Martin Luther King Junior

Martin Luther King was born on 15 January 1929. Growing up in Atlanta, Georgia, during the Great Depression, King knew poverty and racial injustice at first hand, but his family shielded him from some of its worst effects. They never went hungry, because his father was good with money, and they suffered few racial attacks because he was a strong, confident and brave man who knew how to stand up for himself without hitting back.

Above all, it was a loving and happy family:

Where did Martin Luther King Junior grow up?

One hundred years earlier, most black people in the USA had been slaves serving white masters. Slaves had been freed in 1865 but, well into the 1950’s, black people had still not achieved equality with white people. In fact there was vicious racial prejudice in the southern states of America. Blacks were treated very unfairly.

White people justified this situation by saying that black people were inferior. Some racist scientists even went so far as to say that they could scientifically prove that the black man had less brain power than the white man! This type of racist attitude led to terrible discrimination against black people. This went on for so long and was so intense that some black people came to believe that it was true, that they were inferior to white people. Racial segregation in Atlanta meant that as a boy King could not go swimming or to the park or to the cinema. He learnt from his parents not to accept this evil, but also that it was his duty as a follower of Christ to love the white people, and not to hate.

At the age of 14, he won a schools speech making competition in Dublin, Georgia. His speech was on "The Black Man and the Constitution," arguing that the rights enshrined in the American Constitution were not extended to black people in reality.

On the bus journey home, he and his teacher were shouted at and cursed by the driver for not being quick enough to vacate their seats for white travellers. They had to stand for 90 miles. "That night will never leave my memory," King later said. "It was the angriest I have ever been in my life."

BBC: Watch King talk about childhood

Here are some examples of what black people experienced in the USA 50 years ago.

King received his BA degree at the age of 19 and then trained as a minister for three years, going on to take a PhD at Boston University. In his desire to challenge the condition of America, he studied ethical thinkers from Marx to Plato, but the one who had the greatest impact on him was GANDHI. Gandhi's non-violent protest had gained India's independence from Britain, inspired by Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount – which King felt Gandhi, who was a Hindu, understood better than Christians.

The Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5, 3-11)

Determined to put this "love ethic" of Jesus into practice to change America, he rejected offers of lecturing posts and returned south

He married Coretta Scott in 1953, and in 1954 became the minister of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, where he worked with such campaign groups as the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People.(NAACP)

ROSA PARKS AND THE BUS BOYCOTT

Then on 1 December 1955, ROSA PARKS, a local black woman, got on a bus. By law, blacks were bound to vacate the middle section of the bus when the whites-only part was full, but for once she refused and was arrested.

King and other black leaders met in his church and decided it was time to act. They called a BUS BOYCOTT, electing King as their leader. It was a phenomenal success. For almost a year, hardly a single black person in Montgomery rode a bus. Cheap taxi services were organised, which the city authorities closed down. People started to share cars instead. The bus company was devastated, but the city fought all the way. Throughout, King insisted that they reject violence in favour of Christian love.

During the Montgomery bus boycott, King was bombarded with death threats. Late one night, after a threatening phone call, he was overcome by fear and weariness. He prayed aloud, telling God he could not go on. He felt an inner voice saying, "Martin Luther, stand up for righteousness. Stand up for justice. Stand up for truth. And lo, I will be with you. Even to the end of the world."

Three nights later, while he was at a meeting, his house was bombed. His wife and daughter were not hurt. King and other leaders of the movement were imprisoned over the boycott. He was sentenced to 386 days hard labour, but while this was going to appeal, in November 1956, the US Supreme Court ruled Alabama's segregation laws unconstitutional (Illegal).

Martin said, "We have lived under the agony and darkness of Good Friday with the conviction that one day the heightening glow of Easter would emerge on the horizon. We have seen truth crucified and goodness buried, but we have kept going with the conviction that truth crushed to earth will rise again. Now our faith seems to be vindicated."

imprisoned 1956

Winning the right to vote freely

In 1957, King turned his attention to the vote. In theory, black people in the south had the vote, but in practice they were largely prevented from actually voting.
In Washington DC, a bill (Potential law) was being debated to address this. To call on the government to pass the law, King helped organise a Prayer Pilgrimage to the city. 37,000 gathered at the Lincoln Memorial, including political leaders, and King's speech confirmed him as the voice of black America.

