Martin luther king jr biography encyclopedia americana

The civil rights leader was attacked in by Izola Ware Curry, a decade before his murder. Later that year, Martin Luther King Jr. Held on August 28 and attended by sometoparticipants, the event is widely regarded as a watershed moment in the history of the American civil rights movement and a factor in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of Captured on television, the brutal scene outraged many Americans and inspired supporters from across the country to gather in Alabama and take part in the Selma to Montgomery march led by King and supported by President Lyndon B.

Johnsonwho sent in martin luther king jr biography encyclopedia americana troops to keep the peace. As more militant Black leaders such as Stokely Carmichael rose to prominence, King broadened the scope of his activism to address issues such as the Vietnam War and poverty among Americans of all races. On the evening of April 4,Martin Luther King was assassinated.

In the wake of his death, a wave of riots swept major cities across the country, while President Johnson declared a national day of mourning. James Earl Rayan escaped convict and known racist, pleaded guilty to the murder and was sentenced to 99 years in prison. He later recanted his confession and gained some unlikely advocates, including members of the King family, before his death in After years of campaigning by activists, members of Congress and Coretta Scott King, among others, in President Ronald Reagan signed a bill creating a U.

King brother Alveda King niece. Civil rights peace anti-war. This article is part of a series about. See also: Martin Luther King Jr. Activism and organizational leadership. Montgomery bus boycott, Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Survived knife attack, Atlanta sit-ins, prison sentence, and the elections. Albany Movement, Main article: Albany Movement.

Birmingham campaign, Main article: Birmingham campaign. March on Washington, Main article: March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. I Have a Dream. Problems playing this file? See media help. Main article: St. Augustine movement. Biddeford, Maine, New York City, Scripto strike in Atlanta, Main article: — Scripto strike. Selma voting rights movement and "Bloody Sunday", Main article: Selma to Montgomery marches.

Chicago open housing movement, Main article: Chicago Freedom Movement. Opposition to the Vietnam War. It reveals systemic rather than superficial flaws and suggests that radical reconstruction of society itself is the real issue to be faced —Martin Luther King Jr. Poor People's Campaign, Main article: Poor People's Campaign. Assassination and aftermath.

I've Been to the Mountaintop. Further information: King assassination riots. Allegations of conspiracy. Main article: Martin Luther King Jr. See also: Black Consciousness Movement. See also: Northern Ireland civil rights movement. Ideas, influences, and political stances. Criticism within the movement. Activism and involvement with Native Americans.

See also: Reparations for slavery debate in the United States. State surveillance and coercion. FBI surveillance and wiretapping. NSA monitoring of King's communications. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN X. The New York Times. Voice of America. Archived from the original on August 2, Board of Education. ISBN The King Center. The Martin Luther King, Jr.

Center for Nonviolent Social Change. Archived from the original on January 22, Retrieved January 22, March 9, Archived from the original on March 10, Retrieved September 2, Archived from the original on December 17, Retrieved June 24, Archived from the original on January 18, Retrieved May 29, Beacon Press. January 15, The Washington Post.

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Martin luther king jr biography encyclopedia americana: Martin Luther King, Jr., was

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ISSN The Daily Telegraph. February 1, Archived from the original on November 13, Retrieved September 8, Martin Luther King, Jr. InterVarsity Press. University of Georgia Press. Retrieved June 17, Encyclopedia of Alabama. Archived from the original on January 23, Retrieved January 23, March 11, Archived from the original on September 18, Retrieved June 8, The Montgomery Bus Boycott.

Gareth Stevens. Ethical Leadership Through Transforming Justice. University Press of America. Patterns of Conflict, Paths to Peace. Broadview Press. June 22, Archived from the original on November 10, Retrieved November 10, Billy Graham and the Rise of the Republican South. University of Pennsylvania Press. Retrieved April 8, May 17, Archived from the original on January 15, Retrieved January 30, Civil Rights Digital Library.

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May 4, October 25, Archived from the original on November 20, Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr. Archived from the original on November 9, Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Archived from the original on October 19, Atlanta Magazine. Archived from the original on November 17, New Georgia Encyclopedia. Archived from the original on December 23, Hatchette Digital.

