What life was like
In 1954, Martin Luther King became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church
in Montgomery, Alabama. Always a strong worker for civil rights for members of
his race, King was, by this time, a member of the executive committee of the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the leading
organization of its kind in the nation. He was ready, then, early in December,
1955, to accept the leadership of the first great Negro nonviolent
demonstration of contemporary times in the United States, the bus boycott
described by Gunnar Jahn in his presentation speech in honor of the laureate.
The boycott lasted 382 days. On December 21, 1956, after the Supreme Court of
the United States had declared unconstitutional the laws requiring segregation
on buses, Negroes and whites rode the buses as equals. During these days of
boycott, King was arrested, his home was bombed, he was subjected to personal
abuse, but at the same time he emerged as a Negro 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. The ideals for this organization he took
from Christianity; its operational techniques from Gandhi. In the eleven-year
period between 1957 and 1968, King traveled over six million miles and spoke
over twenty-five hundred times, appearing wherever there was injustice,
protest, and action; and meanwhile he wrote five books as well as numerous
articles. In these years, he led a massive protest in Birmingham, Alabama, that
caught the attention of the entire world, providing what he called a coalition
of conscience. and inspiring his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail", a manifesto
of the Negro revolution; he planned the drives in Alabama for the registration
of Negroes as voters; he directed the peaceful march on Washington, D.C., of
250,000 people to whom he delivered his address, "l Have a Dream", he conferred
with President John F. Kennedy and campaigned for President Lyndon B. Johnson;
he was arrested upwards of twenty times and assaulted at least four times; he
was awarded five honorary degrees; was named Man of the Year by Time
magazine in 1963; and became not only the symbolic leader of American blacks
but also a world figure.
At the age of thirty-five, Martin Luther King, Jr., was the
youngest man to have received the Nobel Peace Prize. When notified of his
selection, he announced that he would turn over the prize money of $54,123 to
the furtherance 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 assassinatedMichael King Sr. stepped in as pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church upon the
death of his father-in-law in 1931. He too became a successful minister, and
adopted the name Martin Luther King Sr. in honor of the German Protestant
religious leader Martin Luther. In due time, Michael Jr. would follow his
father's lead and adopt the name himself.
Young Martin had an older sister, Willie Christine, and a younger brother,
Alfred Daniel Williams King. The King children grew up in a secure and loving
environment. Martin Sr. was more the disciplinarian, while his wife's gentleness
easily balanced out the father's more strict hand. Though they undoubtedly
tried, Martin Jr.’s parents couldn’t shield him completely from racism. Martin
Luther King Sr. fought against racial prejudice, not just because his race
suffered, but because he considered racism and segregation to be an affront to
God's will. He strongly discouraged any sense of class superiority in his
children which left a lasting impression on Martin Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr. was in trouble. He had been arrested in Birmingham,
Alabama, for leading a freedom march. Now he was in jail. No one could visit
him. He could not make a telephone call. This was "solitary."
King's wife, Coretta, was home in Atlanta, Georgia. She had not heard from
her husband in two days. Finally, she felt she had to do something. Once before,
King had been in "solitary." At that time, John F. Kennedy was running for
President. He had called Coretta and told her he would try to help her husband.
And the next day, King got out of jail.
Now, in April, 1963, Coretta called President Kennedy in Washington. The
President was away, but she spoke to his brother, Attorney General Robert
Kennedy. She told him she was afraid her husband was not safe. He told her he
would do everything he could to help King.
Later, Coretta's phone rang. It was the President calling from Florida. He
told her he would look into her husband's trouble right away.
Both the President and his brother called Birmingham. Soon King was allowed
to call Coretta. He was also allowed a visit from his lawyer. Before long, he
was out of jail.
King was out of danger — for now. But the truth was, he lived with danger
almost all the time. His home had been bombed twice. He had gotten hundreds of
calls and letters from people who said they would kill him. Leading the civil
rights movement was a dangerous job. Why had King chosen it? Perhaps there was
something in his early life that made it all happen.
MARTIN'S CHILDHOOD
Martin Luther King Jr., was born in January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia.
