Martin l king jr biography

Center for Nonviolent Social Change, Inc. Although extremely involved with his family, his church, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, activities for peace and justice, his world travels, and his many speaking engagements, Dr. King wrote six books and numerous articles. His volumes include:. The story of the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

A selection of sermons.

Martin l king jr biography

The story of the Birmingham Campaign. The Massey Lectures. Sponsored by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. King was shot while standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee on April 4, King was in Memphis to help lead sanitation workers in a protest against low wages and intolerable working conditions. On March 9,before coming to trial, he entered a guilty plea and was sentenced to ninety-nine years in the Tennessee State Penitentiary.

Loyd Jowers and Other Unknown Conspirators that Loyd Jowers and governmental agencies including the City of Memphis, the State of Tennessee, and the federal government were party to the conspiracy to assassinate Dr. The area where Dr. Historic Site. Department of the Interior. Biography of Martin Luther King, Jr. University of Kentucky. University-wide Navigation.

After the march, King and other leaders met with President John F. Kennedy to discuss equal rights and an end to segregation. Two days after the speech, the FBI wrote a memo detailing their suspicions that King was a communist. While FBI surveillance failed to find communist ties, the agency did find evidence that King was having extramarital affairs.

FBI Domestic Intelligence Chief William Sullivan decided to use this information against King, and wrote an anonymous letter to him in urging King to kill himself, Yale historian Beverly Gage reported in The New York Times inafter she found an unredacted version of the letter. Edgar Hoover, wanted to discredit King. He donated the winnings to the civil rights movement.

King received hundreds of other awards and several honorary degrees. In addition to his work on racial issues, King became an activist for economic justice and a critic of the Vietnam War. He formed an organization called the Poor People's Campaign, which was unpopular among some Black activists who wanted to take more radical approaches to social change, such as those advocated by the Black Power campaigns.

Related: What was the Black Panther Party? On April 3,in Memphis, Tenn. 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 next day, while standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel, King was assassinated. White supremacist James Earl Ray was convicted of the crime, though the identity of King's murderer was the subject of some controversy.

His baptism in May was less memorable for young King, but an event a few years later left him reeling. In Maywhen King was 12 years old, his grandmother Jennie died of a heart attack. Distraught at the news, he jumped from a second-story window at the family home, allegedly attempting suicide. Growing up in Atlanta, King entered public school at age 5.

He later attended Booker T. Washington High School, where he was said to be a precocious student. He skipped both the ninth and eleventh grades and, at age 15, entered Morehouse College in Atlanta in He was a popular student, especially with his female classmates, but largely unmotivated, floating through his first two years. Influenced by his experiences with racism, King began planting the seeds for a future as a social activist early in his time at Morehouse.

At the time, King felt that the best way to serve that purpose was as a lawyer or a martin l king jr biography. Although his family was deeply involved in the church and worship, King questioned religion in general and felt uncomfortable with overly emotional displays of religious worship. But in his junior year at Morehouse, King took a Bible class, renewed his faith, and began to envision a career in the ministry.

In the fall of his senior year, he told his father of his decision, and he was ordained at Ebenezer Baptist Church in February Later that year, King earned a sociology degree from Morehouse College and began attended the liberal Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania. He thrived in all his studies, was elected student body president, and was valedictorian of his class in He also earned a fellowship for graduate study.

He became romantically involved with a white woman and went through a difficult time before he could break off the relationship. Mays was an outspoken advocate for racial equality and encouraged King to view Christianity as a potential force for social change. After being accepted at several colleges for his doctoral study, King enrolled at Boston University.

He completed his doctorate and earned his degree in at age A committee of scholars appointed by Boston University determined that King was guilty of plagiarism inthough it also recommended against the revocation of his degree. As explained in his autobiographyKing previously felt that the peaceful teachings of Jesus applied mainly to individual relationships, not large-scale confrontations.

It was in this Gandhian emphasis on love and nonviolence that I discovered the method for social reform that I had been seeking. Led by his religious convictions and philosophy of nonviolence, King became one of the most prominent figures of the Civil Rights Movement. He was a founding member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and played key roles in several major demonstrations that transformed society.

The effort began on December 1,when year-old Rosa Parks boarded the Cleveland Avenue bus to go home after work. As more passengers boarded, several white men were left standing, so the bus driver demanded that Parks and several other African Americans give up their seats. Three other Black passengers reluctantly gave up their places, but Parks remained seated.

The driver asked her again to give up her seat, and again, she refused. Parks was arrested and booked for violating the Montgomery City Code. On the night Parks was arrested, E. King was elected to lead the boycott because he was young, well-trained, and had solid family connections and professional standing. He was also new to the community and had few enemies, so organizers felt he would have strong credibility with the Black community.

The Montgomery Bus Boycott began December 5,and for more than a year, the local Black community walked to work, coordinated ride sharing, and faced harassment, violence, and intimidation. In addition to the boycott, members of the Black community took legal action against the city ordinance that outlined the segregated transit system.

They argued it was unconstitutional based on the U. Board of Education After the legal defeats and large financial martins l king jr biography, the city of Montgomery lifted the law that mandated segregated public transportation. The boycott ended on December 20, Flush with victory, African American civil rights leaders recognized the need for a national organization to help coordinate their efforts.

In JanuaryKing, Ralph Abernathyand 60 ministers and civil rights activists founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to harness the moral authority and organizing power of Black churches. The SCLC helped conduct nonviolent protests to promote civil rights reform. The SCLC felt the best place to start to give African Americans a voice was to enfranchise them in the voting process.

King met with religious and civil rights leaders and lectured all over the country on race-related issues. ByKing was gaining national exposure. He returned to Atlanta to become co-pastor with his father at Ebenezer Baptist Church but also continued his civil rights efforts. By the time the Supreme Court ruled segregated seating on public buses unconstitutional in NovemberKing—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. Emboldened by the success of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, in he and other civil rights activists—most of them fellow ministers—founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference SCLCa group committed to achieving full equality for African Americans through nonviolent protest.

In 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 s. With the slogan, "I am a man," workers in Memphis sought financial justice in a strike that fatefully became Martin Luther King Jr.

King penned of the civil rights movement's seminal texts while in solitary confinement, initially on the margins of a newspaper. The civil rights leader was attacked in by Izola Ware Curry, a decade before his murder. Later that year, Martin Luther King Jr. Held on August 28 and attended by sometoparticipants, 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 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.