The bill was passed, becoming the American civil rights legislation of the century.

STABBED

Prayer Pilgrimage 1957

In 1958, King was stabbed at a book signing by a woman with a letter opener.

He survived, but the tip of the knife touched his aorta, so his whole chest had to be opened up to extract it.

If he had sneezed, it would have killed him.

1960'S PASSIVE RESISTANCE

The 1960s dawned with a wave of student sit-ins, following King's policy of passive resistance. Black students throughout the south occupied coffee shops and lunch counters which still practised segregation, and got a savage response from the police. Many were beaten and arrested.
One of the leaders expressed their policy like this:

Over the following years, the situation in the south grew increasingly more dangerous. Demonstrations were harshly put down.

King went to jail repeatedly. In 1963, in solitary confinement in Birmingham, Alabama, the stronghold of segregation, he was called upon by white Church ministers to stop the campaign, and wrote the famous Letter from Birmingham Jail defending the necessity of it.

On release, he organised a march of 6,000 children and young people in Birmingham. The police chief turned dogs and water cannons on them.

The confrontation was repeated for several days until the city conceded and agreed to stop the worst aspects of segregation.

Religious faith was very important to Martin and he got strength from God when he was at his weakest and most vulnerable. His non-violent protest or ‘passive resistance’ can sometimes seem strange to us when our world is full of leaders and governments that go to war all too easily even if it is not the will of their own people.

However, Martin was believed that something other than violence could bring about change. He had a vision of a world free from the power of weapons and hatred. - a world where people felt valued because they were loved. Martin believed this required a strength that only God could give, the strength to love

BBC: Race riots in Birmingham

History: Birmingham church bombing

In August 1963, King led another march to Washington. President Kennedy was trying to get a law through Congress against racial inequality, and 250,000 people from across the US came in support of it. This is where King delivered his historic "I have a dream" speech

BBC - Speech Link

The Civil Rights Act was passed and followed in 1965 by the Voting Rights Act.

King was acclaimed the Time magazine Man of the Year in 1963.
In 1964 was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize

In his later years, his non-violent ideals were disputed by other black leaders such as Malcolm X, and condemned by other such as Stokely Carmichael. King, however, stayed utterly committed to the way of peace for the rest of his life.

In the later sixties, he moved his focus from segregation in the south to the deeper-rooted problem of poverty that oppressed black people – and also many white people – throughout the United States. He scheduled a Poor People's March in Washington for the summer of 1968.

In April 1968 he flew to Memphis, Tennessee, to help sanitation workers organise a strike. He addressed them on 3 April, recalling what glorious days he would have missed if he had died in the stabbing ten years earlier. These were his closing words:

ASSASSINATION OF MARTIN LUTHER KING

The following day, as he stood on his hotel balcony, he was shot and killed. The man who killed him was James Earl Ray - a white man who did not believe that the black man should have equal

King's birthday has been a US national holiday since 1986. At the time of his death, there was a long way to go towards real equality for black people in America, but not nearly such a long way as before he started. It was his commitment to the non-violent ways of Jesus, learned at the feet of Gandhi, which prevented the struggle for freedom becoming a war. This dream has not come true (yet) – there is still racism in the USA today and around the world. You only have to watch the news to see that. Many believe that the struggle continues and race is still a huge current issue in the United States

BBC: Growing up black in the US

BBC: Charleston shootings

Confederate flag debate

Behind the Ferguson Riots

Charleston: Modern Day lynchings

Confederate flag removed in S. Carolina

Who are White Supremacists?

However, there are also positive signs. In 2008 the USA elected their first ever black President, Barack Obama, many people saw his election as a sign that America had finally put behind them much of their racist past. This school display below puts it into context

In Northern Ireland, a place that has suffered so much because of prejudice and discrimination based on religious and political difference, racism has become a terrible reality. Worse still, Belfast has become known as the “race-hate capital of Europe.”