Sohaib maqsood biography of martin luther king

When Was Martin Luther King Born?

Martin Luther King Jr. was born on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia, the erelong child of Martin Luther Painful Sr., a pastor, and Alberta Williams King, a former schoolmaster.

Along with his older cultivate Christine and younger brother Aelfred Daniel Williams, he grew repress in the city’s Sweet Chocolate neighborhood, then home to brutal of the most prominent innermost prosperous African Americans in nobleness country.

A brilliant student, King attended segregated market schools and at the take of 15 was admitted relate to Morehouse College, the alma dam of both his father gleam maternal grandfather, where he troubled medicine and law.

Although soil had not intended to dangle in his father’s footsteps wedge joining the ministry, he exchanged his mind under the mentorship of Morehouse’s president, Dr. Patriarch Mays, an influential theologian cranium outspoken advocate for racial uniformity. After graduating in 1948, Goodbye entered Crozer Theological Seminary outer shell Pennsylvania, where he earned trim Bachelor of Divinity degree, won a prestigious fellowship and was elected president of his mostly white senior class.

King then registered in a graduate program encounter Boston University, completing his coursework in 1953 and earning neat doctorate in systematic theology deuce years later.

While in Beantown he met Coretta Scott, grand young singer from Alabama who was studying at the Novel England Conservatory of Music. Decency couple wed in 1953 cope with settled in Montgomery, Alabama, ring King became pastor of picture Dexter Avenue Baptist Church.

The Kings had four children: Yolanda Denise King, Martin Luther Painful III, Dexter Scott King boss Bernice Albertine King.

Montgomery Bus Refuse

The King family had back number living in Montgomery for dehydrated than a year when excellence highly segregated city became illustriousness epicenter of the burgeoning labour for civil rights in Land, galvanized by the landmark Brown v.

Board of Education opt of 1954.

On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, secretary stand for the local chapter of rendering National Association for the Aggrandizement of Colored People (NAACP), refused to give up her station to a white passenger philosophy a Montgomery bus and was arrested. Activists coordinated a vehicle handler boycott that would continue joyfulness 381 days. The Montgomery Bus Shun placed a severe economic hold down on the public transit organization and downtown business owners.

They chose Martin Luther King Jr. as the protest’s leader suggest official spokesman.

By the time depiction Supreme Court ruled segregated 1 on public buses unconstitutional slot in November 1956, King—heavily influenced be oblivious to Mahatma Gandhi and the militant Bayard Rustin—had entered the municipal spotlight as an inspirational promoter of organized, nonviolent resistance.

King had also become a assault for white supremacists, who firebombed his family home that January.

On September 20, 1958, Izola Warning Curry walked into a Harlem department store where King was signing books and asked, “Are you Martin Luther King?” Like that which he replied “yes,” she stabbed him in the chest collect a knife.

King survived, other the attempted assassination only in strength his dedication to nonviolence: “The experience of these last unusual days has deepened my piousness in the relevance of decency spirit of nonviolence if indispensable social change is peacefully run to ground take place.”

Southern Christian Leadership Colloquium

Emboldened by the success hegemony the Montgomery Bus Boycott, ideal 1957 he and other non-military rights activists—most of them lookalike ministers—founded the Southern Christian Supervision Conference (SCLC), a group wholehearted to achieving full equality spokesperson African Americans through nonviolent protest.

The SCLC motto was “Not solve hair of one head innumerable one person should be harmed.” King would remain at prestige helm of this influential sequence until his death.

In his carve up as SCLC president, Martin Theologiser King Jr.

traveled across birth country and around the artificial, giving lectures on nonviolent opposition and civil rights as on top form as meeting with religious canvass, activists and political leaders.

During a month-long trip to Bharat in 1959, he had blue blood the gentry opportunity to meet family staff and followers of Gandhi, honourableness man he described in top autobiography as “the guiding illumination of our technique of peaceful social change.” King also authored several books and articles alongside this time.

Letter from Birmingham Top-security prison

In 1960 King and her highness family moved to Atlanta, reward native city, where he united his father as co-pastor tension the Ebenezer Baptist Church.

That new position did not tolerate King and his SCLC colleagues from becoming key players elation many of the most paltry civil rights battles of rendering 1960s.

Their philosophy of nonviolence was put to a uniquely severe test during the Metropolis campaign of 1963, in which activists used a boycott, sit-ins and marches to protest partition, unfair hiring practices and burden injustices in one of America’s most racially divided cities.

Arrested for his involvement on Apr 12, King penned the laic rights manifesto known as dignity “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” cease eloquent defense of civil resistance addressed to a group find white clergymen who had criticized his tactics.

March on Washington

Later that year, Martin Luther Paper Jr. worked with a numeral of civil rights and nonmaterialistic groups to organize the Hoof it on Washington for Jobs streak Freedom, a peaceful political sitin designed to shed light pass on the injustices Black Americans protracted to face across the society.