Retrieved January 4, Harper Collins. Civil Rights Movement Archive. Archived from the original on July 7, April 16, Archived from the original on June 17, Simon and Schuster. Wm B Eerdmans Publishing. Newsweek : May 13, Newsweek : 28, April 22, Retrieved August 22, Encyclopedia of Race and Crime. Sage Publications. Retrieved June 7, Archived from the original on January 7, King began writing the letter on newspaper margins and continued on bits of paper brought by friends.

Hoover Institution. Archived from the original on July 1, Retrieved April 28, Basic Civitas Books. Freedom Riders: and the Struggle for Racial Justice. Leaders from the s: A biographical sourcebook of American activism. African-Americans and the Quest for Civil Rights, — NYU Press. Robert Kennedy and His Times. Houghton Mifflin Books. Press of Mississippi.

Living for Change: An Autobiography. U of Minnesota Press. Mysteries in History: From Prehistory to the Present. The Sixties in America. Salem Press. Syracuse University Press. Congressional Record. Library of Congress. Archived from the original on July 28, Retrieved July 11, The Guardian. Archived from the original on August 27, Retrieved January 9, Newmarket Press.

Archived from the original on January 5, Retrieved August 27, Grand Expectations: The United States, — The Struggle for Black Equality. Hill and Wang. Robert B. Archived from the original on June 10, Archived from the original on November 3, Retrieved January 17, Pineapple Press. Augustine, Florida". About this article Martin Luther King Jr.

Updated About encyclopedia. Martin Luther College: Narrative Description. Martin Luther and the Reformation. Martin Lister. Martin IV, Pope. Martin Industries, Inc. Martin I, Pope, St. Martin Heinrich Klaproth. Martin Gellert. Martin Franchises, Inc. Martin E. Martin du Gard: Banquet Speech. Martin de Porres. Martin Cortes de Albacar. Martin Community College: Tabular Data.

Martin Community College: Narrative Description. National Historic Site. Martin Luther: Founder of Lutheranism. Martin Marietta Corporation. Martin Methodist College: Narrative Description. Martin Methodist College: Tabular Data. Martin of Braga, St. Martin of Tours, St. Martin of Troppau. Martin R. Martin Rodbell. Martin T. They know that people who built the bridges, the mansions and docks of the South could build modern buildings if they were only given a chance for apprenticeship training.

They realize that it is hard, raw discrimination that shuts them out. 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 [wealth] he sees in the mass media and the deprivation he experiences in his everyday life. In his three years at Fisk, Du Bois witnessed racial discrimination and resolved to fight against it.

He became a writer, editor, and an impassioned speaker. Du Bois observed that those on the outside might glance at the people within the cave, yet continue to pass them by. Many do not even look. The people inside feel trapped, as if a barrier stands between them and the outside. As a result, "the people within may become hysterical.

They may scream and hurl themselves against the barriers, hardly realizing in their bewilderment that they are screaming in a vacuum unheard and that their antics may actually seem funny to those outside looking in. Living with the daily ugliness of slum life, educational castration and economic exploitation, some ghetto dwellers now and then strike out in spasms of violence and self-defeating riots.

A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard. It is the desperate, suicidal cry of one who is so fed up with the powerlessness of his cave existence that he asserts that he would rather be dead than ignored…. In the treatment of poverty nationally, one fact stands out: there are twice as many white poor as Negro poor in the United States. Therefore I will not dwell on the experiences of poverty that derive from racial discrimination, but will discuss the poverty that affects white and Negro alike.

Up to recently we have proceeded from a premise [assumption] that poverty is a consequence of multiple evils: lack of education restricting job opportunities; poor housing which stultified [makes useless] home life and suppressed [stopped] initiative; fragile family relationships which distorted personality development. The logic of this approach suggested that each of these causes be attacked one by one.

Hence a housing program to transform living conditions, improved educational facilities to furnish tools for better job opportunities, and family counseling to create better personal adjustments were designed. In combination these measures were intended to remove the causes of poverty. While none of these remedies in itself is unsound, all have a fatal disadvantage.

