Martin Luther King

His life and death

Early days

• King was born on 15 January 1929 into a religious family. His father was a minister who changed his name to “Martin Luther” after the German monk who inspired the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century.

• He skipped most of his secondary schooling to go directly to Morehouse College, a private all-male black college in Atlanta, Georgia. He later went to a Theological College, earning a Bachelor of Divinity in 1951, and a Doctor of Philosophy in 1955.

• He married Coretta Scott in 1953, and a year later in 1954, he became pastor at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery. They had four children.

Early activity

• He led the bus boycott in Montgomery in 1955, helping to create pressure for the desegregation of city transport in Montgomery.

• He helped to establish the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), a group of black churches that aimed to bring about improved civil rights for Negroes using non-violent methods

The march on Washington

• This march was an effort to expose the treatment Southern blacks suffered and to pressure the federal government to be more active in supporting equality of treatment for Negroes.

• King’s speech at this event is regarded as one of the greatest examples of oratory in the 20th century.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4AItMg70kg

Later activities

• After his successes in the South, King and Abernathy moved to Chicago to try to address problems of blacks in Northern industrial cities.

• He established the Chicago Freedom Movement, which held several marches to expose social problems in black neighbourhoods.

• He also criticised America’s involvement in the Vietnam War, where much of the fighting was undertaken by poor blacks.

• In 1968 he organised the “Poor People’s Campaign” to try to achieve greater economic justice for many different people, not just blacks.

King’s assassination

• In March 1968, King was requested to go to Memphis Tennessee to support a strike by sanitation workers wanting better pay and treatment.

• On 3 April he addressed a rally, making his last speech • He was shot by James Earl Ray at 6.01pm on 4 April,

while standing on the balcony of his hotel.• Ray was later captured in London and confessed to the

killing, but later withdrew this confession. Like Kennedy’s assassination, there is still some confusion about the circumstances of his assassination.

Remembering Martin Luther King

King was posthumously awarded

• the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977

• Congressional Gold Medal in 2004• Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was

established as a national holiday in the United States in 1986.