൻ ലൂതർ കിങ് നടത്തിയ ഈ പ്രസംഗം 1964 ലെ പൗരാവകാശ നിയമം നിലവിൽ വരാൻ സഹായിച്ചതായി പലരും വിശ്വസിക്കുന്നു

1968 ഏപ്രിൽ 4 ന് വൈകുന്നേരം മാർട്ടിൻ ലൂതർ കിംഗ് കൊല്ലപ്പെട്ടു. ലോറൻ മോട്ടലിലെ തന്റെ മുറിക്ക് പുറത്ത് ഒരു ബാൽക്കണിയിൽ നിൽക്കുമ്പോൾ, മാർട്ടിൻ ലൂതർ കിംഗ് ജൂനിയരുടെ ശരീരത്തിൽ ഒരു സ്നൈപ്പറുടെ ബുള്ളറ്റ് തുളച്ച് കയറുകയായിരുന്നു. ജയിംസ് ഏൾ ‌റേ എന്ന വെള്ളക്കാരനായ കുറ്റവാളിയായിരുന്നു അദ്ദേഹത്തെ വെടി വെച്ചത്. ടർന്ന് ലണ്ടനിലേക്ക് ഒളിച്ചു കടന്ന ഇയാൾ ബ്രസൽ‌സിലേക്ക് ഒളിച്ചുകടക്കാൻ ശ്രമിക്കുമ്പോൾ പിടിക്കപ്പെടുകയാണുണ്ടായത്. കുറ്റസമ്മതം നടത്തിയ ഇയാൾക്ക് 99 വർഷത്തെ തടവാണ് ശിക്ഷ വിധിക്കപ്പെട്ടത്.

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Martin Luther King's tryst with truth in Kerala

Nobel Peace Prize-winning American Civil Rights leader Martin Luther King Jr was accidentally treated to an unforgettable philosophical experience in Thiruvananthapuram on February 22 ,1959.

The visit to Kerala 60 years ago provided unique insightful moments for King to strengthen his convictions for the civil rights movement in America, historical documents reveal.

King and his wife Coretta Scott King visited Kerala as part of their month-long India visit. After the State luncheon with the then Chief Minister E M S Namboothirippad, King was invited to a school in Thiruvananthapuram (Trivandrum) that afternoon.

US civil rights pioneer, congressman John Lewis dies

King was ceremoniously welcomed by the school authorities and students, most of them children of former untouchables. When it was time for a formal meeting to begin, the school principal made a speech and introduced the civil rights leader to the students with these words : "Young people, I would like to present to you a fellow untouchable from the United States of America."

King was taken aback. He did not expect to be addressed as an untouchable! Apparently hurt, he pondered over that shocking attribute: 'a fellow untouchable'!

King knew very well about the caste system and 'Harijans' from Mahatma Gandhi, his guiding light in nonviolence. He knew that untouchables of India were mistreated and segregated. That afternoon in Kerala, as he was being introduced to the young descendants of former untouchables, he experienced a sudden flash of enlightenment, details of which he revealed only after a long silence of six years.

That was the occasion of a sermon he delivered at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, in the US state of Georgia on July 4, 1965. While referring to his famous "I Have A Dream" speech and how his great dream had often turned into a nightmare, he suddenly started narrating his unforgettable experience in Kerala:

I remember when Mrs. King and I were in India, we journeyed down one afternoon to the southernmost part of India, the state of Kerala, the city of Trivandrum. That afternoon I was to speak in one of the schools, what we would call high schools in our country, and it was a school attended by and large by students who were the children of former untouchables. Now you know in India, there was the caste system - and India has done a marvelous job in grappling with this problem - but you had your full caste and individuals were in one of the castes. And then you had some sixty or seventy million people who were considered outcasts. They were the untouchables; they could not go places that other people went; they could not do certain things. And this was one of the things that Mahatma Gandhi battled - along with his struggle to end the long night of colonialism - also to end the long night of the caste system and caste untouchability. You remember some of his great fasts were around the question of making equality a reality for the Harijans, as they were called, the "untouchables." He called them the children of God, and he even adopted an untouchable as his daughter. He demonstrated in his own personal life and in his family that he was going to revolt against a whole idea. And I remember that afternoon when I stood up in that school. The principal introduced me and then as he came to the conclusion of his introduction, he says, "Young people, I would like to present to you a fellow untouchable from the United States of America." And for the moment I was a bit shocked and peeved that I would be referred to as an untouchable.

Pretty soon my mind dashed back across the mighty Atlantic. And I started thinking about the fact that at that time no matter how much I needed to rest my tired body after a long night of travel, I couldn’t stop in the average motel of the highways and the hotels of the cities of the South. I started thinking about the fact that no matter how long an old Negro woman had been shopping downtown and got a little tired and needed to get a hamburger or a cup of coffee at a lunch counter, she couldn’t get it there. I started thinking about the fact that still in too many instances, Negroes have to go to the back of the bus and have to stand up over empty seats. I started thinking about the fact that my children and the other children that would be born would have to go to segregated schools. I started thinking about the fact: twenty million of my brothers and sisters were still smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in an affluent society. I started thinking about the fact: these twenty million brothers and sisters were still by and large housed in rat-infested, unendurable slums in the big cities of our nation, still attended inadequate schools faced with improper recreational facilities. And I said to myself, "Yes, I am an untouchable, and every Negro in the United States of America is an untouchable." And this is the evilness of segregation: it stigmatizes the segregated as an untouchable in a caste system. We hold these truths to be self-evident, if we are to be a great nation, that all men (all men) are created equal. God’s black children are as significant as his white children. "We hold these truths to be self-evident." One day we will learn this.

(These excerpts from the transcript of the sermon are from the King Papers collection at King Institute, Stanford University, California, US ).

An eye-opener

Most significantly, King held India close to his heart for many reasons, including his unique experience in Kerala. My research interest in King's Kerala visit was triggered by the visit of his son Martin Luther King III in 2009. The son of the illustrious civil rights leader was retracing his father's 'pilgrimage to India'. (King famously described his travel to India as a pilgrimage, he said that he could not be a tourist in the land of Mahatma Gandhi). After tracing the news reports published in Malayala Manorama daily back issues, I got in touch with the King Institute. I was also informed that King's school visit in Thiruvananthapuram was an unscheduled event. An unscheduled event turned out to be an eye-opener for the great leader!

