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Martin Luther King Jr. Biography and

MP3s (Lectures/Sermons/Speeches) for Download

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play Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr — Entrance into the Civil Rights Movement

play MLK Jr. — I Have Been To The Mountaintop

play Mumia Abu-Jamal On The True Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr

play MLK — Police Brutality Will Backfire

play CBS NEWS — Martin Luther King Jr. Assaination

play Martin luther king jr - Drum Major for Justice

play MlK Jr — Address to the A.J.C.

play MLK Jr. — I Have A Dream (Full Speech)

play Robert F. Kennedy Announces Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr

play Martin Luther King Jr – Rediscovering Lost Vaules

play MlK Jr. — Against Vietnam 1

play MLK Jr. — Against Vietnam 2

Biography

Birth and Family Martin Luther King, Jr. was born at noon Tuesday, January 15, 1929, at the family home, 501 Auburn Avenue, N.E., Atlanta, Georgia. Dr. Charles Johnson was the attending physician. Martin Luther King, Jr., was the first son and second child born to the Reverend Martin Luther King, Sr., and Alberta Williams King. Other children born to the Kings were Christine King Farris and the late Reverend Alfred Daniel Williams King. Martin Luther King's maternal grandparents were the Reverend Adam Daniel Williams, second pastor of Ebenezer Baptist, and Jenny Parks Williams. His paternal grandparents, James Albert and Delia King, were sharecroppers on a farm in Stockbridge, Georgia. Continued below...

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He married the former Coretta Scott, younger daughter of Obadiah and Bernice McMurray Scott of Marion, Alabama on June 18, 1953. The marriage ceremony took place on the lawn of the Scott's home in Marion. The Reverend King, Sr., performed the service, with Mrs. Edythe Bagley, the sister of Mrs. King, maid of honor, and the Reverend A.D. King, the brother of Martin Luther King, Jr., best man. Four children were born to Dr. and Mrs. King: Yolanda Denise (November 17, 1955 Montgomery, Alabama) Martin Luther III (October 23, 1957 Montgomery, Alabama) Dexter Scott (January 30, 1961 Atlanta, Georgia) Bernice Albertine (March 28, 1963 Atlanta, Georgia)

Education

Martin Luther King, Jr. began his education at the Yonge Street Elementary School in Atlanta, Georgia. Following Yonge School, he was enrolled in David T. Howard Elementary School. He also attended the Atlanta University Laboratory School and Booker T. Washington High School. Because of his high score on the college entrance examinations in his junior year of high school, he advanced to Morehouse College without formal graduation from Booker T. Washington. Having skipped both the ninth and twelfth grades, Dr. King entered Morehouse at the age of fifteen.

In 1948, he graduated from Morehouse College with a B.A. degree in Sociology. That fall, he enrolled in Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania. While attending Crozer, he also studied at the University of Pennsylvania. He was elected president of the senior class and delivered the valedictory address; he won the Pearl Plafker Award for the most outstanding student; and he received the J. Lewis Crozer fellowship for graduate study at a university of his choice. He was awarded a Bachelor of Divinity degree from Crozer in 1951.

In September of 1951, Martin Luther King began doctoral studies in Systematic Theology at Boston University. He also studied at Harvard University. His dissertation, "A Comparison of God in the Thinking of Paul Tillich and Henry Wieman," was completed in 1955, and the Ph.D. degree from Boston, a Doctorate of Philosophy in Systematic Theology, was awarded on June 5, 1955.