The programs have never proceeded on a coordinated basis or at similar rates of development. Housing measures have fluctuated [changed] at the whims of legislative bodies. They have been piecemeal and pygmy. Educational reforms have been even more sluggish and entangled in bureaucratic stalling and economy-dominated decisions. Family assistance stagnated [stood still] in neglect and then suddenly was discovered to be the central issue on the basis of hasty and superficial studies.

At no time has a total, coordinated and fully adequate program been conceived. As a consequence, fragmentary and spasmodic reforms have failed to reach down to the profoundest needs of the poor. In addition to the absence of coordination and sufficiency, the programs of the past all have another common failing—they are indirect. Each seeks to solve poverty by first solving something else.

I am now convinced that the simplest approach will prove to be the most effective—the solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed measure: the guaranteed income. Earlier in this century this proposal would have been greeted with ridicule and denunciation [strong disapproval] as destructive of initiative and responsibility.

At that time economic status was considered the measure of the individual's abilities and talents. In the simplistic thinking of that day the absence of worldly goods indicated a want of industrious habits and moral fiber. We have come a long way in our understanding of human motivation and of the blind operation of our economic system. Now we realize that dislocations [disruptions] in the market operation of our economy and the martin luther king jr biography encyclopedia americana of discrimination thrust people into idleness and bind them in constant or frequent unemployment against their will.

The poor are less often dismissed from our conscience today by being branded as inferior and incompetent. We also know that no matter how dynamically the economy develops and expands it does not eliminate all poverty. We have come to the point where we must make the nonproducer a consumer or we will find ourselves drowning in a sea of consumer goods.

We have so energetically mastered production that we now must give attention to distribution. Though there have been increases in purchasing power, they have lagged behind increases in production. Those at the lowest economic level, the poor white and Negro, the aged and chronically ill, are traditionally unorganized and therefore have little ability to force the necessary growth in their income.

They stagnate or become even poorer in relation to the larger society. The problem indicates that our emphasis must be two-fold. We must create full employment or we must create incomes. People must be made consumers by one method or the other. Once they are placed in this position, we need to be concerned that the potential of the individual is not wasted.

New forms of work that enhance the social good will have to be devised for those for whom traditional jobs are not available…. We are likely to find that the problems of housing and education, instead of preceding the elimination of poverty, will themselves be affected if poverty is first abolished. The poor transformed into purchasers will do a great deal on their own to alter housing decay.

Negroes, who have a double disability, will have a greater effect on discrimination when they have the additional weapon of cash to use in their struggle. Beyond these advantages, a host of positive psychological changes inevitably will result from widespread economic security. The dignity of the individual will flourish when the decisions concerning his life are in his own hands, when he has the assurance that his income is stable and certain, and when he knows that he has the means to seek self-improvement.

Personal conflicts between husband, wife and children will diminish when the unjust measurement of human worth on a scale of dollars is eliminated. Two conditions are indispensable if we are to ensure that the guaranteed income operates as a consistently progressive measure. First, it must be pegged to the median income of society, not at the lowest levels of income.

To guarantee an income at the floor would simply perpetuate [bring about] welfare standards and freeze into the society poverty conditions. Second, the guaranteed income must be dynamic; it must automatically increase as the total social income grows. Were it permitted to remain static [unchanged] under growth conditions, the recipients would suffer a relative decline.

If periodic reviews disclose that the whole national income has risen, then the guaranteed income would have to be adjusted upward by the same Retrogression: Heading in percentage. Without these safeguards a creeping retrogression would occur, nullifying [invalidating] the gains of security and stability. This proposal is not a "civil rights" program, in the sense that that term is currently used.

The program would benefit all the poor, including the two-thirds of them who are white. I hope that both Negro and white will act in coalition [partnership] to effect this change, because their combined strength will be necessary to overcome the fierce opposition we must realistically anticipate. Our nation's adjustment to a new mode of thinking will be facilitated if we realize that for nearly forty years two groups in our society have already been enjoying a guaranteed income.