His father was the pastor of a Baptist church there. King Sr., hated the South's
segregation laws. These laws kept white and black people separated. African
Americans were kept out of "white" schools, parks, theaters, hotels, and eating
places. They had to sit in separate sections in trains and buses.
"I don't care how long I have to live with this system," King Sr., said. "I
will never accept it." He was a fighter and his son, Martin, took after him.
One day, Martin was riding with his father in the family car. Mr. King drove
past a "Stop" sign by accident. A policeman told him to pull over. Then he said,
"All right, boy, let me see your license."
No man likes to be called a "boy." This was a way of insulting
African-Americans in the South. Mr. King got very angry. He pointed to his son
and said to the policeman:
"This is a boy. I'm a man. Until you call me one, I will not listen to
you."
The policeman was so surprised, he wrote out the ticket in a hurry and
left.
It was no wonder that Martin also grew up to hate segregation. The whole
system, he thought, was unfair and stupid. Even more, he hated the violence that
grew out of segregation. He had seen the Ku Klux Klan riding at night. It meant
that an African-American would be beaten or killed for going against the system.
These things almost made Martin turn against all white people.
SEEKING A CAREER
In school, Martin was a bright student and skipped two grades. He entered
Morehouse College in Atlanta when he was only 15. At this time, Martin wasn't
sure what he wanted to be. But he knew he wanted to help his people in some way.
Religion, he felt, was "out of touch" with the real problems of his people —
segregation and poverty. For a while, he thought he would become a lawyer.
But two of the leading teachers at Morehouse were ministers. And they showed
him that a minister could care about things like segregation and hunger. Martin
knew then that he wanted to be a minister. At 18, Martin became his father's
assistant.
Martin graduated from Morehouse when he was 19. But he wanted to study even
more. So he entered a school of religion in Pennsylvania. The school had 100
students. Only six were black. Now Martin set out to prove what his mother had
always told him: "You are as good as anybody."
Martin studied hard and became an "A" student. What about his wish to help
his people? He was beginning to find a way.
In college, Martin had read an essay by Henry David Thoreau. Thoreau was an
American writer who lived more than 100 years ago. He believed that a man had
the right to disobey any law he thought was evil or unjust. Once Thoreau did not
pay his taxes as a protest against slavery. He was put in jail. A friend came to
visit him.
"Why are you in jail?" the friend asked.
"Why are you out of jail?" he answered.
THOREAU AND GANDHI
King liked Thoreau's idea — that men should not obey evil or unjust laws. And
he began to search harder for a way to fight against evil. He read books by the
world's great thinkers and writers. Then one day, he heard a speech about the
great leader of India, Mahatma Gandhi.
Gandhi had won freedom for his country from British rule (1947). And he had
done it in a very unusual way. From the start, he told his people not to use
violence against the British. He told them to resist the British by peaceful
means only. They would march. They would sit down or lie down in the streets.
They would strike. They would boycott (refuse to buy) British goods.
Gandhi had also read Thoreau's essay. He, too, believed that men had the
right to disobey unjust laws. Like Thoreau, he believed that men should gladly
go to jail when they break such laws.
"Fill the jails," Gandhi said. But — never use violence. Violence only brings
about more hate and more violence. Gandhi told his people to meet body force
with soul force. He told them to meet hate with love. Gandhi called this "war
without violence." And it helped India gain its freedom.
KING ADOPTS NONVIOLENCE
Martin Luther King Jr. began to think that black Americans could use Gandhi's
way to win their freedom. Wasn't Gandhi's way also the way of Jesus Christ?
Hadn't Christ told his people to "turn the other cheek" if someone struck
them?
This idea of fighting peacefully against evil was called nonviolence. Was it
the coward's way? No, said King. It took more courage not to hit back when
struck.
In the next few years, many good things happened to King. He graduated at the
top of his class, with "A's" in all his subjects. He met and married Coretta
Scott. And, in 1954, he got the job he really wanted. He became minister of a
very good Baptist church in Montgomery, Alabama.
