“A lie cannot live.” .....Martin Luther King, Jr. (January 15, 1929 - April 4, 1968) – an American clergyman, activist, prominent leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement from mid 1950s (until his death), and a national icon in the history of modern American liberalism _________________________ MARTIN LUTHER KING, Jr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was born on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta (Georgia) in the family of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Sr. and Alberta Williams King. He was christened Michael Luther King, Jr., but later had his name changed to Martin. He had an older sister, Willie Christine King, and a younger brother, Alfred Daniel Williams King. He attended Booker T. Washington High School in Atlanta. A precocious student, he skipped both the ninth and the twelfth grade and entered Morehouse College (Atlanta) – a distinguished Negro institution of Atlanta from which both his father and grandfather had graduated – while just fifteen-year-old without formally graduating from high school. In 1948, he graduated from Morehouse College with a Bachelor of Arts degree in sociology, and enrolled at Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania, from where he graduated with a Bachelor of Divinity degree in 1951. . In Boston, he met Coretta Scott – a young woman of uncommon intellectual and artistic attainments – and married her on June 18, 1953, on the lawn of her parents house in her hometown of Heiberger (Alabama). The couple were blessed with two daughters and two sons: Yolanda King, Martin Luther King III, Dexter Scott King, and Bernice King. Martin became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, when he was 25-year-old. He then began doctoral studies in systematic theology at Boston University and received his Doctor of Philosophy on June 5, 1955, with a dissertation on A Comparison of the Conceptions of God in the Thinking of Paul Tillich and Henry Nelson Wieman. 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 Coloured 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 honour 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, Martin Luther King was elected president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization formed to provide new leadership for the now burgeoning civil rights movement. With assistance from the Quaker group the American Friends Service Committee, and inspired by Mahatma Gandhis success with non-violent activism, King visited Gandhis birthplace in India in 1959. The trip to India affected King in a profound way, deepening his understanding of non-violent resistance and his commitment to Americas struggle for civil rights. In a radio address made during his final evening in India, King reflected, Since being in India, I am more convinced than ever before that the method of nonviolent resistance is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for justice and human dignity. In a real sense, Mahatma Gandhi embodied in his life certain universal principles that are inherent in the moral structure of the universe, and these principles are as inescapable as the law of gravitation ! In the eleven-year period between 1957 and 1968, King travelled 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. Throughout his career of service, King wrote and spoke frequently, drawing on his experience as a preacher. His Letter from Birmingham Jail, written in 1963, is a passionate statement of his crusade for justice a manifesto of the Negro revolution, as he also planned and executed several drives in Alabama for the registration of Negroes as voters. His “I Have a Dream” speech is a 17-minute public delivery at the conclusion of peaceful march led by him in Washington to an audience of 250,000 people on August 28, 1963, in which he called for racial equality and an end to discrimination. In his career of resistance against injustice, 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. On October 14, 1964, 35-year-old King became the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize that was awarded to him for his work to end racial segregation and racial discrimination through civil disobedience and other nonviolent means. 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. King was opposed to the Vietnam War on the grounds that the war took money and resources that could have been spent on social welfare services like the War on Poverty. The United States Congress was spending more and more on the military and less and less on anti-poverty programs at the same time. He summed up this aspect by saying, A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defence than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. King was assassinated 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 posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977 and Congressional Gold Medal in 2004. Martin-Luther-King-Jr. Day was established as a U.S. federal holiday in 1986. ____________________ By AVDHESH SHUKLA
Posted on: Sat, 05 Apr 2014 17:44:30 +0000