Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
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A March 18th, 1966 photo of President Lyndon B. Johnson meeting with Martin Luther King, Jr. in the White House Cabinet Room |
Martin Luther King, Jr., the most important voice of the American civil rights movement, was born at noon Tuesday, January 15, 1929, at the family home, 501 Auburn Avenue, N.E., Atlanta, Georgia. Dr. Charles Johnson was the attending physician. Martin Luther King, Jr., was the first son and second child born to the Reverend Martin Luther King, Sr., and Alberta Williams King. Other children born to the Kings were Christine King Farris and the late Reverend Alfred Daniel Williams King. Martin Luther King's maternal grandparents were the Reverend Adam Daniel Williams, second pastor of Ebenezer Baptist, and Jenny Parks Williams. His paternal grandparents, James Albert and Delia King, were sharecroppers on a farm in Stockbridge, Georgia.
Martin Luther King, Jr. first attended the Yonge Street Elementary School in Atlanta, Georgia transferring to the David T. Howard Elementary School. He also attended the Atlanta University Laboratory School and Booker T. Washington High School. Because of his high score on the college entrance examinations in his junior year of high school, he advanced to Morehouse College without formal graduation from Booker T. Washington. After graduating Morehouse College at age 19, King followed his father and grandfather into the Baptist ministry. He was ordained in February 1948 at the age of nineteen at Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta, Georgia and became the Assistant Pastor. In September of 1951, Martin Luther King began doctoral studies in Systematic Theology at Boston University. He also studied at Harvard University.
Dr. King was not particularly impressive in appearance. About 5 feet 8 inches tall, he had an oval face with dreamy eyes that widened when he was addressing an audience. His delicate hands contrasted with his muscled upper torso and surprised visitors who were fortunate enough to shake his hand. While working on his doctorate Dr. King met Coretta Scott, a graduate of Antioch College, who was doing graduate work in music. He married her, the younger daughter of Obadiah and Bernice McMurray Scott of Marion, Alabama on June 18, 1953. The marriage ceremony took place on the lawn of the Scott's home in Marion. The Reverend King, Sr., performed the service, with Mrs. Edythe Bagley, the sister of Mrs. King, maid of honor, and the Reverend A.D. King, the brother of Martin Luther King, Jr., best man. Four children were born to Dr. and Mrs. King:
In 1954 very few of Montgomery's white residents, not realizing how deeply the minorities resented segregated buses, restaurants, bathrooms, etc... , failed to comprehend that there was any reason for a major dispute with the city's 50,000 African American citizens. On Dec. 1, 1955, a Mrs. Rosa Parks, a Black seamstress, refused to comply with a bus driver's order to give up her seat to a white passenger. She was tired, she said. Her feet hurt from a day of shopping. This was no accident, however, as Mrs. Parks had been a local secretary for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. She was arrested, convicted of refusing to obey the bust conductor and fined $10 and cost, a total of $14.
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The National Basketball Retired Players Association (NBRPA), the only alumni association comprised of former NBA, ABA, Harlem Globetrotter and WNBA players, is commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the 150th Anniversary of the 13th Amendment – in conjunction with the University Honors Program at Loyola University New Orleans and ELEVATE, an academic, athletic and mentoring program for inner-city teens – by issuing a one-of-a-kind limited edition print of Martin Luther King's “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” signed by Dr. King and more than 50 former NBA players. This unique, historic, limited edition print is the perfect collectible for any history and/or sports fanatic. The 1000 special edition “Path to Freedom” prints are only available as a gift, limit one per patron, for tax-deductible donations of $100.00 or more placed at www.SpecialEdition.us |
In September 1954, while writing his dissertation, he became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama serving until November 1959. King's dissertation, "A Comparison of God in the Thinking of Paul Tillich and Henry Wieman," was completed in 1955, and Boston College Ph.D. , a Doctorate of Philosophy in Systematic Theology, was awarded on June 5, 1955.
- Yolanda Denise (November 17, 1955 Montgomery, Alabama)
- Martin Luther III (October 23, 1957 Montgomery, Alabama)
- Dexter Scott (January 30, 1961 Atlanta, Georgia)
- Bernice Albertine (March 28, 1963 Atlanta, Georgia)
In 1954 very few of Montgomery's white residents, not realizing how deeply the minorities resented segregated buses, restaurants, bathrooms, etc... , failed to comprehend that there was any reason for a major dispute with the city's 50,000 African American citizens. On Dec. 1, 1955, a Mrs. Rosa Parks, a Black seamstress, refused to comply with a bus driver's order to give up her seat to a white passenger. She was tired, she said. Her feet hurt from a day of shopping. This was no accident, however, as Mrs. Parks had been a local secretary for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. She was arrested, convicted of refusing to obey the bust conductor and fined $10 and cost, a total of $14.
Rosa Parks was not the first person to resist bus segregation. Others had taken similar steps, including Irene Morgan in 1946, Sarah Louise Keys in 1955, and the members of the Browder v. Gayle lawsuit (Claudette Colvin, Aurelia Browder, Susie McDonald, and Mary Louise Smith) were arrested months before Parks. The NAACP organizers believed that Parks was the best candidate to initiate a court challenge after her arrest for civil disobedience in violating Alabama segregation laws. Almost as spontaneous as Mrs. Parks's act was the rallying of many African American leaders in the city to help her in the court challenge. The members agreed to place Dr. King, who was new to Montgomery, at the leadership helm while a Board of Directors managed the administrative work. King decided, with the backing of the board, to escalate the boycott by using non-violent civil disobedience mirroring the example of Henry David Thoreau and Mahatma Gandhi.