King's life was now busy and full. But he wanted to do more than care for the
souls of his church members. He wanted his church to help young people to go to
college. He wanted it to help black people to register and vote — a tough job in
the South. Religion, King said, must care about heaven and earth, souls and
slums.
in Montgomery, Alabama. Always a strong worker for civil rights for members of
his race, King was, by this time, a member of the executive committee of the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the leading
organization of its kind in the nation. He was ready, then, early in December,
1955, to accept the leadership of the first great Negro nonviolent
demonstration of contemporary times in the United States, the bus boycott
described by Gunnar Jahn in his presentation speech in honor of the laureate.
The boycott lasted 382 days. On December 21, 1956, after the Supreme Court of
the United States had declared unconstitutional the laws requiring segregation
on buses, Negroes and whites rode the buses as equals. During these days of
boycott, King was arrested, his home was bombed, he was subjected to personal
abuse, but at the same time he emerged as a Negro 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. The ideals for this organization he took
from Christianity; its operational techniques from Gandhi. In the eleven-year
period between 1957 and 1968, King traveled over six million miles and spoke
over twenty-five hundred times, appearing wherever there was injustice,
protest, and action; and meanwhile he wrote five books as well as numerous
articles. In these years, he led a massive protest in Birmingham, Alabama, that
caught the attention of the entire world, providing what he called a coalition
of conscience. and inspiring his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail", a manifesto
of the Negro revolution; he planned the drives in Alabama for the registration
of Negroes as voters; he directed the peaceful march on Washington, D.C., of
250,000 people to whom he delivered his address, "l Have a Dream", he conferred
with President John F. Kennedy and campaigned for President Lyndon B. Johnson;
he was arrested upwards of twenty times and assaulted at least four times; he
was awarded five honorary degrees; was named Man of the Year by Time
magazine in 1963; and became not only the symbolic leader of American blacks
but also a world figure.
At the age of thirty-five, Martin Luther King, Jr., was the
youngest man to have received the Nobel Peace Prize. When notified of his
selection, he announced that he would turn over the prize money of $54,123 to
the furtherance 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 assassinatedMichael King Sr. stepped in as pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church upon the
death of his father-in-law in 1931. He too became a successful minister, and
adopted the name Martin Luther King Sr. in honor of the German Protestant
religious leader Martin Luther. In due time, Michael Jr. would follow his
father's lead and adopt the name himself.
Young Martin had an older sister, Willie Christine, and a younger brother,
Alfred Daniel Williams King. The King children grew up in a secure and loving
environment. Martin Sr. was more the disciplinarian, while his wife's gentleness
easily balanced out the father's more strict hand. Though they undoubtedly
tried, Martin Jr.’s parents couldn’t shield him completely from racism. Martin
Luther King Sr. fought against racial prejudice, not just because his race
suffered, but because he considered racism and segregation to be an affront to
God's will. He strongly discouraged any sense of class superiority in his
children which left a lasting impression on Martin Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr. was in trouble. He had been arrested in Birmingham,
Alabama, for leading a freedom march. Now he was in jail. No one could visit
him. He could not make a telephone call. This was "solitary."
King's wife, Coretta, was home in Atlanta, Georgia. She had not heard from
her husband in two days. Finally, she felt she had to do something. Once before,
King had been in "solitary." At that time, John F. Kennedy was running for
President. He had called Coretta and told her he would try to help her husband.
And the next day, King got out of jail.
Now, in April, 1963, Coretta called President Kennedy in Washington. The
President was away, but she spoke to his brother, Attorney General Robert
Kennedy. She told him she was afraid her husband was not safe. He told her he
would do everything he could to help King.
Later, Coretta's phone rang. It was the President calling from Florida. He
told her he would look into her husband's trouble right away.
Both the President and his brother called Birmingham. Soon King was allowed
to call Coretta. He was also allowed a visit from his lawyer. Before long, he
was out of jail.
King was out of danger — for now. But the truth was, he lived with danger
almost all the time. His home had been bombed twice. He had gotten hundreds of
calls and letters from people who said they would kill him. Leading the civil
rights movement was a dangerous job. Why had King chosen it? Perhaps there was
something in his early life that made it all happen.
MARTIN'S CHILDHOOD
Martin Luther King Jr., was born in January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia.
