Biography
American clergyman and inspirational leader of the civil rights
movement. A symbol of the struggle against black segregation in the
American South, he won the Kennedy Peace Prize and the Nobel Peace Prize
in 1964. Galvanizing black Americans into action through his electrifying
oratory skills, he rose to become a legend and national hero in his own
time.
Growing up in a pious, proud and progressive black community in
segregated Atlanta, King was the son of Alberta and Martin Luther King, a
Baptist minister at the Ebeneezer Baptist Church. Living in a family of
black Brahmins he never experienced poverty, yet he continuously heard his
father preach from his pulpit, "I don't care how long I have to live
with this system. I will never accept it."
King's rhetorical ability showed early. A pastor's son of whom much was
expected, he won an oratorical contest sponsored by the black Elks in
1944. Programmed from his early youth to follow in his father's and
grandfather's footsteps in the ministry, by his teens he was uncomfortable
with the emotionalism of fundamental Baptist services and sought a more
liberal perspective. Enrolling in Morehouse College in Atlanta, he
vacillated between choosing a career as a doctor or a lawyer and a bitter
seed was planted about his Baptist roots. "I wondered whether
religion, with its emotionalism in Negro churches, could be intellectually
respectable as well as emotionally satisfying." With his spiritual
perspective enhanced by the liberal theologians at Morehouse, he enrolled
at Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania where he was one of 11
blacks in a student population of 90. Manifesting his innate sense of
leadership, he became student body president and class valedictorian. He
was ordained a minister in his father's church in 1947. Upon applying to
Boston University for graduate work, his professors wrote "His work
is of the highest grade" and "He will probably become a big
strong leader among his people."
In 1955 at age 26, after refusing to be heir apparent to his father's
pulpit at Ebeneezer Baptist in Atlanta, King's first position was at the
prestigious Dexter Baptist Church at Montgomery, Alabama. When seamstress
Rose Parks refused to move to the back of the bus on December 1st of that
same year, King began his sermon to a church full of agitated supporters
of her cause, four days after her courageous act. "You know my
friends, there comes a time when people get tired of being trampled over
by the iron feet of oppression." Individual cheers gave way to a
resounding din within the church walls and King walked into history that
day as the delegated spokesman for the Montgomery Bus Boycott. When the
Montgomery buses finally began to operate on a non-segregated basis 381
days later, King formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference,
giving him a sound base from which to operate his vast congregation of
everyday soldiers for civil rights. His philosophy of passive resistance
led to his frequent arrests and tours through the Bible Belt, where he
became known as "Alabama's Modern Moses." The Southern student
lunch counter sit-in of 1960, the Freedom Riders of 1961, marches in
Birmingham, AL 1963, St. Augustine, FL 1964 and Selma, AL in 1965 put King
in the national deadlines as a civil rights activist. His greatest coup
was the March on Washington on 8/28/1963, where 200,000 people gathered to
demand their civil rights and hear King make his famous speech, "I
have a dream....." For upholding his allegedly radical views he was
stoned, physically attacked and his house was bombed.
King's outstanding success in uniting his people for a common cause
made its ripple effect in American society, rendered him suspect in the
eyes of the FBI, who rigorously followed and taped King, especially in his
extra-marital affairs. "I'm away from home 25-27 days a month.
Extra-marital sex is a form of anxiety reduction," he said. In 1964
an FBI agent sent a package to King at the headquarters of the Southern
Leadership Conference, containing a letter urging King to commit suicide
and a reel of tape with King having sex. An identical anonymous package
made its way to King's wife, who played the tape and read the letter which
stated, "King, there is only one thing left for you to do. You better
take your life before your filthy abnormal fraudulent self is bared to the
nation."
Undaunted, King pressed forward on his mission to free people
everywhere from the chains of oppression. As society grew more militant in
the mid '60s, King's interests widened to the Viet Nam War and those
living in poverty. His plans for a Poor People's March on Washington in
1968 were interrupted by a sanitation workers' strike in Memphis,
Tennessee. On the evening of 4/03/1968, King delivered his legendary
speech to supporters at the Mason Street Temple: "I have been to the
mountaintop ... I see the Promised Land. I may not get there with you, but
mine eyes have seen the glory."
The following evening, while standing on the balcony of the Lorraine
Motel in Memphis, he was shot to death at 6:01 PM EST by allegedly lone
assassin James Earl Ray.
King married Coretta Scott in 1957. They had four children, Yolanda
Denise, Martin Luther King III, Dexter and Bernice Albertine.
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