Martin Luther King, Jr. was born on January 15, 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia. There he could witness first hand the brutality and oppression of white society upon black people. The legacy of two generations of Baptist preachers, King earned his own Bachelor of Divinity in 1951. While at seminary King became acquainted with the philosophy of Mohandas Gandhi which emphasized non-violent protest . While studying at Crozer, King attends a lecture by a Dr. Mordeca Johnson on the life and work of Mahatma Gandhi and is inspired to delve deeper into the teachings of the Indian social philosopher.
King graduated from Crozer with a Bachelor of Divinity degree. He became class valedictorian and winner of the Pearl Plafker Award for most outstanding student. In September, he began doctoral studies in theology at Boston University, where he studied personalism with Edgar Sheffield Brightman and L. Harold De Wolf. In 1953 he marries his life long partner Coretta Scott King. In May of 1954 King accepts a position as pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. On October 31, he is installed as the church's twentieth pastor. This places King in a position of power and responsibility at a very urgent time in black America. In May of that same year, the Brown vs. Board of Education decision paves the way for school desegregation as the Supreme Court of the United States unanimously rules
racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional. King pays very close attention to these events shaking the very foundation of American society.
On that fateful day of December l, 1955: Parks decided to take the bus because she was feeling particularly tired after a long day in the department store where she worked as a seamstress. She was sitting in the middle section, resting her feet after a long day's work when a white man boarded the bus and demanded that her row be cleared because the white section was full. The others in the row obediently moved to the back of the bus, but Parks quietly refused to move. She would later tell others that she just did not feel like moving. Angry at her rebellion the white bus driver threatened to call the police unless Parks gave her up her seat. A calm Parks only replied, "Go ahead and call them." By the time the police arrived the now enraged bus driver insisted on arrest. Parks was subsequently arrested, fingerprinted and jailed. With her one allowed phone call, she contacted an NAACP lawyer who arranged for her to be released on bail.
Having completed his dissertation, King is awarded his Ph.D. from Boston University. On November 17, Yolanda Denise (Yoki), the King's first child is born. Less than one month later, on December 1, an important incident occurs in Montgomery Alabama that will forever change King's life. A seamstress by the name of Mrs. Rosa Parks broke her usual routine of walking and decided to board a bus because she was feeling particularly tired after a long day in the department store where she worked. She was sitting in the middle section, resting her feet after a long day's work when a white man boarded the bus and demanded that her row be cleared because the white section was full. The others in the row obediently moved to the back of the bus, but Parks quietly refused to move. She would later tell others that she just did not feel like moving. Angry at her rebellion the white bus driver threatened to call the police unless Parks gave her up her seat. A calm Parks only replied, "Go ahead and call them." By the time the police arrived the now enraged bus driver insisted on arrest. Parks was subsequently arrested, fingerprinted and jailed. With her one allowed phone call, she contacted an NAACP lawyer who arranged for her to be released on bail. Word of Parks's arrest spread quickly, and the Women's Political Council decided to protest her treatment by organizing a boycott of the buses. The boycott was set for December 5, the day of Parks's trial, but some prominent members of Montgomery's black community realized that here was a chance to take a firm stand on segregation. As a result, the Montgomery Improvement Association was formed to organize a boycott that would continue until the bus segregation laws were changed. King is elected president of the newly formed Montgomery Improvement Association and assumes leadership of the boycott. Under King's guidance leaflets were distributed telling people not to ride the buses, and other forms of transport were relied upon.
Meanwhile, Parks was fined for failing to obey a city ordinance, but on the advice of her lawyers she refused to pay the fine so that they could challenge the segregation law in court. Recognized as a leader of the boycott, the King's home is bombed on January 30. Although Mrs. King and Yolanda are at home with a friend, no one is injured. On February 21, King is indicted, along with twenty-four other ministers and more than one hundred other blacks, for conspiring to prevent the Montgomery bus company from operation of business. A United States Discrit Court rules on June 4 that racial segregation on Alabama's city bus lines is unconstitutional. On November 13, the United States Supreme Court unanimously upholds the decision. On December 21, blacks and whites in Montgomery ride for the first time on previously segregated buses. Capitalizing upon this victory, King call for a meeting of black Christian clergymen. More than sixty black ministers, committed to a southern civil rights movement, respond in Atlanta on January 9 and 10 forming the organization that will become the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SLCL). While King and Rev. Ralph Abernathy are in Atlanta for the meeting, Abernathy's home and church are bombed in Montgomery. Three other
Baptist churches and the home of a white minister are also bombed in response to the victory of the bus boycott. On February 14, the SCLC meets formally for the first time in New Orleans. King is unanimously elected president.