From Thiruvananthapuram, King and his entourage went to Kanyakumari. His experiences in Kanyakumari as he watched the beautiful sunset in serene meditative silence, are well documented his autobiography:

On February 22, Mrs. King and I journeyed down to a city in India called Trivandrum. Then we went from Trivandrum down to a point known as Cape Comorin. This is where the mass of India ends and the vast rolling waters of the ocean have their beginning. It is one of the most beautiful parts of all the world. Three great bodies of water meet together in all of their majestic splendor: the Bay of Bengal, the Arabian Sea, and the Indian Ocean.

I remember how we went out there and looked at the big old rocks, a sight that was truly incredible, out into the waters, out into the ocean. Seated on a huge rock that slightly protruded into the ocean, we were enthralled by the vastness of the ocean and its terrifying immensities. We looked at the waves of those great bodies of water as they unfolded in almost rhythmic suspension. As the waves crashed against the base of the rock on which we were seated, an oceanic music brought sweetness to the ear. To the west we saw the magnificent sun, a red cosmic ball of fire, appear to sink into the very ocean itself. Just as it was almost lost from sight, Coretta touched me and said, "Look, Martin, isn't that beautiful!" I looked around and saw the moon, another ball of scintillating beauty. As the sun appeared to be sinking into the ocean, the moon appeared to be rising from the ocean. When the sun finally passed completely beyond sight, darkness engulfed the earth, but in the east the radiant light of the rising moon shone supreme. This was, as I said, one of the most beautiful parts in all the world, and that happened to be one of those days when the moon was full. This is one of the few points in all the world where you can see the setting of the sun and the rising of the moon simultaneously.

I looked at that and something came to my mind and I had to share it with Coretta, Dr. Reddick, and other people who were accompanying us around at that point. God has the light that can shine through all the darkness. We have experiences when the light of day vanishes, leaving us in some dark and desolate midnight moments when our highest hopes are turned into shambles of despair or when we are victims of some tragic injustice and some terrible exploitation. During such moments our spirits are almost overcome by gloom and despair, and we feel that there is no light anywhere. But ever and again, we look toward the east and discover that there is another light which shines even in the darkness, and "the spear of frustration" is transformed "into a shaft of light."

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• Martin Luther King Jr. - Biography

Martin Luther King Jr.

Biographical.

M artin Luther King, Jr., (January 15, 1929-April 4, 1968) was born Michael Luther King, Jr., but later had his name changed to Martin. His grandfather began the family’s long tenure as pastors of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, serving from 1914 to 1931; his father has served from then until the present, and from 1960 until his death Martin Luther acted as co-pastor. 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 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. Two sons and two daughters were born into the family.

In 1954, Martin Luther King became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. Always a strong worker for civil rights for members of his race, King was, by this time, a member of the executive committee of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the leading organization of its kind in the nation. He was ready, then, early in December, 1955, to accept the leadership of the first great Negro nonviolent demonstration of contemporary times in the United States, the bus boycott described by Gunnar Jahn in his presentation speech in honor of the laureate. The boycott lasted 382 days. On December 21, 1956, after the Supreme Court of the United States had declared unconstitutional the laws requiring segregation on buses, Negroes and whites rode the buses as equals. During these days of boycott, King was arrested, his home was bombed, he was subjected to personal abuse, but at the same time he emerged as a Negro leader of the first rank.

In 1957 he was elected president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization formed to provide new leadership for the now burgeoning civil rights movement. The ideals for this organization he took from Christianity; its operational techniques from Gandhi. In the eleven-year period between 1957 and 1968, King traveled over six million miles and spoke over twenty-five hundred times, appearing wherever there was injustice, protest, and action; and meanwhile he wrote five books as well as numerous articles. In these years, he led a massive protest in Birmingham, Alabama, that caught the attention of the entire world, providing what he called a coalition of conscience. and inspiring his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”, a manifesto of the Negro revolution; he planned the drives in Alabama for the registration of Negroes as voters; he directed the peaceful march on Washington, D.C., of 250,000 people to whom he delivered his address, “l Have a Dream”, he conferred with President John F. Kennedy and campaigned for President Lyndon B. Johnson; he was arrested upwards of twenty times and assaulted at least four times; he was awarded five honorary degrees; was named Man of the Year by Time magazine in 1963; and became not only the symbolic leader of American blacks but also a world figure.

At the age of thirty-five, Martin Luther King, Jr., was the youngest man to have received the Nobel Peace Prize. When notified of his selection, he announced that he would turn over the prize money of $54,123 to the furtherance of the civil rights movement.

On the evening of April 4, 1968, while standing on the balcony of his motel room in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was to lead a protest march in sympathy with striking garbage workers of that city, he was assassinated.

Selected bibliography

Adams, Russell, Great Negroes Past and Present , pp. 106-107. Chicago, Afro-Am Publishing Co., 1963.

Bennett, Lerone, Jr., What Manner of Man: A Biography of Martin Luther King, Jr. Chicago, Johnson, 1964.

I Have a Dream: The Story of Martin Luther King in Text and Pictures . New York, Time Life Books, 1968.

King, Martin Luther, Jr., The Measure of a Man . Philadelphia. The Christian Education Press, 1959. Two devotional addresses.

King, Martin Luther, Jr., Strength to Love . New York, Harper & Row, 1963. Sixteen sermons and one essay entitled “Pilgrimage to Nonviolence.”

King, Martin Luther, Jr., Stride toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story . New York, Harper, 1958.

King, Martin Luther, Jr., The Trumpet of Conscience . New York, Harper & Row, 1968.

King, Martin Luther, Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? New York, Harper & Row, 1967.

King, Martin Luther, Jr., Why We Can’t Wait . New York, Harper & Row, 1963.

“Man of the Year”, Time , 83 (January 3, 1964) 13-16; 25-27.

“Martin Luther King, Jr.” , in Current Biography Yearbook 1965 , ed. by Charles Moritz, pp. 220-223. New York, H.W. Wilson.

Reddick, Lawrence D., Crusader without Violence: A Biography of Martin Luther King, Jr . New York, Harper, 1959.

