Martin Luther King Jr. was born on 15 January 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia. His father and grandfather were Baptist preachers. Already in the early years of his life, his family environment was unable to keep him away from the grip of white intolerance. Much later he would talk at length about the curtains that haunted his childhood, those used in train dining rooms to separate whites from blacks. "I was very young when I had my first experience behind the curtain. I felt as if a curtain had been thrown over my whole life."
At age 15, Martin Luther began studying at Morehouse College in Atlanta under a special program for gifted students. In his senior year, he abandoned his interest in medicine and law for good and chose a career as a clergyman at his father's insistence. He studied at Crozier Theological Seminary in Cheater, Pennsylvania, from which he graduated in 1951 with a degree in theology.
The philosophy of "civil disobedience" and "non-violence" of Mahatma Gandhi, as well as the theories of contemporary Protestant theologians, had a tremendous influence on his already awakened thinking. From Crozier he found himself at Boston University, where he met his future wife Coretta Scott. There, moreover, he embraced a solid foundation for his own theological and ethical principles, upon which he built his doctoral dissertation entitled "A Comparative Study of Ideas of God in the Thought of Paul Tillich and Henry Nelson Wyman." King conceived of God as an active, impersonal entity. For him, therefore, man's salvation was to be found neither in the pursuit of social progress nor in the power of reason, but in the belief that man is led by God.
He had been pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church on Dexter Avenue in Montgomery, Alabama, for almost a year when a small group of supporters of the city's civil rights movement launched a fight against racial discrimination on public buses. The occasion was the December 1, 1955 arrest of seamstress Rosa Parks, who refused to give up her seat on the bus to a white passenger, as required by racial discrimination laws. Militant representatives of the local black population rushed to found Montgomery's Union for Progress and elected King as their leader: "We have no choice but to protest. For many years we have shown incredible patience. We have sometimes given our white brothers the impression that we liked the way we were treated. But we have come here to redeem ourselves from that patience which makes us endure anything less than freedom and justice." The American nation had just gained a new voice. A year later, Montgomery's blacks had gained their own seat on the bus.
Recognizing the need for a mass black movement, King created the Southern States Christian Leadership Conference, now officially launching the fight against racial discrimination. Having secured a strong platform in the South, he begins his humanitarian tours around the United States, discussing with blacks about their civil rights, pursuing a policy of active non-violence, organizing sit-ins and protest marches, meeting with foreign leaders, gives fiery speeches (that inspired "I have a dream" during a peaceful "interracial" rally in Washington on August 28, 1963 will go down in history), proclaims that "the time has come when a concerted dash against injustice could bring great and tangible benefits."
In the early years of the 1960s his popularity reaches its peak. In 1964 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and the Civil Rights Act was passed, empowering the federal government to enforce the elimination of racial discrimination in public places and to prosecute discrimination in both public utilities and employment.
Soon, however, the first signs of opposition within the black movement would appear. The philosophy of non-violence is increasingly being "stumbled upon" by angry radicals of the so-called "Black Power", who are not slow to "stick him" with the highly ironic nickname "de Lawd" ("Mr. Praying Man"). King responded by broadening the basis of his organisation: he formed a front of poor people of all races, he opposed the Vietnam War, he now fought 'for a radical restructuring of the whole of society, a revolution of values'.
His plan for a "Poor People's March on Washington" was interrupted in the spring of 1968 by a trip to Memphis, Tennessee, to support a hospital workers' strike. On April 4, Martin Luther King was assassinated at age 39 by a white sniper while standing on the balcony of the motel he was staying in with close associates. On March 10, 1969, the murderer of James Ireland Ray confessed and was sentenced to 99 years in prison.
Source: sansimera.gr
Contents of this article including associated images are belongs to Cyprus Times
Views & opinions expressed are those of the author and/or Cyprus Times
Source
