A variety of historic points in the civil rights movement have been used to describe Martin Luther King, Jr.—the prime mover of the Montgomery bus boycott, keynote speaker at the March in Washington, the youngest Nobel Peace Prize recipient. Although, in retrospect, single incidents are less significant than the fact that King and his program of non-violent resistance were the dominant force in the civil rights movement during its decade of greatest success, from 1957 to 1968. King was born Michael Luther King in Atlanta on January 15, 1929—one of the three children of Martin Luther King Sr., pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church, and Alberta (William King). He was renamed "Martin" when he was about 6 years old.
Since attending nearby grammar and high schools, King enrolled at Morehouse College in Atlanta in 1944. He did not intend to enter the ministry, but then he met Dr. Benjamin Mays, a philosopher whose style and bearing persuaded him that a theological profession could also be intellectually rewarding. Since earning his Bachelor's degree in 1948, King attended the Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pa., winning the Plafker Prize as an outstanding graduate student, and the J. Lewis Crozer Fellowship, also. King finished the academic work for his doctorate in 1953 and was awarded the degree two years later after his dissertation.
Married by then, King returned to the South to become a minister of the Baptist Church of Dexter Avenue in Montgomery, Ala. He made his first impact on the civil-rights revolution thereby mobilizing the black community during a 382-day shutdown of the city's bus services. King overcame arrests and other aggressive harassment, including the bombing of his house. In the end, the U.S. The Supreme Court held that the bus division was illegal.
A great leader and a civil-right figure of increasing significance, King summoned several black leaders together in 1957 and laid the foundation for the organization today known as 381 Movement King was quickly started encouraging other groups to coordinate their anti-discrimination demonstrations. After completing his first book and making a trip to India, King moved back to the United States in 1960 to become co-pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church with his father.
Three years later, King's non-violent methods were put to a most significant test in Birmingham, amid a nationwide rally against equal employment policies and the desegregation of department stores. Police violence against the marchers has dramatized the plight of blacks before the country at large, with considerable effect. King was arrested, but his speech was not silenced: he penned "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" in order to refute his opponents.
Later that year, King was a guest speaker at the landmark March in Washington, D.C., where he gave one of the most emotional speeches of his career. Time Magazine designated him as the Person of the Year of 1963. Another few months later he was nominated laureate of the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize. As he returned from Norway, where he had gone to receive the prize, King was faced with new obstacles. In Selma, Ala, he led an electoral registration drive that resulted in the Independence March of the Selma-to-Montgomery. King then took his crusade to Chicago, where he initiated projects to rehabilitate the slums and provide shelter. In the North, nevertheless, King soon learned that the young, furious blacks cared little for his preaching and much less for his calls for a nonviolent revolt. Their frustration was one of the factors behind a new cause: the war in Vietnam. While he sought to build a new alliance focused on mutual respect for peace and human rights, it created an immediate split. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) saw King's change of focus as "a serious tactical mistake." The Urban League cautioned that the "limited resources" of the civil rights movement would be too thin.
Yet from the point of view of history, King's timing was excellent. Students, professors, intellectuals, clergymen, and reformers hurried to the cause. Then King turned his attention to the domestic issue that he felt was closely linked to the struggle of Vietnam: hunger.
He advocated for unconditional household wages, threatened nationwide boycotts, and spoke about the destruction of non-violent camp-ins to whole cities. With this in mind, he started to organize a large march of the poor in Washington, D.C. to see a protest of such strength and scale that Congress would have to understand and deal with the overwhelming amount of desperate and depressed Americans.
King disrupted these preparations to lend his assistance to the Memphis men's sanitation strike. He tried to deter violence and to draw national attention to the plight of the vulnerable, unorganized workers of the region. Men were fighting for basic union rights and long-overdue rises. But he never got back to his plans for hardship. Death came to King on April 4, 1968, on the balcony of the black-owned Lorraine Hotel, just off Beale Street in Memphis. King was struck in the throat by a sniper bullet as he was standing outside with Jesse Jackson and Ralph Abernathy. His death had sparked a surge of unrest in major cities around the country.
The King's legacy, however, has lived on. His widow, Coretta Scott King, organized the
Martin Luther King Jr center in 1969. Core in Non-Violent Civil Reform. Today it sits next to the beloved Baptist Church of Ebenezer in Atlanta. His birthday, Jan. 15, is a national holiday, celebrated every year with educational activities, cultural events, and concerts in the United States. The Lorraine Hotel, where he was shot, is now the National Museum of Civil Rights.
Martin Lurther King Jr. was an inspiration to us all. He stood not only for the people but with the people. He Strongly believed in equal rights, and equal resources and for everyone. 381 Movement thanks Martin Luther King Jr. for passing the torch to us in order for us to evolve this country. Martin Luther King jr. had a dream of eqauilty, well our dream is to be the ANSWER to the unanswered, the SOLUTION to the worlds problems, and last but not least be the CHANGE THAT CHANGES THE WORLD.
In remembrance of the late great Mr. King Jr., 381 movement will not only peacefully rally for 381 days to urge reform from our lawmakers and politicians but will; educate, empower, and evolve the black is communities of this country.