MARTIN LUTHER KING

MARTIN LUTHER KING

Martin Luther King lived a very successful life as a civil rights activist serving as the leading force behind the withdrawal of segregation laws in the 60´s. martin was born in the southern city of Atlanta, Georgia to Alberta Williams and Martin Luther King. His father was a pastor at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. Martin flew through school and by the time he was 15 he was enrolled in Morehouse College located in his hometown. By 1948, he had graduated and chosen to purpose the same career as his father. By 1955 he received his PHD from the Boston Graduate School where he met Coretta Scott, whom he married in 1953. They had four children, and they stayed together until Martin´s death.

He became a civil rights activist. Making many strides forward and eventually gaining the withdrawal of segregation laws. Martin was killed by an assassin on April 4, 1968. The assassin was an escaped convict named James Earl Ray, who confessed to the assassination in March of 1969. Martin was killed while he was in Memphis, Tennessee supporting a strike of African American garbage men. He was buried in the South View Cemetery in Atlanta. Later his body was transferred to a location near the Ebenezer Baptist Church, where his father was a minister. Kings tombstone has the words from one of his speeches “FREE AT LAST, FREE AR LAST, THANK GOD ALMIGHTILY, I’M FREE AT LAST”

He had an enormous impact on the desegregation of the United States in the 1960´s. he had arguably the largest impact of any civil rights leader of his time. King began his civil rights activities in 1955, when he protested Montgomery´s segregated bus system. The protest was started after an African American bus passenger by the name of Rosa Parks was arrested after refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger. After the arrest African Americans encouraged others to boycott the Montgomery bus system. They formed a secret group called “The Montgomery Improvement Association” and elected King as their leader. The group chose to use the great weapon of protest to desegregate the Montgomery bus lines. The group protest worker and soon the bus lines no longer had segregation rules and African American no longer boycotted the busses.

In the same year that the bus boycott ended, King´s house was bombed by angry whites intent on killing King. They were unsuccessful and no one in the house was hurt. But King was in no way swayed to stop from insisting on nonviolent protests. In 1957 along with several other black ministers King formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to expand the nonviolent battle against discrimination. In 1957 segregation existed in every state in one way or another, but mostly in the south where public schools, transportation, hotels, and restaurants were al segregated. In the year 1960 King moved himself and his family to Montgomery to devote more of his effort towards the work of the SCLC.

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