The boycott proved extremely effective, with enough riders lost to the city transit system to cause serious economic distress. Martin Luther King later wrote a "miracle had taken place." Boycotters organized a system of carpools, with car owners volunteering their vehicles or themselves driving people to various destinations. Black Taxi Cab drivers charged 10 cents, the fee of the bus, to support the boycott. Even some white housewives support the effort by carpooling their black domestic servants to work at their homes. Montgomery, whose transit system was bleeding red ink, successfully pressured local insurance companies to stop insuring cars used in the carpools. To counter act this measure, the boycott leaders arranged policies with Lloyd's of London.
In response the ranks in White Citizens' Council doubled and members resorted to violence with boycotters often physically attacked. On January 28th, 1956, Dr. King was arrested for speeding. Following reports of Montgomery Improvement Association dissension that had appeared in the press, King insisted spoke insisting that MIA leaders should continue the bus boycott. "My intimidations are a small price to pay if victory can be won."
Two days later, his and Abernathy's houses were firebombed, as were four black Baptist churches. Inside his home, with the front window shattered and a hole blasted into the porch, King was relieved to find his wife and daughter unharmed. Mayor Gayle, along with police commissioner Sellers, the fire chief, and newspaper reporters, had assembled in the house issuing official declarations of regret along with promises to bring the perpetrators to justice. The Black community from all sections of the neighborhood press forward against the police barricade, angered over the bombing and murder attempt on King's family. Dr. King, to mitigate the anger, addressed the people from his front porch stating:
If you have weapons, take them home; if you do not have them, please do not seek to get them. We cannot solve this problem through retaliatory violence. We must meet violence with nonviolence. Remember the words of Jesus: 'He who lives by the sword will perish by the sword'. We must love our white brothers, no matter what they do to us. We must make them know that we love them. Jesus still cries out in words that echo across the centuries: 'Love your enemies; bless them that curse you; pray for them that despitefully use you'. This is what we must live by. We must meet hate with love. Remember, if I am stopped, this movement will not stop, because God is with the movement. Go home with this glowing faith and this radiant assurance.
Following the bombings, Dr. King and other boycott leaders and carpool drivers were indicted for conspiring to interfere with a business under a 1921 ordinance. The 90 memn and women, rather than wait to be arrested, turned themselves in as an act of defiance. Dr. King was ordered to pay a $500 fine or serve 386 days in jail and defiantly refused payment opting for incarceration. King remarked: "I was proud of my crime. It was the crime of joining my people in a nonviolent protest against injustice." During his two weeks in jail, Montgomery's stratedgy fro ending the boycott backfired and the national press became interested in the protest. On December 20, 1956, after 381 days, the city relented and passed an ordinance authorizing black bus passengers to sit virtually anywhere they chose on buses ending the boycott.
Montgomery civil rights activists success, stimulated activism and participation all over the South in the national civil rights movement. It was here, from a protest begun over a woman's tired feet, that Dr. King began his public career and garnished the nation's attention. According to the New York Times:
There was little of the rabblerouser in his oratory. He was not prone to extravagant gestures or loud peroration. His baritone voice, though vibrant, was not that of a spellbinder. Occasionally, after a particular telling sentence, he would tilt his head a bit and fall silent as though waiting for the echoes of his thought to spread through the hall, church or street.
In private gatherings, Dr. King lacked that laughing gregariousness that often makes for popularity. Some thought he was without a sense of humor. He was not a gifted raconteur. He did not have the flamboyance of a Representative Adam Clayton Powell Jr. or the cool strategic brilliance of Roy Wilkins, head of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
What Dr. King did have was an instinct for the right moment to make his moves. Some critics looked upon this as pure opportunism. Nevertheless, it was this sense of timing that raised him in 1955, from a newly arrived minister in Montgomery, Ala., with his first church, to a figure of national prominence.In 1959, Dr. King and his family moved back to Atlanta, where he became a co-pastor, with his father, of the Ebenezer Baptist Church. It was here that he formed and began to direct the activities of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference as its President. Allied with it was a second organization, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, also formed under Dr. King's sponsorship. These two organizations had a national reach but their influence was primarily limited to the South. Together the two institutions brought together Black clergymen, businessmen, professional men and students. They raised capital, organized sit-ins, and campaigned tirelessly for African American vote registration. The organizations' demonstrations embraced all races in their ranks and chipped away at segregationist resistance throughout the 60's, removing many barriers that barred minority participation in the political, economic and social life of the nation.
On April 3rd, 1963, Southern Christian Leadership Conference led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights launched a non-violent campaign of coordinated marches and sit-ins against racism and racial segregation. Dr. King's efforts were even more impressive during this "big push" in Birmingham, which organized sit-ins at lunch counters, picketing and protest marches with hundreds of children, used in the campaign. The entire world was stunned when Birmingham official turned police turned dogs on the demonstrators and jailed children during the non-violent protests.
Dr. King was jailed for five days and placed in a dark cell with no mattress which was only a prelude to unusually harsh conditions during his incarceration. A fellow activist managed to smuggle the April 12th, issue of "The Birmingham News." The newspaper contained a letter titled "A Call for Unity" which, was a statement made by eight white Alabama clergymen criticizing the non-violent Birmingham civil rights campaign.
Begun on the margins of the newspaper in which the statement appeared while I was in jail, the letter was continued on scraps of writing paper supplied by a friendly black trusty, and concluded on a pad my attorneys were eventually permitted to leave me.It is reported that Dr. King's lawyers took the newspaper and the letter's continuation on paper provided by council back to Southern Christian Leadership Conference headquarters. Here, the Reverend Wyatt Walker began compiling and editing the rhetorical jigsaw puzzle producing the “Letter From Birmingham Jail” which, endures as one of the canonical texts of the United States Civil Rights Movement.
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