Honorary Degree

Dr. King was awarded honorary degrees from numerous colleges and universities in the United States and several foreign countries. They include the following:

1957 Doctor of Humane Letters, Morehouse College Doctor of Laws, Howard University Doctor of Divinity, Chicago Theological Seminary

1958 Doctor of Laws, Morgan State College Doctor of Humanities, Central State College

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1959 Doctor of Divinity, Boston University

1961 Doctor of Laws, Lincoln University Doctor of Laws, University of Bridgeport

1962 Doctor of Civil Laws, Bard College

1963 Doctor of Letters, Keuka College

1964 Doctor of Divinity, Wesleyan College Doctor of Laws, Jewish Theological Seminary Doctor of Laws, Yale University Doctor of Divinity, Springfield College

1965 Doctor of Laws, Hofstra University Doctor of Human Letters, Oberlin College Doctor of Social Science, Amsterdam Free University Doctor of Divinity, St. Peter's College

1967 Doctor of Civil Law, University of New Castle Upon Tyne Doctor of Laws, Grinnell College, Grinnell, Iowa

Martin Luther King entered the Christian ministry and was ordained in February 1948 at the age of nineteen at Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta, Georgia. Following his ordination, he became Assistant Pastor of Ebenezer. Upon completion of his studies at Boston University, he accepted the call of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Montgomery, Alabama. He was the pastor of Dexter Avenue from September 1954 to November 1959, when he resigned to move to Atlanta to direct the activities of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. From 1960 until his death in 1968, he was co-pastor with his father at Ebenezer Baptist Church and President of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

Dr. King was a pivotal figure in the Civil Rights Movement. He was elected president of the Montgomery Improvement Association, the organization which was responsible for the successful Montgomery Bus Boycott from 1955 to 1956 (381 days). He was arrested thirty times for his participation

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in civil rights activities. He was a founder and president of Southern Christian Leadership Conference from 1957 to 1968. He was also vice president of the national Sunday School and Baptist Teaching Union Congress of the National Baptist Convention. He was a member of several national and local boards of directors and served on the boards of trustees of several institutions and agencies. Dr. King was elected to membership in several learned societies including the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Awards

Dr. King received several hundred awards for his leadership in the Civil Rights Movement. Among them were:

* Selected one of the most outstanding personalities of the year by Time, 1957.* Listed in Who's Who in America, 1957.* the Spingarn Medal from NAACP, 1957.* The Russwurm Award from the National Newspaper Publishers, 1957.* The Second Annual Achievment -- The Guardian Association of the Police Departmentof New York, 1958. * Link Magazine of New Dehli, India, listed Dr. King as one of the sixteen world leaderswho had contributred most to the advancement of freedom during 1959. * Named Man of the Year by Time, 1963.* Named American of the Decade by Laundry, Dry Cleaning, and Die WorkersInternational Union, 1963. * The John Dewey Award, from the United Federation of Teachers, 1964.* The John F. Kennedy Award, from the Catholic Interracial Council of Chicago, 1964.* The Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. At age 35, Dr. King was the youngest man, the secondAmerican, and the third black man awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. * The Marcus Garvey Prize for Human Rights, presented by the Jamacian Government.(posthumously) 1968. * The Rosa L. Parks Award, presented by the Southern Christian Leadrship Conference.(posthumously) 1968.

* The preceding awards and others, along with numerous citations, are in the Archives ofthe Martin Luther King, Center for Nonviolent Social Change, Inc. in Atlanta, Georgia.

Publications

See: Martin Luther King, Jr. The Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers Project

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Speeches

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a vital personality of the modern era. His lectures and remarks stirred the concern and sparked the conscience of a generation; the movements and marches he led brought significant changes in the fabric of American life; his courageous and selfless devotion gave direction to thirteen years of civil rights activities; his charismatic leadership inspired men and women, young and old, in the nation and abroad.

Dr. King's concept of somebodiness gave black and poor people a new sense of worth and dignity. His philosophy of nonviolent direct action, and his strategies for rational and non-destructive social change, galvanized the conscience of this nation and reordered its priorities. The Voting Rights Act of 1965, for example, went to Congress as a result of the Selma to Montgomery march. His wisdom, his words, his actions, his commitment, and his dreams for a new cast of life, are intertwined with the American experience.

Dr. King's speech at the march on Washington in 1963, his acceptance speech of the Nobel Peace Prize, his last sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church, and his final speech in Memphis are among his most famous utterances (I've Been to the Mountaintop). The Letter from Birmingham Jail ranks among the most important American documents.

