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If you can't be a sun, be a star.
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For it isn't by size that you win or fail. Be the best of whatever you are. A look at one of the defining social movements in U. You can opt out at any time. You must be 16 years or older and a resident of the United States. Your Profile. Email Updates. Montgomery Bus Boycott.
Wilhelm hennis biography of martin luther king
Read more. Sign Up. Edgar Hoover believed him to be a threat to the nation. Part of the investigation was trying to tie Dr. King to communism. The FBI even went so far as to write him a threatening letter, anonymous at the time. King believed the letter had implied for him to commit suicide.
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In the later s, Martin Luther King Jr. By , the years of demonstrations and confrontations were beginning to wear on King. He had grown tired of marches, going to jail, and living under the constant threat of death. He was becoming discouraged at the slow progress of civil rights in America and the increasing criticism from other African American leaders.
In the spring of , a labor strike by Memphis, Tennessee, sanitation workers drew King to one last crusade. Longevity has its place.
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Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. In September , King survived an attempt on his life when a woman with mental illness stabbed him in the chest as he signed copies of his book Stride Toward Freedom in a New York City department store. King died at age The shocking assassination sparked riots and demonstrations in more than cities across the country.
The shooter was James Earl Ray , a malcontent drifter and former convict. He initially escaped authorities but was apprehended after a two-month international manhunt. In , Ray pleaded guilty to assassinating King and was sentenced to 99 years in prison. Another complicating factor is the confession of tavern owner Loyd Jowers, who said he contracted a different hit man to kill King.
In June , more than two years after Ray died, the U. Years after his death, he is the most widely known Black leader of his era. His life and work have been honored with a national holiday, schools and public buildings named after him, and a memorial on Independence Mall in Washington D. Over the years, extensive archival studies have led to a more balanced and comprehensive assessment of his life, portraying him as a complex figure: flawed, fallible, and limited in his control over the mass movements with which he was associated, yet a visionary leader who was deeply committed to achieving social justice through nonviolent means.
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Malcolm X. Ethel Kennedy. Huey P. Dred Scott.
Biography of martin luther king: Martin Luther King, Jr. (born January 15, , Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.—died April 4, , Memphis, Tennessee) was a Baptist minister and social activist who led the civil rights movement in the United States from the mids until his death by assassination in
Benjamin Banneker. Marcus Garvey. Madam C. Legacy Quotes. Date: May 17, Six years before he told the world of his dream, King stood at the same Lincoln Memorial steps as the final speaker of the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom. Give us the ballot, and we will no longer plead to the federal government for passage of an anti-lynching law Give us the ballot, and we will transform the salient misdeeds of bloodthirsty mobs into the calculated good deeds of orderly citizens.
Date: December 10, Speaking at the University of Oslo in Norway, King pondered why he was receiving the Nobel Prize when the battle for racial justice was far from over, before acknowledging that it was in recognition of the power of nonviolent resistance. Date: March 25, At the end of the bitterly fought Selma-to-Montgomery march, King addressed a crowd of 25, supporters from the Alabama State Capitol.
How long? Not long, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.
Date: April 3, The well-known orator delivered his final speech the day before he died at the Mason Temple in Memphis, Tennessee. 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. Their daughter Bernice was born the next year. Memorial in Washington, D. Advertisement - Continue Reading Below.
Civil Rights Activists. There, he made his first mark on the civil-rights movement, by mobilizing the black community during a day boycott of the city's bus lines. King overcame arrest and other violent harassment, including the bombing of his home.
Ultimately, the U. Supreme Court declared bus segregation unconstitutional. A national hero and a civil-rights figure of growing importance, King summoned together a number of black leaders in and laid the groundwork for the organization now known as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference SCLC. King was elected its president, and he soon began helping other communities organize their own protests against discrimination.
After finishing his first book and making a trip to India, King returned to the United States in to become co-pastor, with his father, of Ebenezer Baptist Church. Three years later, King's nonviolent tactics were put to their most severe test in Birmingham, during a mass protest for fair hiring practices and the desegregation of department-store facilities.
Police brutality used against the marchers dramatized the plight of blacks to the nation at large, with enormous impact. King was arrested, but his voice was not silenced: He wrote "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" to refute his critics. Later that year King was a principal speaker at the historic March on Washington, where he delivered one of the most passionate addresses of his career.
Time magazine designated him as its Person of the Year for A few months later he was named recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. When he returned from Norway, where he had gone to accept the award , King took on new challenges. In Selma, Ala. King next brought his crusade to Chicago, where he launched programs to rehabilitate the slums and provide housing.
In the North, however, King soon discovered that young and angry blacks cared little for his preaching and even less for his pleas for peaceful protest. Their disenchantment was one of the reasons he rallied behind a new cause: the war in Vietnam. Although he was trying to create a new coalition based on equal support for peace and civil rights, it caused an immediate rift.
But from the vantage point of history, King's timing was superb. Students, professors, intellectuals, clergymen and reformers rushed into the movement. Then, King turned his attention to the domestic issue that he felt was directly related to the Vietnam struggle: poverty. He called for a guaranteed family income, he threatened national boycotts, and he spoke of disrupting entire cities by nonviolent "camp-ins.
King interrupted these plans to lend his support to the Memphis sanitation men's strike. He wanted to discourage violence, and he wanted to focus national attention on the plight of the poor, unorganized workers of the city. The men were bargaining for basic union representation and long-overdue raises. But he never got back to his poverty plans. While standing outside with Jesse Jackson and Ralph Abernathy, King was shot in the neck by a rifle bullet.