This autobiography/biography was written at the time of the award and first published in the book series Les Prix Nobel . It was later edited and republished in Nobel Lectures . To cite this document, always state the source as shown above.

* Note from Nobelprize.org: This biography uses the word “Negro”. Even though this word today is considered inappropriate, the biography is published in its original version in view of keeping it as a historical document.

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Martin Luther King, Jr., was a Baptist minister and social rights activist in the United States in the 1950s and ’60s. He was a leader of the American civil rights movement . He organized a number of peaceful protests as head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference , including the March on Washington in 1963. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, and, at the time, he was the youngest person to have done so. Learn more.

Martin Luther King, Jr., is known for his contributions to the American civil rights movement in the 1960s. His most famous work is his “ I Have a Dream ” speech, delivered in 1963, in which he spoke of his dream of a United States that is void of segregation and racism. King also advocated for nonviolent methods of protest, and he organized and staged countless marches and boycotts.

Martin Luther King, Jr., influenced people around the world. He advocated for peaceful approaches to some of society’s biggest problems. He organized a number of marches and protests and was a key figure in the American civil rights movement . He was instrumental in the Memphis sanitation workers’ strike , the Montgomery bus boycott , and the March on Washington . The holiday honoring King is often celebrated as the MLK Day of Service, a reflection of his legacy of addressing social problems through collective action.

Martin Luther King, Jr., grew up as the middle child of Michael (later Martin Luther) King, Sr., and Alberta Williams King. His father was the minister of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta—the same church where Martin Luther King, Jr., would eventually minister. In 1953 King married Coretta Scott , and the two had four children: Yolanda, Martin Luther III, Dexter Scott, and Bernice.

Martin Luther King, Jr., was standing on a motel balcony in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968, when he was shot by James Earl Ray . An hour later, King died at St. Joseph’s hospital. His death sparked riots across the country. In the United States he is memorialized on the third Monday of January every year— Martin Luther King, Jr., Day , which was first observed as a federal holiday in 1986.

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Martin Luther King, Jr. (born January 15, 1929, Atlanta, Georgia , U.S.—died April 4, 1968, Memphis , Tennessee) was a Baptist minister and social activist who led the civil rights movement in the United States from the mid-1950s until his death by assassination in 1968. His leadership was fundamental to that movement’s success in ending the legal segregation of African Americans in the South and other parts of the United States. King rose to national prominence as head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference , which promoted nonviolent tactics , such as the massive March on Washington (1963), to achieve civil rights . He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.

King came from a comfortable middle-class family steeped in the tradition of the Southern Black ministry: both his father and maternal grandfather were Baptist preachers. His parents were college-educated, and King’s father had succeeded his father-in-law as pastor of the prestigious Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta . The family lived on Auburn Avenue, otherwise known as “Sweet Auburn,” the bustling “Black Wall Street,” home to some of the country’s largest and most prosperous Black businesses and Black churches in the years before the civil rights movement. Young Martin received a solid education and grew up in a loving extended family .

This secure upbringing, however, did not prevent King from experiencing the prejudices then common in the South . He never forgot the time when, at about age six, one of his white playmates announced that his parents would no longer allow him to play with King, because the children were now attending segregated schools. Dearest to King in these early years was his maternal grandmother, whose death in 1941 left him shaken and unstable. Upset because he had learned of her fatal heart attack while attending a parade without his parents’ permission, the 12-year-old King attempted suicide by jumping from a second-story window.

In 1944, at age 15, King entered Morehouse College in Atlanta under a special wartime program intended to boost enrollment by admitting promising high-school students like King. Before beginning college, however, King spent the summer on a tobacco farm in Connecticut; it was his first extended stay away from home and his first substantial experience of race relations outside the segregated South. He was shocked by how peacefully the races mixed in the North. “Negroes and whites go [to] the same church,” he noted in a letter to his parents. “I never [thought] that a person of my race could eat anywhere.” This summer experience in the North only deepened King’s growing hatred of racial segregation .

At Morehouse, King favored studies in medicine and law, but these were eclipsed in his senior year by a decision to enter the ministry, as his father had urged. King’s mentor at Morehouse was the college president , Benjamin Mays , a social gospel activist whose rich oratory and progressive ideas had left an indelible imprint on King’s father. Committed to fighting racial inequality, Mays accused the African American community of complacency in the face of oppression, and he prodded the Black church into social action by criticizing its emphasis on the hereafter instead of the here and now; it was a call to service that was not lost on the teenage King. He graduated from Morehouse in 1948.

King spent the next three years at Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester , Pennsylvania, where he became acquainted with Mohandas Gandhi ’s philosophy of nonviolence as well as with the thought of contemporary Protestant theologians. He earned a bachelor of divinity degree in 1951. Renowned for his oratorical skills, King was elected president of Crozer’s student body, which was composed almost exclusively of white students. As a professor at Crozer wrote in a letter of recommendation for King, “The fact that with our student body largely Southern in constitution a colored man should be elected to and be popular [in] such a position is in itself no mean recommendation.” From Crozer, King went to Boston University , where, in seeking a firm foundation for his own theological and ethical inclinations, he studied man’s relationship to God and received a doctorate (1955) for a dissertation titled “A Comparison of the Conceptions of God in the Thinking of Paul Tillich and Henry Nelson Wieman.”

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Martin Luther King Jr.

By: History.com Editors

Updated: January 25, 2024 | Original: November 9, 2009

Martin Luther King Jr. was a social activist and Baptist minister who played a key role in the American civil rights movement from the mid-1950s until his assassination in 1968. King sought equality and human rights for African Americans, the economically disadvantaged and all victims of injustice through peaceful protest. He was the driving force behind watershed events such as the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the 1963 March on Washington , which helped bring about such landmark legislation as the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act . King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 and is remembered each year on Martin Luther King Jr. Day , a U.S. federal holiday since 1986.

When Was Martin Luther King Born?

Martin Luther King Jr. was born on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia , the second child of Martin Luther King Sr., a pastor, and Alberta Williams King, a former schoolteacher.

Along with his older sister Christine and younger brother Alfred Daniel Williams, he grew up in the city’s Sweet Auburn neighborhood, then home to some of the most prominent and prosperous African Americans in the country.

