35TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION Super Hero DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 

The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was the leading organizer of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, which led to desegregation of public places, the abolition of legal discrimination against African Americans in employment, and voting rights for Blacks. 

King's success was in elevating the issue of equality into a moral crusade. He appealed to the conscience of the nation and brought pressure on the federal government to pass legislation that remedied many of society's inequities. 

This eloquent, stirring orator was able to convince people of goodwill that justice is inherent in the civil rights cause. He galvanized people of all colors, particularly massive numbers of Blacks, into actions that were fraught with danger; indeed, these actions cost King his own life when he was assassinated April 4, 1968, at the age of 39. 

King was born on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia, into a family of ministers. At age 15, he was accepted into Morehouse College under a program for gifted students. He received his bachelor's degree in sociology at 19 years of age. 

His educational accomplishments continued at Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester,  Pennsylvania. King graduated first in his class and was the first Black student body president. He met and married Coretta Scott while attending Boston University, where he received his Ph.D. in systematic theology in 1955. 

King left higher education with more than a doctorate degree. Through studies of classic philosophers and modern activists, such as Mahatma Ghandi, King formulated a philosophy of nonviolence that played a guiding role in the rest of his life. 

After college, he accepted the pastorship at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. In December 1955, a Black seamstress named Rosa Parks was arrested in Montgomery for refusing to give her seat on a bus to a white man. Park's courageous act sparked a bus boycott that gave rise to the Montgomery Improvement Association, through which King's national leadership evolved. 

Though King's home was bombed during the Montgomery bus boycott, he remained undeterred. He continued to inspire local African Americans to walk, car pool, take taxis, and find transportation other than buses. The boycott forced the bus company to desegregate the following year. The Supreme Court declared the bus segregation law unconstitutional in December 1956. King's persuasive leadership brought renewed life to the nationwide struggle for social change. 

King began traveling extensively and lecturing about peacefully seeking justice for Blacks. He shared his Pilgrimage to Nonviolence more widely in his book discussing the Montgomery bus boycott, published in 1958. His philosophies on nonviolence were further expanded into fundamental actions for social change expressed in the famous Letter from Birmingham Jail. It was written during King's period of confinement after defying a local city ordinance with a protest march on Good Friday in 1963. 

When attack dogs, fire hoses, and clubs were used by local law enforcers against men, women, and children, who asked only to sit at the lunch counter of their choice or to vote for the candidate of their choice or to drink at the water fountain of their choice, America's image as the greatest bastion of human rights and individual freedom was shattered. This darker view of the country brought enormous global pressure to rectify the situation. 

In a glorious show of unity in August 1963, King delivered his stirring "I Have a Dream" speech to the largest crowd of demonstrators seen in the nation's capitol up to that day. The Civil Rights Act was passed the following year. 

Resistance to the federal law persisted, and following a bloody confrontation in Selma, Alabama, in 1965, King called on religions leaders of all denominations and differing factions of the Movement to join him in a second attempt to march 54 miles to Montgomery in support of Black voting rights. By the end of the five-day protest, more than 20,000 people had walked into Alabama's capitol. President Lyndon Johnson maneuvered the Voting Rights Act of 1965 through Congress soon after the event. 

It is ironic that the man in the forefront of elevating the nation's moral consciousness and promoting world peace would have his privacy invaded by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Under the broad powers assumed for fighting Communism, the FBI countered progress toward civil rights with attempts to discredit ' the Movement and selected leaders through a paper titled "Racial Tensions and Civil Rights," as well as the infamous COINTELPRO (counterintelligence program) surveillance. King, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, was not exempt from this invasion of privacy. With the FBI watching, King persisted in advocating global freedom, peace (including an end to the controversial Vietnam War), and economic justice. 

Building on his past successes, he began organizing a multiracial Poor People's Campaign to continue in Washington, D.C., until basic economic rights were secured. By the start of that action, demonstrators had to pitch camp without King, who had been fatally shot on the balcony of the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis in April 1968. James Earl Ray originally confessed to the murder. Then prior to his death years later, Ray provided the details of a conspiracy. In 1999, a Memphis jury agreed that Lloyd Jowers and others, including government agencies, participated in a conspiracy related to King's assassination.

From Great African Americans.  Copyright, Publications International, Ltd.