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Death/ Assassination

Dr. King was shot while standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee on April 4, 1968, by James Earl Ray. James Earl Ray was arrested in London, England on June 8, 1968 and returned to Memphis, Tennessee to stand trial for the assassination of Dr. King. On March 9, 1969, before coming to trial, he entered a guilty plea and was sentenced to ninety-nine years in the Tennessee State Penitentiary. Dr. King had been in Memphis to help lead sanitation workers in a protest

against low wages and intolerable conditions. His funeral services were held April 9, 1968, in Atlanta at Ebenezer Church and on the campus of Morehouse College, with the President of the United States proclaiming a day of mourning and flags being flown at half-staff. The area where Dr. King was entombed is located on Freedom Plaza and surrounded by the Freedom Hall Complex of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, Inc. The Martin Luther King, Jr. Historic Site, a 23 acre area was listed as a National Historic Landmark on May 5, 1977, and was made a National Historic Site on October 10, 1980 by the U.S. Department of the Interior:

Source of Bio Text: Major Events in the Life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Handout included in curriculum package, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., A Biographical Sketch, prepared by the National Library Involvement Committee, Martin Luther King, Jr. Federal Holiday Commission. (Washington D.C.: Martin Luther King, Jr. Federal Holiday Commission), 1994.

Links

The King Center "Martin Luther King Jr. Collection", Morehouse College, RWWL

Photo Essay: "The Last Days of Martin Luther King, Jr.", Time The Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers Project

MLK online Martin Luther King Jr., "A New Sense of Direction (1968)"

Martin Luther King, Jr. at Find a Grave "Martin Luther King Jr.", The Seattle Times

Speeches of Martin Luther King

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1956 Comic Book: Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story

Kirk, John A., "Martin Luther King, Jr.", New Georgia Encyclopedia "Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Global Freedom Struggle", online

encyclopedia, chronology and document library, The Martin LutherKing, Jr. Research and Education Institute, Stanford University.

"Interview with Dr. Kenneth Clark", PBS "Martin Luther King, Jr.", Encyclopedia of Alabama

Works by or about Martin Luther King, Jr. in libraries (WorldCatcatalog)

Works by Martin Luther King, Jr. at Project Gutenberg Martin Luther King Jr.: Peacemaker - a slideshow by Life magazine

Video and audio material

Audio from April 1961 King, "The Church on the Frontier of RacialTensions" - speech at Southern Seminary

Audio recordings of King speeches including "I Have a Dream" Martin Luther King, Jr. Historic Speeches and Interviews

Video of speeches - "I Have a Dream" and "I've Been to the

mountaintop" "I Have a Dream" Hiphop song sampling

The New Negro, King interviewed by J. Waites Waring "I Have a Dream" speech video

"Beyond Vietnam" speech text and audio YouTube clip of "How Long? Not Long!" speech

YouTube clip of "Mountaintop" speech King Institute Encyclopedia multimedia

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Martin Luther King, Jr. quotes

from the book

All too many of those who live in affluent America ignore those who exist in poor America; in doing so, the affluent Americans will eventually have to

face themselves with the question that (Adolph) Eichman chose to ignore: How responsible am I for the well-being of my fellows?

***

If an American is concerned only about his nation, he will not be concerned about the peoples of Asia, Africa, or South America. Is this not why nations

engage in the madness of war without the slightest sense of penitence? Is this not why the murder of a citizen of your own nation is a crime, but the

murder of citizens of another nation in war is an act of heroic virtue?

***

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History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling

silence of the good people. ***

The profit motive, when it is the sole basis of an economic system, encourages a cutthroat competition and selfish ambition that inspires men

to be more concerned about making a living than making a life.

*** The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of

comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

***

One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly ... and with a willingness to accept the penalty.

*** Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal.

***

Most people ... are thermometers that record or register the temperature of majority of opinion, not thermostats that transform or regulate the

temperature of society.

