Mlk Biography 2023

Mlk Biography 2023

(Martin Luther King – Jr.Atlanta, 1929 – ( Memphis, 1968) American Baptist pastor, defender of civil rights.

The long struggle of black Americans to achieve full rights began in 1955 to accelerate, whose leadership was soon to be highlighted by the young pastor Martin Luther King.
His nonviolent action, inspired by the example of Gandhi,

mobilized a growing portion of the African-American community, culminating in the summer of 1963 in the historic March on Washington, which brought together 250,000 demonstrators.

There at the foot of Lincoln Memorial, Martin Luther King delivered to the most famous and moving of his splendid speeche, known for the formula that headed the vision of a just world. I have a dream

Despite the arrests and police or racist attacks, the movement for civil equality was ripping off judicial sentences and legislative decisions against racial segregation, and obtained the endorsement of the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to King in 1964.

Unfortunately, a disastrous destiny seems drag the apostles of nonviolence: like his teacher Gandhi, Martin Luther King was assassinated four years later.

Biography Mlk Biography 2023

The son of a Baptist minister, Martin Luther King studied theology at Boston University. From a young age, he became aware of the situation of social and racial segregation in which the blacks of his country lived, and especially those of the southern states.

Converted to a Baptist pastor, in 1954 he took charge of a church in the city of Montgomery, Alabama.

Very soon he showed signs of his charisma and his firm decision to fight for the defense of civil rights with peaceful methods, drawing inspiration from the figure of Mahatma Gandhi and Henry David Thoreau ‘s theory of civil disobedience ,

the same sources that by those same years inspired Nelson Mandela ‘s fight against apartheid in South Africa. In August 1955 a lowly black dressmaker, Rosa Parks , was arrested and fined for sitting in the section reserved for whites on a bus. King led a massive year-long boycott against segregation on municipal buses.

Martin Luther King’s fame quickly spread across the country and he quickly took over the leadership of the US peace movement, first through the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and later through the Congress of Racial Equality.

Likewise, as a member of the Association for the Advancement of Colored People, he opened another front to achieve improvements in his living conditions.

In 1960, he took advantage of a spontaneous sit-in by black students in Birmingham, Alabama, to launch a nationwide campaign. On this occasion, Martin Luther King was imprisoned and later released through the intercession of John Fitgerald Kennedy,

then a candidate for the presidency of the United States, but he achieved equal access for blacks to libraries, dining rooms and parking lots.

In the summer of 1963, his struggle reached one of its culminating moments when he led a gigantic march on Washington in which some 250,000 people participated, before whom he delivered the speech today titled I have a dream (I have a dream),

a beautiful address in favor of peace and equality among human beings. King and other representatives of anti-racist organizations were received by President John F. Kennedy , who promised to expedite his policy against segregation in schools and

on the issue of unemployment, which particularly affected the black community.
However, neither the good intentions of the president,

who would die assassinated months later, nor the ethical vigor of the message of Martin Luther King, Nobel Peace Prize winner in 1964,

seemed sufficient to contain the advance of the nationalist groups of color against the integration and pro-violence, such as Black Power, Black Panthers and Black Muslims.

The permeability of groups of color (especially those living in the ghettos of New York and other northern states) to the influence of these violent groups endangered the core of King’s message, pacifism.

In March 1965, he led a demonstration of thousands of civil rights advocates who marched nearly a hundred miles from Selma, where acts of racial violence had taken place, to Montgomery. Martin Luther King’s fight had a tragic end: on April 4, 1968, he was assassinated in Memphis by James Earl Ray, a white common criminal. As his funeral was held at Atlanta’s Edenhaëser Church, a wave of violence swept across the country. Ray, arrested by the police, acknowledged the murder and was convicted on circumstantial evidence. Years later he recanted his statement and, with the support of the King family, asked for the case to be reopened and a new trial heard.

Work and ideology ( Mlk Biography 2023 )

Martin Luther King understood racial equality as an essential condition of human dignity, which was legitimized, on the political level, by the principles of democracy (of which he always declared himself a supporter), and on the moral, by religious principles. Consequently,

the action aimed at the conquest of one’s own rights should never be considered as subversive or revolutionary. King did not proclaim the violation of the law, but maintained that unjust laws cannot be obeyed, because they are opposed to the moral law.

He pointed the way of love as opposed to the inactivity of passive blacks and the exasperated hatred of nationalists. And he hurt for not having been helped and understood by the white church.

In this sense, King adapted and developed Gandhi’s concept of nonviolence, which he was able to apply creatively in a series of anti-segregationist campaigns that made him the most prestigious leader of the American civil rights movement, earning him the award in of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 and led to his assassination at the hands of a racist fanatic in 1968.

After his death, the American black movement embarked on a more openly revolutionary and violent path, far removed from the Christian and liberal inspiration of King, whose memory, Despite everything, she remains revered and loved by the masses of the disinherited of her race.

The same year as the Nobel, President Lyndon Johnson , Kennedy’s successor after the assassination, promulgated the civil rights law, which established the equality of all citizens. According to King, blacks had to abandon their abstract political neutrality to build electoral alliances and support credible candidates,

because “black influence in political power is important.” Only then would the true goal of freedom be reached, for the fate of blacks is linked to that of all America.
Its principles were expressed, in addition to the famous Letter from the Birmingham prison (1963, published by the French magazine Esprit in 1964),

in numerous works, among which Strength to Love ( 1965 ) and The Clarion stand out. of conscience ( The Trumpet of Conscience , 1968), in which often his prose, inspired by the biblical tradition of Anglo-Saxon Protestantism, reaches moments of high emotion and humanity.

Why We Can’t Wait , 1964 deserves special mention , to the extent that the exposure of his political creed alternates in this work with a passionate evocation of the events of the summer of 1963 (lived by the own author as protagonist) of great value as historical testimony.

The book is the story of the liberation of a people, obtained through the use of “a powerful and just weapon… that cuts without hurting and ennobles the man who wields it”: non-violence. read more about Mlk Biography 2023.

I have a dream ( Mlk Biography 2023 )

Despite the value of his written work, none of his texts aroused the universal admiration of his most famous speech: the one he delivered on August 28, 1963 before the 250,000 members of the march on Washington, at the foot of the Abraham Lincoln Memorial , 

The president who, a century earlier, had abolished slavery: “One hundred years ago, a great American, under whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree appeared as a great beacon of hope to millions of slaves who had been branded with the fire of flagrant injustice.

It came like the joyous dawn of the long night of their captivity. But hundred year’s later, colored America is still not free.

Considered a masterpiece of oratory, the name by which this speech is known comes from its central part, in which, reiterating the formula I have a dream, Martin Luther King elevates the simple materialization to the ideal condition. of equality.

I dream that my four young children’s will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the qualities of their character. Valuable both as a condensed expression of his principles and for its impressive emotional height, its validity continues to move us more than half a century later.

when was martin luther king born and died

Martin Luther King Jr. was born on January 15, 1929 and died on April 4, 1968.

martin luther king jr timeline

• January 15, 1929: Born in Atlanta, Georgia
• 1948: Graduated from Morehouse College with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology
• 1951: Earned a Bachelor of Divinity degree from Crozer Theological Seminary
• 1953: Married Coretta Scott
• 1955: Led the Montgomery Bus Boycott in Alabama
• 1957: Founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)
• 1963: Delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom
• 1964: Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize
• 1965: Led the Voting Rights Act march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama
• 1968: Assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee on April 4.
• 1968: The Civil Rights Act of 1968 was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson, prohibiting discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of housing
• 1986: Martin Luther King Jr. Day became a federal holiday in the United States.