Indeed, it is a symptom of our confused social values that these two groups turn out to be the richest and the poorest. The wealthy who own securities have always had an assured income; and their polar opposite, the relief client, has been guaranteed an income, however miniscule [tiny], through welfare benefits. The contemporary tendency in our society is to base our distribution on scarcity, which has vanished, and to compress our abundance into the overfed mouths of the middle and upper classes until they gag with superfluity [overabundance].

If democracy is to have breadth of meaning, it is necessary to adjust this inequity. It is not only moral, but it is also intelligent. We are wasting and degrading human life by clinging to archaic [outdated] thinking. The curse of poverty has no justification in our age. It is socially as cruel and blind as the practice of cannibalism at the dawn of civilization, when men ate each other because they had not yet learned to take food from the soil or to consume the abundant animal life around them.

The time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the total, direct and immediate abolition of poverty. Late inKing began planning the Poor People's Campaign. He wanted to recruit poor men and women from urban and rural areas to campaign for economic martins luther king jr biography encyclopedia americana. The planning involved training in nonviolent action as well as a three-month series of marches, rallies, sit-ins, and boycotts.

The protests were intended to pressure political and business officials into showing more concern toward the poor and more action to lessen poverty. King continued to call for a guaranteed family income, threatened national boycotts, and spoke of disrupting entire cities by nonviolent "camp-ins," including a march of the poor on Washington, D.

The year was marked by violence in America. Summer riots left 43 dead and injured in Detroit, Michigan, and 23 dead and injured in Newark, New Jersey. Violence erupted again in March of during a march by sanitation workers striking to improve work conditions in Memphis, Tennessee. The strike began as a response to a January 31 incident in which 22 black sanitation workers were sent home without pay during bad weather while all white workers remained on the job.

The march was disrupted by members who started a riot that ended with one dead, several injured, and widespread property damage. King vowed to return to reestablish nonviolence in this dispute and to direct another march. The second march was scheduled for April 8, King arrived on April 3 to give a speech and stayed at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis.

The next day, King was shot and killed while standing on the balcony of the motel. A national day of mourning was proclaimed, and funeral services were held in Atlanta, Georgia, at the Ebenezer Church and on the campus of Morehouse College. National Historic Site. In a federal holiday was established to honor King. On January 17,Martin Luther King Day was officially observed in all fifty states for the first time.

Martin luther king jr biography encyclopedia americana: He was a leader

Du Bois, W. New York : Harcourt, Chicago, IL: McClurg, Karson, Jill, ed. The Civil Rights Movement. McKnight, Gerald D. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, Schuman, Michael. Springfield, NJ: Enslow, Young, Andrew. New York: Harper Collins, Alter, Jonathan. It Was the Beginning of the End. Davis, Ossie. Smith, Vern E. The Martin Luther King, Jr.

Research and Education Institute. Economic exploitation: Making an unjust profit from the labor of another, who is often poorly paid or made to work in unhealthy or unsafe conditions. Civil rights leader the Rev. A Baptist minister and gifted public speaker, King led a series of nonviolent protests to end the "Jim Crow" laws in the American South, which were designed to keep blacks and whites living in separate social and economic spheres.

King's influence spread from one Southern city—Montgomery, Alabama, and its bus boycott—to the rest of the South. Just before he was murdered by a sniper in AprilKing was planning a national protest against poverty in urban America. Considered by some to be a martyr, or someone who dies for his or her religious beliefs or causes, King became the first African American ever honored with a national holiday in the United States.

King was born on January 15,in Atlanta, Georgia. He was named after his father, who was the son of a sharecropper, a farmer who pays rent in exchange for being allowed to work a plot of land. Both were originally named Michael, but later changed their first names to Martin. King recalled that his parents, Martin and Alberta, had a happy, harmonious marriage and that he grew up in a household that rarely experienced conflict or disharmony.

Only out in the wider world, beginning within his own neighborhood, did he begin to sense trouble. Once, a white playmate told King that his father forbade him to be friends with King any longer. King recalled asking his parents about the matter. They explained to him some of the hardships and even insults they had experienced themselves due to racism.