On May 17, three years to the day after the Brown v. Board of Education decision, King participates with other civil rights leaders in a Prayer
Pilgrimage to Washington. He delivers his first major national address, calling for black voting rights. The next month, he meets with Vice-President Richard Nixon. As a result of such pressures On September 9, Congress passes the 1957 Civil Rights Act, the first civil rights legislation since Reconstruction. The act created the Civil Rights Commission, established the Civil Right Division of the Justice Department,
and empowered the federal government to seek court injunctions against obstruction of voting rights. Such victories gain King more prominence as well as enemies. He is arrested on September 3 in front of the Montgomery Recorder's Court and charged with loitering. The charge is later changed to "failure to
obey an officer". The following day, he is convicted. He decides to go to jail rather than pay the fine. Over King's objection, the fine is paid by Montgomery Police Commissioner Clyde C. Sellers. On September 20, King is stabbed in the chest by Mrs. Izola Curry in a Harlem department store while autographing his newly published book, STRIDE TOWARD FREEDOM: THE MONTGOMERY STORY. On a trip to India in 1959 King met with followers of Gandhi. During these discussions he became strongly convinced that nonviolent resistance was the best tactic oppressed people could use in their struggle for freedom and empowerment. Upon return King submits his resignation as pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church on
November 29. He will join his father as co-pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where the SCLC has its headquarters.
The sit-in movement begins on February 1 at a Woolworth lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina. In an effort to desegregate lunch counters,
movies, hotels, libraries, and other segregated facilities, it spreads rapidly throughout the country.
On May 6, the 1960 Civil Rights Act is signed. The new legislation authorizes judges to appoint referees to help blacks register and vote. King meets with Senator John F. Kennedy, candidate for president of the
United States, on June 24 to discuss racial concerns. In October, King is arrested in a sit-in at a major Atlanta department store. The charges are subsequently dropped, and all of the jailed demonstrators
except King released. King is held on charge of a violating probation in a previous traffic arrest case. He is sentenced to four months of hard labor and transferred to DeKalb County Jail in Decatur, Georgia, and from there to Reidsville State Prison. Only after Senator Kennedy intervenes is he released on two thousand dollar bail. In March of 1961, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), along with SNCC and
SCLC, announces a new campaign - the Freedom Rides. This tactic consists of bussing students and demonstrators in from the North and other areas of the South to combat segregation. On December 15, King arrives in Albany, Georgia to help the local movement in its fight to desegregate public facilities. The following day King is arrested and charged with obstructing the sidewalk and parading without a
permit.
Under the leadership of figures such as King, mass demonstrations begin in Birmingham, Alabama on April 3, 1963 to protest segregation of public facilities. On April 12, King and other ministers are arrested by Police Commissioner Eugene ("Bull") Connor. King is placed in solitary confinement. While imprisoned, King writes his famous
"Letter From Birmingham Jail" explaining the need for non-violent civil disobedience. When school children join the protests in Birmingham in early May, Bull Connor orders the use of fire hoses and police dogs to halt the youthful protestors. The nation is shocked by the photographs of police brutality. On May 10, an agreement is announced in Birmingham to desegregate public accommodations, increase job opportunities for blacks and provide amnesty to those arrested. White segregationists react violently to the agreement. On May 11, a bomb explodes at the home of King's brother, Reverend A.D. King, in Birmingham. A second explosion blasts King's headquarters in the Gaston Motel. In response, blacks in Birmingham riot. Two hundred and fifty state troopers are sent to keep peace. But the tide is turning for on May 20, the Supreme Court rules Birmingham's segregation ordinances unconstitutional.
The March on Washington, on August 28, becomes the largest and most dramatic civil rights demonstration in history. More than 250,000 marchers,
including 60,000 whites, fill the mall from the Lincoln Memorial to the Washington Monument. King and other civil rights leaders meet with President Kennedy in the White House. King's "I Have A Dream" Speech is the high point of the event. Segregationists, angry at King's prominence and the swift victories of the Civil Rights Movement strike back with terrorist tactics. On September 15, a bomb explodes during Sunday school in Birmingham's sixteenth Avenue Baptist Church, killing four little girls, aged eleven to
fourteen. This is the twenty-first bombing incident against blacks in Birmingham in eight years. What is more, King is put under surveillance by the FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover who believes King to be a communist. This not does deter Time Magazine of naming him "Man of the Year" in 1964. And despite threats from the FBI, King accepts the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway on December 10.
He is the twelfth American, third black and at age thirty-five, the youngest person to win the coveted prize.