Did you know? The final section of Martin Luther King Jr.’s iconic “I Have a Dream” speech is believed to have been largely improvised.

A gifted student, King attended segregated public schools and at the age of 15 was admitted to Morehouse College , the alma mater of both his father and maternal grandfather, where he studied medicine and law.

Although he had not intended to follow in his father’s footsteps by joining the ministry, he changed his mind under the mentorship of Morehouse’s president, Dr. Benjamin Mays, an influential theologian and outspoken advocate for racial equality. After graduating in 1948, King entered Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania, where he earned a Bachelor of Divinity degree, won a prestigious fellowship and was elected president of his predominantly white senior class.

King then enrolled in a graduate program at Boston University, completing his coursework in 1953 and earning a doctorate in systematic theology two years later. While in Boston he met Coretta Scott, a young singer from Alabama who was studying at the New England Conservatory of Music . The couple wed in 1953 and settled in Montgomery, Alabama, where King became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church .

The Kings had four children: Yolanda Denise King, Martin Luther King III, Dexter Scott King and Bernice Albertine King.

Montgomery Bus Boycott

The King family had been living in Montgomery for less than a year when the highly segregated city became the epicenter of the burgeoning struggle for civil rights in America, galvanized by the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954.

On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks , secretary of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ( NAACP ), refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a Montgomery bus and was arrested. Activists coordinated a bus boycott that would continue for 381 days. The Montgomery Bus Boycott placed a severe economic strain on the public transit system and downtown business owners. They chose Martin Luther King Jr. as the protest’s leader and official spokesman.

By the time the Supreme Court ruled segregated seating on public buses unconstitutional in November 1956, King—heavily influenced by Mahatma Gandhi and the activist Bayard Rustin —had entered the national spotlight as an inspirational proponent of organized, nonviolent resistance.

King had also become a target for white supremacists, who firebombed his family home that January.

On September 20, 1958, Izola Ware Curry walked into a Harlem department store where King was signing books and asked, “Are you Martin Luther King?” When he replied “yes,” she stabbed him in the chest with a knife. King survived, and the attempted assassination only reinforced his dedication to nonviolence: “The experience of these last few days has deepened my faith in the relevance of the spirit of nonviolence if necessary social change is peacefully to take place.”

Southern Christian Leadership Conference

Emboldened by the success of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, in 1957 he and other civil rights activists—most of them fellow ministers—founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), a group committed to achieving full equality for African Americans through nonviolent protest.

The SCLC motto was “Not one hair of one head of one person should be harmed.” King would remain at the helm of this influential organization until his death.

In his role as SCLC president, Martin Luther King Jr. traveled across the country and around the world, giving lectures on nonviolent protest and civil rights as well as meeting with religious figures, activists and political leaders.

During a month-long trip to India in 1959, he had the opportunity to meet family members and followers of Gandhi, the man he described in his autobiography as “the guiding light of our technique of nonviolent social change.” King also authored several books and articles during this time.

Letter from Birmingham Jail

In 1960 King and his family moved to Atlanta, his native city, where he joined his father as co-pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church . This new position did not stop King and his SCLC colleagues from becoming key players in many of the most significant civil rights battles of the 1960s.

Their philosophy of nonviolence was put to a particularly severe test during the Birmingham campaign of 1963, in which activists used a boycott, sit-ins and marches to protest segregation, unfair hiring practices and other injustices in one of America’s most racially divided cities.

Arrested for his involvement on April 12, King penned the civil rights manifesto known as the “ Letter from Birmingham Jail ,” an eloquent defense of civil disobedience addressed to a group of white clergymen who had criticized his tactics.

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Behind Martin Luther King’s Searing ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail’

King penned of the civil rights movement's seminal texts while in solitary confinement, initially on the margins of a newspaper.

How an Assassination Attempt Affirmed MLK’s Faith in Nonviolence

The civil rights leader was attacked in 1958 by Izola Ware Curry, a decade before his murder.

March on Washington

Later that year, Martin Luther King Jr. worked with a number of civil rights and religious groups to organize the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, a peaceful political rally designed to shed light on the injustices Black Americans continued to face across the country.

Held on August 28 and attended by some 200,000 to 300,000 participants, the event is widely regarded as a watershed moment in the history of the American civil rights movement and a factor in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 .

"I Have a Dream" Speech

The March on Washington culminated in King’s most famous address, known as the “I Have a Dream” speech, a spirited call for peace and equality that many consider a masterpiece of rhetoric.

Standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial —a monument to the president who a century earlier had brought down the institution of slavery in the United States—he shared his vision of a future in which “this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.'”

The speech and march cemented King’s reputation at home and abroad; later that year he was named “Man of the Year” by TIME magazine and in 1964 became, at the time, the youngest person ever awarded the Nobel Peace Prize .

In the spring of 1965, King’s elevated profile drew international attention to the violence that erupted between white segregationists and peaceful demonstrators in Selma, Alabama, where the SCLC and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) had organized a voter registration campaign.

Captured on television, the brutal scene outraged many Americans and inspired supporters from across the country to gather in Alabama and take part in the Selma to Montgomery march led by King and supported by President Lyndon B. Johnson , who sent in federal troops to keep the peace.

That August, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act , which guaranteed the right to vote—first awarded by the 15th Amendment—to all African Americans.

Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

The events in Selma deepened a growing rift between Martin Luther King Jr. and young radicals who repudiated his nonviolent methods and commitment to working within the established political framework.

As more militant Black leaders such as Stokely Carmichael rose to prominence, King broadened the scope of his activism to address issues such as the Vietnam War and poverty among Americans of all races. In 1967, King and the SCLC embarked on an ambitious program known as the Poor People’s Campaign, which was to include a massive march on the capital.

On the evening of April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King was assassinated . He was fatally shot while standing on the balcony of a motel in Memphis, where King had traveled to support a sanitation workers’ strike. In the wake of his death, a wave of riots swept major cities across the country, while President Johnson declared a national day of mourning.

James Earl Ray , an escaped convict and known racist, pleaded guilty to the murder and was sentenced to 99 years in prison. He later recanted his confession and gained some unlikely advocates, including members of the King family, before his death in 1998.

