You know that third Monday we get off from school and work every time January comes around? Well, it’s the impactful civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday. Most (not all of course) people overlook this day, focus on the fact that they get to sleep in a little later, and have the day to themselves. Well, let’s have another history lesson, look into the reason we have that day off, and most importantly, who King was.
King was born on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia, to Alberta King and Martin King Sr. His grandfather, Adam Williams, started the family’s long history of being pastors at the Ebenezer Baptist Church. King’s father was also a pastor and King was co-pastor. King attended segregated public schools in Georgia, then graduated from high school at only the age of fifteen. He then received the B.A. degree in 1948 from Morehouse College, a distinguished black institution of Atlanta; his father and grandfather also graduated from there. He studied theological studies at Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania, where he was elected president, and then awarded the B.D. in 1951. With a fellowship won 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 then met and married his wife Corretta Scott. They then had two sons and two daughters.
In 1954, King became the lead pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. At this time, he was a member of the executive committee of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In early December 1955, he accepted the leadership of the first great black nonviolent demonstration of contemporary times in the United States, the bus boycott. The boycott lasted 382 days. On December 21, 1956, after the Supreme Court of the United States had declared the laws unconstitutional requiring segregation on buses, blacks and whites rode the buses as equals. During these days of boycott, King was arrested, his home was bombed, he endured personal abuse, but at the same time, he emerged as a black 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. King based the ideals of the group on the beliefs of Christianity. In the eleven years between 1957 and 1968, he traveled over six million miles and spoke over twenty-five hundred times, appearing wherever there was injustice, protest, and action. Also during this time, he wrote five books as well as numerous articles. King led the major Birmingham protest that caught the attention of the entire world, inspiring his “Letter from Birmingham Jail”. He planned the drives in Alabama for the registration of African Americans as voters. He directed the peaceful march on Washington, D.C., of 250,000 people to whom he delivered his famous, impactful address, “I Have a Dream”. He conferred with President John F. Kennedy and campaigned for President Lyndon B. Johnson. While this was happening, King was arrested around twenty times and assaulted at least four times. He was awarded five honorary degrees. He was named Man of the Year by Time magazine in 1963. Lastly, King became not only the symbolic leader of American blacks but also a world figure.
When Martin Luther King, Jr. was thirty-five, he became the youngest man to have received the Nobel Peace Prize. When he was notified of his selection, he announced that he would turn over the prize money of $54,123 to the continuation 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 tragically assassinated. Martin Luther King Jr. has made an impact on the world that will live on as long as we do.