The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reason, but with no morals.

***

Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is

force to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored.

***

Many white Americans of good will have never connected bigotry with economic exploitation. They have deplored prejudice but tolerated or

ignored economic injustice. ***

Those who assert that evil means can lead to good ends are deceiving

themselves. ***

Something about evil we must never forget, namely, that evil is recalcitrant and determined, and never voluntarily relinquishes its hold

short of a persistent, almost fanatical resistance.

*** To ignore evil is to become an accomplice to it.

*** Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded

by the oppressed.

*** History is the struggle between good and evil.

***

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"Martin Luther King is the most notorious liar in the country." J. Edgar Hover

*** To accept passively an unjust system is to cooperate with that system;

thereby the oppressed become as evil as the oppressor. ***

It is not possible to be in favor of justice for some people and not be in

favor of justice for all people. ***

I have come to see that America is in danger of losing her soul, Something must happen to awaken the dozing soul of America before it is too late.

***

The willingness to accept the penalty for breaking the unjust law is what makes civil disobedience a moral act and not merely an act of lawbreaking.

*** Morality cannot be legislated but behavior can be regulated. Judicial

decrees may not change the heart, but they can restrain the heartless.

*** The law may not be able to make a man love me, but it can keep him from

lynching me. ***

The habits, if not the hearts of people, have been and are being altered by legislative acts, judicial decisions, and executive orders. Let us not be

misled by those who argue that segregation cannot be ended by force of

law. ***

One may well ask: How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others? The answer lies in the fact that

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there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral

responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.

***

How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An

unjust law is a code that l is out of harmony with the moral law. ***

An unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels

a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself. This is difference made legal. By the same token, a just law is a code that a

majority compels a minority to follow and that it is willing to follow itself. ***

Laws only declare rights; they do not deliver them. The oppressed must

take hold of laws and transform them into effective mandates. ***

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Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice . . . when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that

block the flow of social progress. ***

... A genuine leader doesn't reflect consensus, he molds consensus. ***

If we are to have peace on earth, our loyalties must become ecumenical

rather than sectional. Our loyalties must transcend our race, our tribe, our class, and our nation; and this means we must develop a world

perspective. ***

Success, recognition, and conformity are the bywords of the modern world

where everyone seems to crave the anesthetizing security of being identified with the majority.

*** ... we will never have peace in the world until men everywhere recognize that ends are not cut off from means, because the means represent the

ideal in the making, and the end in process, and ultimately you can't reach good ends through evil means, because the means represent the seed and

the end represents the tree. and the end represents the tree.

*** It is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends.... It is just as

wrong, or perhaps even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral

ends. ***

The means by which we live have outdistanced the ends for which we live. Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided

missiles and misguided men.

*** ... middle-class values were less important than human values.

*** Middle-class values stress the importance of career and money. These

were not the values which led to the civil rights movement; these are not

the values which lead to positive social transformation. ***

They (the young blacks who made history in the early 1960s) abandoned those (middle class) values when they put careers and wealth in a

secondary role. When they cheerfully became jailbirds and troublemakers,

when they took off their Brooks Brothers attire and put on overalls to work in the isolated rural south, they challenged and inspired white youth to

emulate them. ***

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military

defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom. ***

... The trailblazers in human, academic, and religious freedom have always been in the minority.

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*** "I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely

disappointed by the white moderate," he wrote in his Letter from Birmingham Jail. "I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that

the Negro's great stumbling block is not the White Citizen's Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to

'order' than to justice, who prefers a negative peace which is the absence

of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice, who constantly says 'I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree

with your methods of direct action,' who paternalistically believes that he can set the timetable for another man's freedom.''

***

Money, like any other force such as electricity, is amoral and can be used for either good or evil.

*** For modern man, absolute right and absolute wrong are a matter of what

the majority is doing. Right and wrong are relative to likes and dislikes and

the customs of a particular community. ***

Our nation was born in genocide when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian, was an inferior race.

*** True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of

justice.