After years of campaigning by activists, members of Congress and Coretta Scott King, among others, in 1983 President Ronald Reagan signed a bill creating a U.S. federal holiday in honor of King.

Observed on the third Monday of January, Martin Luther King Day was first celebrated in 1986.

Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes

While his “I Have a Dream” speech is the most well-known piece of his writing, Martin Luther King Jr. was the author of multiple books, include “Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story,” “Why We Can’t Wait,” “Strength to Love,” “Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?” and the posthumously published “Trumpet of Conscience” with a foreword by Coretta Scott King. Here are some of the most famous Martin Luther King Jr. quotes:

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”

“Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”

“The time is always right to do what is right.”

"True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice."

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”

“Free at last, Free at last, Thank God almighty we are free at last.”

“Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase.”

“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”

"I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant."

“I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.”

“Be a bush if you can't be a tree. If you can't be a highway, just be a trail. If you can't be a sun, be a star. For it isn't by size that you win or fail. Be the best of whatever you are.”

“Life's most persistent and urgent question is, 'What are you doing for others?’”

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• Martin Luther King Jr Biography

Dr Martin Luther King Jr. was America's most prominent civil rights activist, and many consider him to be the greatest American leader of the 20th century. His leadership was instrumental in the United States for ending legal apartheid and empowering the African-American community. He was first and foremost a moral leader who advocated peaceful resistance as a way of bringing about political change, stressing that biblical values led by love would prevail over hate and fear-driven politics. He was a gifted orator, best known for his "I Have a Dream" speech delivered on August 28th 1963, at the March on Washington. 

In 1968, he was killed by an assassin's bullet at the age of 39. Martin Luther King Jr.'s influence and legacy extended beyond the United States, affecting the fight against apartheid in South Africa. King is only one of three Americans and the only African-American to have a national holiday, which is observed on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, which falls on the third Monday in January, close to his birthday.

Martin Luther King Information

Martin Luther King jr birth date: January 15, 1929

Martin Luther King jr Birthplace: Atlanta, Georgia, U.S

Martin Luther King jr wife: Coretta Scott ​(m. 1953)

Martin Luther King jr children: Yolanda, Martin, Dexter, Bernice

Martin Luther King jr death date: April 4, 1968 (aged 39)

Martin Luther King jr death place: Memphis, Tennessee, U.S

Martin Luther King jr cause of death: Assassination by gunshot

About Martin Luther King Jr

Martin Luther King Jr. was born on January 15th 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia, to Rev. Martin Luther King Sr. and Mrs Alberta Williams King. The boy's father, Reverend Martin Luther King, was pastor of Atlanta's historic, prominent, and prestigious Ebenezer Baptist Church. 

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was a cornerstone of Atlanta's black middle class. He governed his household with the zeal of an Old Testament patriarch, and he provided a lifestyle in which his children were educated, safe, and well-fed. By the Reverend King's order, his son (Martin Luther King Jr.) used the moniker "M.L." during his childhood.

M.L. was born a strong and healthy baby, preceded by his sister, Willie Christine, and followed by his brother, Alfred Daniel, or A.D. The church served as the nucleus around which the King family's life revolved. The sanctuary was also just three blocks from the large house on Auburn Avenue. 

M.L. joined Booker T. Washington High School in 1942, at the age of 13, after being slipped into grade school a year early by his parents and being bright and gifted enough to miss a few grades along the way.

He passed Morehouse College's entrance exam two years later as an outstanding high school junior, graduated from Booker T. Washington after eleventh grade, and enrolled in Morehouse at the age of fifteen. There, he was mentored by Benjamin Mays, the school's president and a civil rights veteran. 

King earned a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology from Morehouse College in 1948. He then enrolled at Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania, where he was elected student body president and later graduated with a Bachelor of Divinity degree as class valedictorian in 1951.

He graduated from Boston University with a Doctor of Philosophy in Systematic Theology in 1955. As a result, from the age of 15 to 26, King embarked on an intellectual pilgrimage. He systematised a theological and social outlook through it, which was marked by unusually profound observations and an unwavering belief in the power of nonviolence and salvation through undeserved suffering.

Who was Martin Luther King jr’s Wife?

Martin Luther King Jr. married Coretta Scott on June 18, 1953, after a whirlwind 16-month courtship. The wedding ceremony was conducted by King's father at Scott's parents' home in Marion, Alabama.

Martin and Coretta Scott King had four children together-

Yolanda Denise 

Martin Luther III 

Dexter Scott 

Bernice Albertine

While their views on a variety of contentious topics vary, all four children followed in their father's footsteps as civil rights activists. On January 30th 2006, Coretta Scott King died.

Martin Luther King Information on Career and Activism

To grasp the magnitude of King's 13-year crusade for freedom and justice, split his career into two periods: before and after the Selma, Alabama campaign. 

The Montgomery Bus Boycott began in December 1955 and ended on March 25th 1965, with the popular voting-rights march from Selma to Montgomery. During the first century, King's sublime oratory and equally sublime bravery were fuelled by his belief in divine justice and his vision of a new Christian social order.

This resulted in a widespread acceptance of the principle of "noncooperation with evil" by Civil Rights Movement supporters. They opposed the social evils and injustices of segregation by peaceful, passive resistance, refusing to follow and/or comply with unfair and immoral Jim Crow rules. The beatings, jailings, abuses, and brutality that followed became the price that these demonstrators had to pay for their unparalleled victories.

Montgomery Bus Boycott

This initiative lasted from December 2nd 1955 to December 21st 1956, culminating in the Supreme Court declaring Alabama's bus segregation scheme unconstitutional. King's leadership had wrought a remarkable victory, as Montgomery blacks showed bravery, conviction, solidarity, and noble devotion to Christian values, and eventually accomplished their goal of desegregating the city's buses, following Mrs Rosa Parks' valiant stand and against the ensuing outcry of white hate and brutality. It was through this triumph that King and his ecclesiastical colleagues elevated the iconic status of the black clergyman as a pioneer in the fight for civil rights to new heights.

Birth of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference

Following the success of the Montgomery campaign, King saw the need for a mass movement to build on the victory. On August 7-8, 1959, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) was established, and King was unanimously elected president. This was a coalition that added a distinct emphasis to the already developed mix of major civil-rights organisations.