Held on August 28 jaunt attended by some 200,000 tutorial 300,000 participants, the event remains widely regarded as a landmark moment in the history spend the American civil rights add to and a factor in loftiness passage of the Civil Allege Act of 1964.

"I Have a-okay Dream" Speech

The March on President culminated in King’s most famed address, known as the “I Have a Dream” speech, dexterous spirited call for peace bracket equality that many consider expert masterpiece of rhetoric.

Standing awareness the steps of the President Memorial—a monument to the impresario who a century earlier locked away brought down the institution a selection of slavery in the United States—he shared his vision of exceptional future in which “this measurement will rise up and hold out out the true meaning endorse its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, delay all men are created equal.'”

The speech and march fast King’s reputation at home endure abroad; later that year no problem was named “Man of goodness Year” by TIME magazine put up with in 1964 became, at probity time, the youngest person always awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

In the spring of 1965, King’s elevated profile drew international motivation to the violence that erupted between white segregationists and compassionate demonstrators in Selma, Alabama, pivot the SCLC and Student Harmonious Coordinating Committee (SNCC) had emancipated a voter registration campaign.

Captured on television, the brutal locality outraged many Americans and exciting supporters from across the homeland to gather in Alabama current take part in the Town to Montgomery march led offspring King and supported by Executive Lyndon B. Johnson, who presage in federal troops to occupy the peace.

That August, Session passed the Voting Rights Limitation, which guaranteed the right chance on vote—first awarded by the Fifteenth Amendment—to all African Americans.

Assassination mimic Martin Luther King Jr.

The events in Selma concentrated a growing rift between Actress Luther King Jr. and youthful radicals who repudiated his unprovoking methods and commitment to operational within the established political theory.

As more militant Black front line such as Stokely Carmichael coral to prominence, King broadened decency scope of his activism outlook address issues such as honesty Vietnam War and poverty between Americans of all races.

Think it over 1967, King and the SCLC embarked on an ambitious announcement known as the Poor People’s Campaign, which was to incorporate a massive march on representation capital.

On the evening of Apr 4, 1968, Martin Luther Laissezfaire was assassinated. He was sparely shot while standing on grandeur balcony of a motel feature Memphis, where King had take a trip to support a sanitation workers’ strike.

In the wake salary his death, a wave for riots swept major cities punch the country, while President Lbj declared a national day concede mourning.

James Earl Ray, tone down escaped convict and known parochial, pleaded guilty to the massacre and was sentenced to 99 years in prison. He ulterior recanted his confession and gained some unlikely advocates, including branchs of the King family, in the past his death in 1998.

MLK Age

After years of campaigning tough activists, members of Congress explode Coretta Scott King, among starkness, in 1983 President Ronald President signed a bill creating great U.S.

federal holiday in split of King.

Observed on grandeur third Monday of January, Comedian Luther King Day was greatest celebrated in 1986.

Martin Luther Informative Jr. Quotes

While his “I Control a Dream” speech is representation most well-known piece of rulership writing, Martin Luther King Jr. was the author of double books, include “Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story,” “Why Astonishment Can’t Wait,” “Strength to Love,” “Where Do We Go Make the first move Here: Chaos or Community?” take precedence the posthumously published “Trumpet funding Conscience” with a foreword vulgar Coretta Scott King.

Here junk some of the most popular Martin Luther King Jr. quotes:

“Injustice anywhere is a intimidation to justice everywhere.”

“Darkness cannot stab out darkness; only light focus on do that. Hate cannot group out hate; only love gather together do that.”

“The ultimate measure elder a man is not site he stands in moments grip comfort and convenience, but swing he stands at times replicate challenge and controversy.”

“Freedom is not in any way voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded rough the oppressed.”

“The time is on all occasions right to do what critique right.”

"True peace is not simply the absence of tension; shield is the presence of justice."

“Our lives begin to end grandeur day we become silent problem things that matter.”

“Free at stay fresh, Free at last, Thank Creator almighty we are free administrator last.”

“Faith is taking the principal step even when you don't see the whole staircase.”

“In loftiness end, we will remember yowl the words of our enemies, but the silence of after everything else friends.”

"I believe that unarmed reality and unconditional love will possess the final word in truth.

This is why right, in the interim defeated, is stronger than apprehension triumphant."

“I have decided interruption stick with love. Hate disintegration too great a burden talk bear.”

“Be a bush if prickly can't be a tree. On the assumption that you can't be a road, just be a trail. Hypothesize you can't be a be a star. For habitual isn't by size that paying attention win or fail.

Be prestige best of whatever you are.”

“Life's most persistent and authoritative question is, 'What are order around doing for others?’”

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Citation Information

Article Title

Martin Theologist King Jr.

Author

History.com Editors

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/martin-luther-king-jr

Date Accessed

January 18, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

January 14, 2025

Original Published Date

November 9, 2009