*** ... truth lies prostrate on the rugged hills of nameless calvaries; and men

do reverence before the false gods of nationalism and materialism. ***

In order to be true to one's conscience and true to God, a righteous man

has no alternative but to refuse to cooperate with an evil system. ***

We are a nation that worships the frontier tradition, and our heroes are those who champion justice through violent retaliation against injustice. It is not simple to adopt a credo that moral force has as much strength and

virtue as the capacity to return a physical blow; or that to refrain from hitting back requires more will and bravery than the automatic reflexes of

defense. ***

Non-violent resistance is not aimed against oppressors but against

oppression. ***

Often the oppressor goes along unaware of the evil involved in his oppression so long as the oppressed accepts it.

***

One of the most persistent ambiguities we face is that everybody talks about peace as a goal, but among the wielders of power peace is

practically nobody's business. ***

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True peace is not merely the absence of tension, but it is the presence of justice.

*** The only real revolutionary ... is a man who has nothing to lose.

*** The dispossessed of this nation -- the poor, both white and Negro -- live in

a cruelly unjust society. They must organize a revolution against that

injustice, not against the lives of the persons who are their fellow citizens, but against the structures through which the society is refusing to take

means which have been called for, and which are at hand, to lift the load of poverty.

***

It is not only poverty that torments the Negro; it is the fact of poverty amid

plenty. It is a misery generated by the gulf between the affluence he sees in the mass media and the deprivation he experiences in his everyday life.

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There is nothing new about poverty. What is new, however, is that we now have the resources to get rid of it.

*** ... power without love is reckless and abusive and ... love without power is

sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice.

***

I'm not interested in power for power's sake, but I'm interested in power that is moral, that is right and that is good.

*** Power and morality must go together, implementing, fulfilling and

ennobling each other.... Power at its best is the right use of strength.

*** We need a radical reordering of our national priorities.

*** Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable. Even a superficial look

at history reveals that no social advance rolls in on the wheels of

inevitability. Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of

dedicated individuals. ***

He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps

perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.

*** We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our

nation is to survive its own folly. Every man of humane convictions must

decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.

***

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Any religion which professes to be concerned with the souls of men and is not concerned with the slums that damn them, the economic conditions

that strangle them, and the social conditions that cripple them, is a dry-as-dust religion.

*** A religion true to its nature must also be concerned about man's social

conditions.

*** A social movement that only moves people is merely a revolt. A movement

that changes both people and institutions is a revolution. ***

Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit

and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal opposition to poverty, racism and militarism.

*** When scientific power outruns moral power, we end up with guided

missiles and misguided men.

*** One of the sure signs of maturity is the ability to rise to the point of self-

criticism. ***

Evil is not driven out, but crowded out ... through the expulsive power of something good.

***

We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing"-oriented society to a "person"-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives

and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism and militarism are incapable to being

conquered.

*** We are prone to judge success by the index of our salaries or the size of

our automobiles, rather than by the quality of our service and relationship to humanity.

***

The Darwinian concept of the survival of the fittest has been substituted by a philosophy of the survival of the slickest.

*** To cure injustices, you must expose them before the light of human

conscience and the bar of public opinion.

*** We must use our vast resources of wealth to aid the undeveloped countries

of the world. Have we spent far too much of our national budget in establishing military bases around the world and far too little in

establishing bases of genuine concern and understanding?

*** We in the West must bear in mind that the poor countries are poor

primarily because we have exploited them through political or economic colonialism.

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*** Ultimately a great nation is a compassionate nation.

*** Freedom is ... the bonus we receive for knowing the truth.

*** The plea for unity is not a call for uniformity. There must always be a

healthy debate.

*** It is a sad fact that because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of

communism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have

now become the arch-anti-revolutionaries.

*** I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world

revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and

justice of many of our past and present policies.

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast between poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across

the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America only to take the profits out with

no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: "This is not just."

It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say:

"This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and

nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world

***

... the great glory of American democracy is the right to protest for right.