Stride Toward Freedom

On June 13th 1957, King met with Vice President Richard M. Nixon with his best friend, the Rev. Ralph D. Abernathy. King, A. Philip Randolph, Roy Wilkins, and Lester Granger met with President Dwight D. Eisenhower a year later, on June 23rd 1958. Both Nixon and Eisenhower turned down the SCLC chief, and King eventually gave up on the possibility of collaborating with either of them.

From 1957 to 1959, King fought to-

(1) keep the Civil Rights Movement united; 

(2) raise much-needed funds; 

(3) systematise and disseminate the philosophy and practise of nonviolence, and 

(4) establish himself as a shrewd author.

Following the deranged Mrs Izola Curry's stabbing attempt on his life on September 20th 1958, King endeared himself to millions of black and white Americans around the country when he forgave the woman and declined to press charges against her.

On November 29th 1959, the SCLC chief resigned as pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church and spent the next three years witnessing historic events unfold in cities across the South. In 1960, he returned to his hometown of Atlanta and joined his father as co-pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church.

He used this forum to promote the SCLC's and the Civil Rights Movement's goals while also attempting to maintain unity and peace among the SCLC, the NAACP, and the National Urban League. 

Throughout 1960, King was inspired by the unexpectedly positive growth of student sit-in protests around the South. The SCLC president was ecstatic that black students on so many campuses were now joining the fight. As the sit-ins grew in popularity, King boldly and firmly proclaimed his full support for their strategic bravery in the fight to desegregate eating establishments in Southern cities.

Thousands of blacks and sincere whites throughout the country pledged their allegiance to the cause using Bible-based methods of applied nonviolence (protest marches, sit-ins, and Freedom Rides). The administrations of Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson had backed him up. Despite persistent misery, defeats, and notable failures, such as in Albany, Georgia (1961-1962), where the civil rights movement was completely and resoundingly defeated in its campaign to desegregate public parks, pools, lunch counters, and other services, progress was made. King and his lieutenants assessed their weakness and concluded that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had sided with the Albany segregationists.

During the late fall and early winter of 1962, King forged a new resolve through a series of speeches and written papers. From his discussions with Alabama's Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, the head of the SCLC's Birmingham auxiliary, the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR), the SCLC leader devised a plan in which a successful direct-action campaign in Birmingham would compensate for the failure in Albany and finally end legal segregation in Birmingham.

Martin Luther King Jr’s Letter From Birmingham Jail

From February to May 1963, King, Shuttlesworth, Abernathy, and others drew national attention to Birmingham with their effort to deracinate the city's strict segregation policies and expose the world to the viciousness and brutality of the segregationists in this culture. It was bad enough that racism existed at lunch counters and in recruiting practises. 

The brutality of Police Commissioner Eugene "Bull" Connor's men, who unleashed dogs and firehoses on the peaceful protesters, contributed to the embarrassment. And King was determined that he and his people would awaken America's spiritual conscience in the streets of Birmingham.

Walk to Freedom with Martin Luther King Jr.

King was in Detroit, Michigan, sixty-six days before the famous March on Washington, at the behest of his ecclesiastical associate, the Rev. C.L. Franklin. Franklin was a member of a group that included James Del Rio, a powerful local black millionaire, and other members of the Detroit Council for Human Rights. By orchestrating a major show of support, these activists were determined to engineer a significant Kingian breakthrough in the North and, as a result, open up a new Northern front. 

Detroit, as a booming black labour town, had a strong black middle class that had grown out of the workers of its car factories. Detroit's "Walk to Freedom With Martin Luther King Jr." was held on June 23, 1963, along the city's Woodward Avenue, and was organised by Tony Brown, a respected local newspaper journalist. 

A throng of 250,000 - 500,000 people marched in lockstep with the SCLC president as one single wave of humanity. The march came to an end at Covall Hall Auditorium, where King took the stage and delivered the "I Have A Dream'' speech, which he would repeat sixty-six days later at the Lincoln Memorial in front of a packed house. The event was described as "extraordinary" in Business Week magazine on June 29, 1963. King was hailed as the personification of nonviolence.

And, after the success of the Birmingham movement, he was gaining regular credibility at the time of the Detroit march. The Detroit march received extensive media coverage, reinforcing the lesson King had learned from the South's Freedom Rides, achieving genuine success in civil rights movements required doing something dramatic enough to elicit national media attention. None of his generation's black leaders had understood the lesson better than the SCLC president.

Campaigns in Selma and Chicago

By Christmas of 1964, the plans for "Project Alabama" had been finalised. The aim was to highlight the need for a federal voting-rights law that would give legal weight to the enfranchisement of African-Americans in the South. The protest marches and demonstrations from January to March 1965 demonstrated to Selma that the SCLC leader and his supporters were serious and playing for keeps.

During King's leadership of the Selma Movement, the city was visited by Malcolm X, who had flown in, addressed a crowd at Brown Chapel, given Coretta a message for King, and then left. Malcolm X was murdered by blacks in New York City two weeks later.

As blacks fought to make the right to vote a reality for themselves and all Americans, King's arrest in Selma on February 1st 1965, drew national attention as well as the attention of the Johnson White House. 

On March 7, a procession from Selma to Montgomery's State Capitol building began. King was unable to lead it because he was in Atlanta. State troopers armed with tear gas, billy clubs, bullwhips, and rubber tubing covered in barbed wire confronted the marchers. Using these guns, the troopers targeted the defenceless, unarmed protesters with such ferocity and wrath that 70 blacks were hospitalised and another 70 were treated for injuries by the end of the ordeal. 

The news of the violence shook the nation as it had never been shaken before that night when a film clip from Selma's "Bloody Sunday" disrupted the broadcast of ABC Television's Sunday-night movie, Judgment at Nuremberg. The national uproar was deafening, and the public backed the battered demonstrators. King led a second march on March 9 as a wave of public support bolstered his Selma Movement.

A wall of highway patrol officers hindered the march of 1,500 black and white demonstrators from crossing the Pettus Bridge. The demonstrators were told to stop marching. King protested, but it was in vain. At that point, the SCLC leader agreed not to press the issue and avoid a confrontation. Instead, he instructed his followers to kneel and pray before abruptly turning around. Many young Black Power radicals were enraged by King's decision, which they already saw as too cautious and conservative.