His deeply religious parents, however, repeatedly pointed out that he should instead be guided by the Christian belief in the notion of brotherly love. As King grew up, he recognized that racism was deeply rooted in the American South. Segregation, or the separation of the races, existed throughout the South. Blacks and whites went to separate schools; rode in different sections of buses and trains; used separate bathroom facilities and drank from different water fountains; sat in different areas in restaurants, theaters, or concert halls; used separate beaches and parks, etc.

White facilities were better than those set aside for blacks. In transportation, even if the seats designated for whites went unused and the section restricted to blacks was completely filled, he still had to stand, as did all African Americansincluding the elderly. Nearly everything in the public realm was segregated. Such practices, part of local government regulations that ruled life in the South, were entirely legal at the time.

The rules were designed to remind former slaves and their descendants that many white southerners considered them to be second-class citizens. King recalled that he often felt a deep sense of shame, especially when he noticed how inferior, shabby, or just plain filthy the blacks-only facilities were.

Martin luther king jr biography encyclopedia americana: Martin Luther King Jr. (born

At his segregated Atlanta high school, King emerged as a skilled debater and even won a public speaking contest. He graduated early from Booker T. Washington High School and in entered Morehouse College, which his father and mother's father had attended. This was a historic black school in Atlanta that had educated a long list of achievers before King and continued to instruct countless numbers of students into the twenty-first century.

At Morehouse, he majored in sociology—the study of human society and its institutions, like religion and politics. He particularly enjoyed the intellectually stimulating atmosphere of college. For the martin luther king jr biography encyclopedia americana time in his life, he later noted, the topic of race in America could be freely discussed and debated.

During these years, King grew particularly interested in the concept of nonviolent protest. This came out of his reading of the famous essay "Civil Disobedience," an writing by American naturalist and philosopher Henry David Thoreau — The piece explained Thoreau's opposition to the Mexican-American War —48 and the practice of slavery in the South.

Thoreau refused to pay tax for a number of years and argued in his essay that "[i]f a thousand men were not to pay their tax bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. King was also intrigued by another display of civil disobedience that occurred during his college years.

In India, then controlled by Great Britaina Hindu lawyer named Mahatma Gandhi — led a mass movement to end British colonial rule by using the tactic of nonviolent protests and strikes. This had gone on for a generation. Finally inIndia was granted its independence. King began to read extensively on the concept of nonviolence, and he gradually began to think about entering the ministry.

He had initially been resistant to the idea, but during his Morehouse years came to know men who were trained as preachers. These men were highly educated and progressive, favoring changes toward new policies and reforms, as he hoped to be, too. King entered Pennsylvania's Crozer Theological Seminary in and finished three years later. He became an ordained minister of the National Baptist Church and went on to attend Boston University in Massachusetts.

He received his doctorate in theology in She came from a modestly wealthy family in Marion, Alabama. On their first date, the two discussed their views on race in America and economic injustice. They were married in June and soon began a family that would include four children. In the decade following the end of World War II —45some advances had been made in race relations in the United States.

The U. Supreme Court, Brown v. Board of Education. In the case, the court ruled that separate schools for blacks were unconstitutional. There seemed to be a renewed interest in fighting for civil rightsand King was eager to become involved. King's chance came on December 1,when the secretary of the Montgomery NAACP chapter refused to give up her seat on the bus to a white rider.

The secretary, a seamstress named Rosa Parks —was arrested. King and the Rev. Ralph Abernathy —a fellow minister who would be King's longtime colleague in the civil rights struggle, worked with the state NAACP chair to call a public meeting. Out of that event came plans for an organized bus boycott for the following Monday, December 5, which was also the day Parks was to appear in court.

The Montgomery Bus Boycott was more successful than King or his allies had dreamed it would be, and plans were made to continue it indefinitely. The majority of Montgomery's African American population boycotted the bus system. Some used carpools or taxis, while others walked long distances to work and school as a form of protest. Many blacks had long resented the bus company and its rude treatment of African American riders.