His father was the pastor of a Baptist church there. King Sr., hated the South's
segregation laws. These laws kept white and black people separated. African
Americans were kept out of "white" schools, parks, theaters, hotels, and eating
places. They had to sit in separate sections in trains and buses.
"I don't care how long I have to live with this system," King Sr., said. "I
will never accept it." He was a fighter and his son, Martin, took after him.
One day, Martin was riding with his father in the family car. Mr. King drove
past a "Stop" sign by accident. A policeman told him to pull over. Then he said,
"All right, boy, let me see your license."
No man likes to be called a "boy." This was a way of insulting
African-Americans in the South. Mr. King got very angry. He pointed to his son
and said to the policeman:
"This is a boy. I'm a man. Until you call me one, I will not listen to
you."
The policeman was so surprised, he wrote out the ticket in a hurry and
left.
It was no wonder that Martin also grew up to hate segregation. The whole
system, he thought, was unfair and stupid. Even more, he hated the violence that
grew out of segregation. He had seen the Ku Klux Klan riding at night. It meant
that an African-American would be beaten or killed for going against the system.
These things almost made Martin turn against all white people.
SEEKING A CAREER
In school, Martin was a bright student and skipped two grades. He entered
Morehouse College in Atlanta when he was only 15. At this time, Martin wasn't
sure what he wanted to be. But he knew he wanted to help his people in some way.
Religion, he felt, was "out of touch" with the real problems of his people —
segregation and poverty. For a while, he thought he would become a lawyer.
But two of the leading teachers at Morehouse were ministers. And they showed
him that a minister could care about things like segregation and hunger. Martin
knew then that he wanted to be a minister. At 18, Martin became his father's
assistant.
Martin graduated from Morehouse when he was 19. But he wanted to study even
more. So he entered a school of religion in Pennsylvania. The school had 100
students. Only six were black. Now Martin set out to prove what his mother had
always told him: "You are as good as anybody."
Martin studied hard and became an "A" student. What about his wish to help
his people? He was beginning to find a way.
In college, Martin had read an essay by Henry David Thoreau. Thoreau was an
American writer who lived more than 100 years ago. He believed that a man had
the right to disobey any law he thought was evil or unjust. Once Thoreau did not
pay his taxes as a protest against slavery. He was put in jail. A friend came to
visit him.
"Why are you in jail?" the friend asked.
"Why are you out of jail?" he answered.
THOREAU AND GANDHI
King liked Thoreau's idea — that men should not obey evil or unjust laws. And
he began to search harder for a way to fight against evil. He read books by the
world's great thinkers and writers. Then one day, he heard a speech about the
great leader of India, Mahatma Gandhi.
Gandhi had won freedom for his country from British rule (1947). And he had
done it in a very unusual way. From the start, he told his people not to use
violence against the British. He told them to resist the British by peaceful
means only. They would march. They would sit down or lie down in the streets.
They would strike. They would boycott (refuse to buy) British goods.
Gandhi had also read Thoreau's essay. He, too, believed that men had the
right to disobey unjust laws. Like Thoreau, he believed that men should gladly
go to jail when they break such laws.
"Fill the jails," Gandhi said. But — never use violence. Violence only brings
about more hate and more violence. Gandhi told his people to meet body force
with soul force. He told them to meet hate with love. Gandhi called this "war
without violence." And it helped India gain its freedom.
KING ADOPTS NONVIOLENCE
Martin Luther King Jr. began to think that black Americans could use Gandhi's
way to win their freedom. Wasn't Gandhi's way also the way of Jesus Christ?
Hadn't Christ told his people to "turn the other cheek" if someone struck
them?
This idea of fighting peacefully against evil was called nonviolence. Was it
the coward's way? No, said King. It took more courage not to hit back when
struck.
In the next few years, many good things happened to King. He graduated at the
top of his class, with "A's" in all his subjects. He met and married Coretta
Scott. And, in 1954, he got the job he really wanted. He became minister of a
very good Baptist church in Montgomery, Alabama.
King's life was now busy and full. But he wanted to do more than care for the
souls of his church members. He wanted his church to help young people to go to
college. He wanted it to help black people to register and vote — a tough job in
the South. Religion, King said, must care about heaven and earth, souls and
slums.