Death of a King
On April 4, 1968, Civil rights leader Doctor Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis while supporting a Civil Sanitation Workers' strike. His death led to riots in 125 cities that resulted in 46 deaths and 21,270 arrests. Federal troops and National Guard members, amounting to 55,000 strong, were used to control the largest of these riots which occurred in Washington, D.C., Chicago, Baltimore, and Kansas City. Escaped convict James Earl Ray was convicted of murdering Doctor King.
Martin Luther King, Jr. had believed that love and peaceful protest could eliminate social injustice. He became one of the outstanding Black leaders in America. His words and actions served to arouse both whites and Blacks to protest racial discrimination as well as poverty and war. King was a "champion of nonviolent resistance to oppression," and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.
Growing Up a King
Martin Luther King, Jr., was born in Atlanta, Georgia on Jan. 15, 1929. His father, Martin, Sr., was the pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church, a black congregation. His mother, Alberta Williams King, was a schoolteacher. Martin had an older sister, Christine, and a younger brother, Alfred Daniel.
Martin came face-to-face with racism when he was six-years-old. He was a close friend to two white boys. This childhood friendship was halted when the parents of the two boys discovered their sons' friend was a Negro. Again, at age eleven, Martin stared racism in the face when a white woman struck him and called him a "Nigger."
Education of a King
Martin Luther, Jr. was a bright and intelligent student. He was admitted to Morehouse College at 15, without completing high school. He decided to become a minister and at 18 was ordained in his father's church. After graduating from Morehouse, in 1948, he entered Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pa. He was the valedictorian of his class in 1951 and won a graduate fellowship. At Boston University he received a Ph.D. in theology in 1955.
King's studies at Crozer and Boston led him studying the teachings of Henry David Thoreau and exploring the works of the Indian nationalist Mohandas K. Gandhi, whose "ideas became the core of his own philosophy of nonviolent protest.
Martin Luther King, Jr.: A Man of Peace and Equal Rights continues with
King For Civil Rights: From Boston to Boycotting.