The Selma campaign is initiated on February 2, 1965 when King is arrested for demonstrating as part of the SCLC's voter registration drive. Several days later, a federal district court bans the literacy test and other technicalities used against black voter applicants, and on February 9, King meets with President Johnson at the White House to discuss voting rights. On March 7, demonstrators in Selma are beaten by state patrolmen as they attempt to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge on a march from Selma to the state capitol in Montgomery. Even King is shocked at the brutality. That evening, Reverend James Reeb and two other white Unitarian ministers are beaten by white segregationists in Selma. Reeb dies two days later. President Johnson addresses a joint session of Congress on March 15 to appeal for the passage of the Voting Rights Bill, which he submits two days later. In the televised address, he uses the slogan of the non-violent movement - "We Shall Overcome". On March 21, King and three thousand protestors begin a five-day march from Selma to the Alabama state capitol in Montgomery. By agreement, only three hundred are allowed to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge and continue the entire way to the state capitol. They are escorted by hundreds of army troops and national guardsmen. In Montgomery, they are met by twenty-five thousand marchers. Mrs. Viola Liuzzo, a white civil rights worker from Detroit, is shot to death while driving returning marchers back to Selma on March 25. As a result, President Johnson finally denounces the Ku Klux Klan and announces the arrests of four Klan members in connection with the murder. On March 30, the House Un-American Activities Committee opens a full investigation of the Klan and its "shocking crimes."
On August 6, President Johnson signs the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Six days of rioting break out in Watts, the black gheto of Los Angeles, on August 11, leaving thirty-five dead. More than thirty-five hundred people are arrested in one of the worst riot in the nation's history. King is upset at the riot and worries that if the Civil Rights Act will ensure blacks gain empowerment. In February, 1966 King and his family move into a tenement apartment in Chicago to initiate the Chicago Project. The SCLC joins forces with Al Raby's
Coordinating Council of Community Organizations. While there King also makes an historic meeting with the Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad. James Meredith is shot on June 6 - the first day of his 220 mile "March Against Fear" from Memphis, Tennessee to Jackson, Mississippi. King and other civil rights leaders decide to continue the march. In Greenwood, Mississippi, Stokely Carmichael, the newly elected head of SNCC, and Willie Ricks use the slogan "Black Power" for the first time in front of reporters. King meets with Carmicheal and states he takes no issue with the slogan but is concerned with the tactics it may cause to come about. Designating July 10 "Freedom Sunday", King initiates a drive to make Chicago an "open city", demanding an end to discrimination in housing, schools and employment. Rioting erupts on Chicago's West Side on July 12. Two black youths are killed. King begins negotiations with Mayor Richard Daley. Illinois governor Otto Kerner orders four thousand National Guardsmen to Chicago. On August 5, King is assaulted with stones as he leads marchers through Chicago's Southwest Side. SNCC and CORE march on Chicago's Cicero suburb on September 4. King and SCLC do not participate. Two hundred
blacks, protected by National Guardsmen, are fiercely attacked and forced to retreat. Such action in the North shocks and disturbs King as he begins to wonder upon the scope of American racism and the enormity of the struggle before him.
On February 15, President Johnson proposes the 1967 Civil Rights Act to Congress, including a strong open-housing provision. The bill does not pass, but similar provisions are later incorporated in the 1968 Civil Rights Act. A more militant and frustrated King seems to emerge during this time. At a news conference in New York on April 16, King warns that at least ten cities "could explode in racial violence this summer" because conditions that caused riots last summer still exist. At a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned at Riverside Church in New York City on April 4, 1967, King makes his historic speech against what he sees as American injustice in the ongoing war against Vietnam. He is denounced by many for this speech and even groups such as the SCLC do not support him. As King warned, on June 2 riots begin in the Roxbury section of Boston. More than 60 people are injured, and nearly 100 are arrested. Before the summer is over, riots occur in Neward, Detroit, Milwaukee, and more than 30 other American cities. In Detroit alone, 43 die and 324 are injured. Certain now that desegregation was not enough to help empower black people, on November 2, King announces the creation of the Poor People's Campaign, focusing on jobs and freedom. On February 12, 1968 sanitation workers go on strike in Memphis, Tennessee. King leads a demonstration in Memphis on March 28 in support of the striking sanitation workers. When the march becomes violent, one black is killed and more than fifty people are injured. King leaves Memphis more distressed than ever over the violence. He returns April 3 in the hopes of leading a peaceful march. He tells the mostly black crowd at the Memphis Masonic Temple, "I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land."
The following day, in the early morning of April 4, Martin Luther King, Jr. is fatally wounded by a sniper as he stands upon a balcony of the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis. He dies at St. Joseph's Hospital of a gunshot wound in the neck. Reaction to his death is swift as rioting erupts in Washington DC's black section is the most in the capital's history. The President declares April 7 a national day of mourning for King. On April 8, a strong willed Coretta Scott King assumes her husband's place leading a massive silent march through the streets of Memphis. Thousands of people attend King's funeral on April 9 at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. Millions more watch at home and abroad on television. As one figure noted, "with the death of Martin Luther King died America's conscience and her last chance at redemption." (Photo and Information courtesy of King Remembered by Flip Schulke and Martin Luther King Jr's Papers Project by Stanford Univeristy )
Letter From A Birmingham Jail Speech