The boycott lasted more than a year and ended only when the bus company yielded to a legal judgment that ordered it to treat all passengers equally. The martin luther king jr biography encyclopedia americana had gone all the way to the U. Supreme Court, and its success opened the door for new challenges to end legalized discrimination in the South.

Within a year, King had emerged as a figure of national prominence, but with that came death threats and firebomb attacks on his home. He and other MIA leaders were regularly harassed by local law-enforcement authorities. For example, King was charged with loitering when he went to see Abernathy in jail one time. On another occasion, King was arrested on charges that he falsified his Alabama state income tax returns.

An all-white jury in Montgomery declared that King was not guilty of the tax charge three months later. Such official persecution increased when King took his civil rights mission back to his hometown, Atlanta. In Januaryhe and sixty other black ministers from southern cities met there to form the Southern Christian Leadership Conference SCLCand King was elected as its first president.

This group became the leading force in. Her act of defiance that day would make both of them heroes in the U. Parks was born Rosa McCauley in Tuskegee, Alabama, on February 4,and was raised by her mother and grandparents. She married a barber, Raymond Parks, at age twenty. The couple settled in the African American section of Montgomery, Alabama.

They became active in their community's efforts to end discriminatory practices against blacks in the South. At the time, Montgomery was deeply segregated, meaning that blacks and whites lived in separate areas and attended different schools. Blacks were only allowed to sit in certain sections of restaurants, theaters, and even buses.

Many African Americans traveled to work by bus, but were required to sit in the back of the vehicle. The front was reserved for white passengers. On December 1,Parks left her job as an assistant tailor at a department store. She boarded the Cleveland Avenue bus and took a seat in one of the middle rows. This was considered a neutral zone, where black passengers were allowed to sit if their section was full and if all white riders had a seat.

As the bus filled up, a white passenger came aboard and had to stand. The driver told Parks and three other blacks to give up their seats and move to the back. Parks refused and the driver called the police, who arrested her. She was later released on bail. However, word spread throughout the African American community that night that the quiet, hard-working seamstress who had served as the NAACP secretary for the past twelve years had been arrested.

Parks agreed when local civil rights leaders asked if she would allow her case to become part of a court challenge that, if successful, would force the Montgomery bus company to change their discriminatory practices. A one-day boycott of the bus company was planned for the following Monday. The leaders of the boycott asked Montgomery's black citizens to protest their treatment by walking to work that day, or by taking a taxi.

On December 2, a meeting was held, which was headed by a dynamic young minister named Martin Luther King Jr. He urged the African American community to boycott the bus system that treated them so shamefully. The Monday boycott turned out to be a great success. When word came that Parks had been found guilty and fined, the decision was made to continue the boycott indefinitely.

For more than a year, blacks in Montgomery walked as far as twenty miles between home and work daily. On December 21,the U. Supreme Court ruled in Parks's favor, forcing Montgomery to desegregate its buses. During the boycott, both Parks and her husband lost their jobs. Parks died inand is one of the most honored women in America of any race. Often described as the mother of the U.

Its goal was to register and record new numbers of black voters in southern states. African American males had been granted the right to vote inwith the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment to the U. During the ensuing years and up to the middle of the twentieth century, however, they faced unfair discrimination from white election officials when they tried to vote.

In some cases they were given a literacy test, or required to pay an expensive poll tax. As a result, very few African Americans in southern states were able to vote in local or national elections. To prohibit someone from exercising his or her legal right to vote is called "disfranchisement. It also made it impossible for any black candidate to legitimately win office.

King and his wife traveled to India in at the invitation of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru — There King learned more about how nonviolent protest could help the powerless gain a political voice. A year later, he moved his family to Atlanta, where he joined his father at the Ebenezer Baptist Church as a minister. Abernathy soon followed, and the SCLC began to prepare its next major campaign, the organized sit-in.

These sit-ins took place at lunch counters in South CarolinaTennessee, and Virginia, where local rules prohibited serving food to customers of both races at the same counter. Activists sat at the lunch counters refusing to move until they were served. At times, angry onlookers dumped food on the protesters or shouted insults at them.