The moral support of these radicals was withdrawn. Nonetheless, the country had been awakened by the events in Selma, which caused widespread outrage and led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

On March 25, King and 25,000 of his supporters, escorted by 800 federal troops, completed a four-day, triumphant Selma-to-Montgomery march. The SCLC president had earned the title of "fresh Moses" by blacks, anointed to lead America on a modern-day Exodus to New Canaan.

Martin Luther King's Assassination and its Aftermath

In the spring of 1968, King's preparations for the Poor People's March were thwarted by a trip to Memphis, Tennessee, to express support for a sanitation workers' strike. The arrival of the SCLC chief in Memphis on April 3 caused a stir in the city and drew a slew of television photographers and camera crews. Two thousand supporters, as well as a huge press and television crew, gathered at Mason Temple that night to hear the twentieth century's most peaceful warrior deliver a speech. King had been hesitant to appear, but he eventually agreed to do so for the sake of the people who adored him.

His "I've Been To The Mountaintop" voice, which encapsulated and reaffirmed his life that night, was destined to become famous. To those who knew him at the time, King had given the impression that his life was coming to an end. The next day, at 6:01 p.m., as the SCLC chief stood on the second-floor balcony of the Lorraine Motel where he was staying, a loud crack of a high-powered rifle was heard, and a bullet decimated the right side of King's face with such force that it violently knocked him backwards.

Rev. Ronald Denton Wilson later told The New York Times that his father, Henry Clay Wilson, was the assassin of Martin Luther King Jr., not James Earl Ray. Rev. Wilson claimed that his father was the leader of a small group of assassins; that prejudice played no role in the assassination; that Henry Clay Wilson shot King because the former suspected the latter of being involved with the Communist movement; and that James Earl Ray was set up to take the fall for the assassination.

Legacy, Awards, and Achievements

At least fifty honorary degrees were bestowed on King by colleges and universities. On October 14, 1964, King received the Nobel Peace Prize for leading peaceful opposition to racial prejudice in the United States, making him the (at the time) youngest recipient of the prize. 

The American Jewish Committee awarded him the American Liberties Medallion in 1965 for his "exceptional advancement of the values of human liberty."

The NAACP presented him with the Spingarn Medal in 1957. He received the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for “Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story” two years later.

The Margaret Sanger Award was given to King by the Planned Parenthood Federation of America in 1966 for "his valiant opposition to bigotry and his lifetime contribution to the promotion of social justice and human dignity."

In 1966, King was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences as a fellow. 

In November 1967, he travelled to the United Kingdom for a 24-hour trip to receive an honorary degree from Newcastle University, making him the first African-American to do so.

In 1971, the civil rights activist was posthumously awarded the Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Recording for "Why I Oppose The War In Vietnam," while being nominated for three Grammy Awards.

President Jimmy Carter bestowed the Presidential Medal of Freedom on King posthumously in 1977.

In 2004, King and his wife received the Congressional Gold Medal.

FAQs on Martin Luther King Jr Biography

Q1. Who is Martin Luther King Jr?

Ans: Martin Luther King Jr. (born Michael King Jr.; January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an African American Baptist minister and activist who became the most visible spokesman and participant in the Civil Rights Movement.

Q2. What is Martin Luther King jr Famous for?

Ans: Martin Luther King Jr. is well-known for his contributions to the civil rights movement in the United States during the 1960s. His most famous work is his 1963 speech "I Have a Dream," in which he expressed his desire for the United States free of segregation and racism.

Q3. Who was Martin Luther King jr Inspired by?

Ans: King was deeply inspired by Mahatma Gandhi and activist Bayard Rustin and had entered the national spotlight as an inspirational promoter of organised, peaceful resistance by the time the Supreme Court directed that the segregation in seating on public buses was unconstitutional in November 1956.

The life of Martin Luther King Jr.

Photo galleries.

• = Key moments in MLK's life and beyond
• = Key moments in the Civil Rights Movement and beyond
• Jan. 15: Michael Luther King Jr., later renamed Martin, is born to schoolteacher Alberta King and Baptist minister Michael Luther King in Atlanta, Ga.
• King graduates from Morehouse College in Atlanta with a B.A.
• Graduates with a B.D. from Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pa.
• June 18: King marries Coretta Scott in Marion, Ala. They will have four children: Yolanda Denise (b.1955), Martin Luther King III (b.1957), Dexter (b.1961), Bernice Albertine (b.1963).
• Brown vs. Board of Education: U.S. Supreme Court bans segregation in public schools.
• September: King moves to Montgomery, Ala., to preach at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church.
• After coursework at New England colleges, King finishes his Ph.D. in systematic theology.
• Bus boycott launches in Montgomery, Ala., after an African-American woman, Rosa Parks, is arrested December 1 for refusing to give up her seat to a white person.
• Jan. 26: King is arrested for driving 30 mph in a 25 mph zone.
• Jan. 30: King's house is bombed.
• Dec. 21: After more than a year of bus boycotts and a legal fight, the Montgomery buses desegregate.
• January: Black ministers form what becomes known as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. King is named first president one month later.
• In this typical year of demonstrations, King travels 780,000 miles and makes 208 speeches.
• Garfield High School becomes the first Seattle high school with a more than 50 percent nonwhite student body.
• At previously all-white Central High in Little Rock, Ark., 1,000 paratroopers are called by President Eisenhower to restore order and escort nine black students.
• King's first book, "Stride Toward Freedom," is published, recounting his recollections of the Montgomery bus boycott. While King is promoting his book in a Harlem book store, an African American woman stabs him.
• King visits India. He had a lifelong admiration for Mohandas K. Gandhi, and credited Gandhi's passive resistance techniques for his civil-rights successes.
• King leaves for Atlanta to pastor his father's church, Ebenezer Baptist Church.
• The sit-in protest movement begins in February at a Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, N.C. and spreads across the nation.
• Freedom rides begin from Washington, D.C: Groups of black and white people ride buses through the South to challenge segregation.
• King makes his only visit to Seattle. He visits numerous places, including two morning assemblies at Garfield High School.
• King meets with President John F. Kennedy to urge support for civil rights.
• Blacks become the majority at Garfield High, 51 percent of the student population - a first for Seattle. The school district average is 5.3 percent.
• Two killed, many injured in riots as James Meredith is enrolled as the first black at the University of Mississippi.
• King leads protests in Birmingham for desegregated department store facilities, and fair hiring.
• April: Arrested after demonstrating in defiance of a court order, King writes "Letter From Birmingham Jail." This eloquent letter, later widely circulated, becomes a classic of the civil-rights movement.
• Police arrest King and other ministers demonstrating in Birmingham, Ala., then turn fire hoses and police dogs on the marchers.
• June 12: Medgar Evers, NAACP leader, is murdered as he enters his home in Jackson, Miss.
• About 1,300 people march from the Central Area to downtown Seattle, demanding greater job opportunities for blacks in department stores. The Bon Marche promises 30 new jobs for blacks.
• About 400 people rally at Seattle City Hall to protest delays in passing an open-housing law. In response, the city forms a 12-member Human Rights Commission but only two blacks are included, prompting a sit-in at City Hall and Seattle's first civil-rights arrests.
• Aug. 28: 250,000 civil-rights supporters attended the March on Washington. At the Lincoln Memorial, King delivers the famous "I have a dream" speech.
• 250,000 people attend the March on Washington, D.C. urging support for pending civil-rights legislation. The event is highlighted by King's "I have a dream" speech.
• The Seattle School District implements a voluntary racial transfer program, mainly aimed at busing black students to mostly white schools.
• Sep. 15: Four girls are killed in a bombing at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala.
• Seattle City Council agrees to put together an open-housing ordinance but insists on putting it on the ballot. Voters defeat it by a 2-to-1 ratio. It will be four more years before an open-housing ordinance becomes law.
• Three civil-rights workers are murdered in Mississippi.
• July 2: President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
• King's book "Why We Can't Wait" is published.
• King visits with West Berlin Mayor Willy Brant and Pope Paul VI.
• Dec. 10: King wins the Nobel Peace Prize.
• Out of 955 people employed by the Seattle Fire Department, just two are African American, and only one is Asian, account for less than 0.2 and 0.1 percent of the force, respectively. By the end of 1993, the department is 12.2 percent African American and 5.6 percent Asian.
• Jan. 18: King successfully registers to vote at the Hotel Albert in Selma, Ala. and is assaulted by James George Robinson of Birmingham.
• February: King continues to protest discrimination in voter registration and is arrested and jailed. He meets with President Lyndon B. Johnson Feb. 9 and other American leaders about voting rights for African Americans.
• Feb. 21: Malcolm X is murdered. Three men are convicted of his murder.
• Mar. 16-21: King and 3,200 people march from Selma to Montgomery
• Aug. 6: President Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The act, which King sought, authorizes federal examiners to register qualified voters and suspends devices such as literacy tests that aimed to prevent African Americans from voting.
• Aug. 11-16: Watts riots leave 34 dead in Los Angeles.
• Apr. 4: King is assassinated in Memphis, Tenn., by James Earl Ray, unleashing violence in more than 100 cities.
• In response to King's death, Seattle residents hurl firebombs, broke windows, and pelt motorists with rocks. Ten thousand people also march to Seattle Center for a rally in his memory.
• Aaron Dixon becomes first leader of Black Panther Party branch in Seattle.
• There is a rally at Garfield High in support of Dixon, Larry Gossett, and Carl Miller, sentenced to six months in the King County Jail for unlawful assembly in an earlier demonstration. Before the speakers finish, firebombs and rocks begin flying toward cars coming down 23rd Avenue. Sporadic riots break out in Seattle's Central Area during the summer.
• Edwin Pratt, executive director of the Seattle Urban League and a moderate and respected African American leader, is shot to death while standing in the doorway of his home. The murder is never solved.
• Seattle School Board adopts a plan designed to eliminate racial imbalance in schools by fall 1979.
• Seattle becomes the largest city in the United States to desegregate its schools without a court order; nearly one-quarter of the school district's students are bused as part of the "Seattle Plan." Two months later, voters pass an anti-busing initiative. It is later ruled unconstitutional.
• In a blow to efforts to diversify university enrollment, the U.S. Supreme Court outlaws racial quotas in a suit brought by Allan Bakke, a white man who had been turned down by the medical school at University of California, Davis.
• Jan. 20: The first national celebration of King's birthday as a holiday.
• Feb. 24: King County Council passes a motion to rename King County in honor of Martin Luther King Jr.
• Douglas Wilder of Virginia becomes the nation's first African American to be elected state governor.
• The first racially based riots in years erupt in Los Angeles and other cities after a jury acquits L.A. police officers in the videotaped beating of Rodney King, an African American.
• King County's name change is made official by Gov. Christine Gregoire's signing of Senate Bill 5332.
• Jan. 30: King’s widow, Coretta Scott King, dies at age 78. Four presidents – Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush – attended her funeral.
• Nov. 4: Barack Obama becomes the first African American to be elected president of the United States.
• Oct. 16: The national memorial to Martin Luther King Jr. is dedicated and opened to the public in Washington, D.C.
• Following the death of Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Fl., the Black Lives Matter movement emerges as a new force for civil rights.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

• Occupation: Civil Rights Leader
• Born: January 15, 1929 in Atlanta, GA
• Died: April 4, 1968 in Memphis, TN
• Best known for: Advancing the Civil Rights Movement and his "I Have a Dream" speech

• King was the youngest person to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.
• Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is a national holiday.
• At the Atlanta premier of the movie Gone with the Wind , Martin sang with his church choir.
• There are over 730 streets in the United States named after Martin Luther King, Jr.
• One of his main influences was Mohandas Gandhi who taught people to protest in a non-violent manner.
• He was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
• The name on his original birth certificate is Michael King. This was a mistake, however. He was supposed to be named after his father who was named for Martin Luther, the leader of the Christian reformation movement.
• He is often referred to by his initials MLK.
• Listen to a recorded reading of this page:

• Civil Rights Timeline
• African-American Civil Rights Timeline
• Magna Carta
• Bill of Rights
• Emancipation Proclamation
• Glossary and Terms