He may have wanted to try and get equal rights for black people because of several reasons. One was the diversion of black people from white people. For example, when Martin Luther King was a young boy, his two best friends were two white boys and they played together everyday. However, when Martin Luther King was six, the white boys had to go to an all white school and Martin Luther King had to go to an all blacks school. His friends’ mother kept telling him that they could not play together anymore.
The reason why there was this diversity between black people and white people was because black people used to be slaves for the whites and were not treated with any respect during that time.
Black
Rights!!
Other people also tried to gain black rights like the Black Power Movement.
The Black Power Movement aimed to give blacks equal rights in the same way as the Civil Rights Movement, however The Black Power Movement wanted the blacks to stay separate but separate and equal. The Black Power Movement aimed to create a black society that had a distinct culture and was proud of its heritage where as The Civil Rights Movement wanted an integrated society.
The Black Power Movement aimed to create an America where Black and White lived with an equal quality of life and had the same rights but were separate by means of lifestyle and culture.
The Civil Rights Movement however aimed to crate an integrated society in which black and white people lived peacefully as one American population.
One of the main leaders of the Black Power Movement was Malcolm X whereas the main Leader of the Civil Rights Movement was Martin Luther King. Although both movements had a common goal (the gaining of rights for Negro Americans as well as respect and dignity,) they had very different means of achieving this goal.
The Black Power Movement believed in using violence if met with violence but Martin Luther King used non violet protest.
King and other black leaders organized the 1963 March on Washington, a massive protest in Washington, D.C., for jobs and civil rights. On August 28, 1963, King delivered the keynote address to an audience of more than 200,000 civil rights supporters. His "I Have a Dream" speech expressed the hopes of the Civil Rights Movement in oratory as moving as any in American history. This is one section of his speech:
“I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day the state of Alabama, whose governor's lips are presently dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, will be transformed into a situation where little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.
This is our hope. This is the faith with which I return to the South. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.”
The speech and the march built on the Birmingham demonstrations to create the political momentum that resulted in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibited segregation in public accommodations, as well as discrimination in education and employment. As a result of King's effectiveness as a leader of the American Civil Rights Movement and his highly visible moral stance, he was awarded the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize.
Throughout 1966 and 1967, King increasingly turned the focus of his civil rights activism throughout the country to economic issues. He began to argue for redistribution of the nation's economic wealth to overcome entrenched black poverty. In 1967 he began planning the Poor People's Campaign to pressure national lawmakers to address the issue of economic justice.
This emphasis on economic rights took King to Memphis, Tennessee, to support striking black garbage workers in the spring of 1968. He was assassinated in Memphis by a sniper on April 4. News of the assassination resulted in an outpouring of horror, shock and anger throughout the nation and the world, prompting riots in more than 100 U.S. cities in the days following King's death. In 1969 James Earl Ray, an escaped white convict, pleaded guilty to the murder of King and was sentenced to 99 years in prison. Although over the years many investigators have suspected that Ray did not act alone, no accomplices have been identified.
After King's death, historians researching his life and career discovered that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) often tapped King's phone line and reported on his private life to the president and other government officials. The FBI's reason for invading his privacy was that King associated with Communists and other "radicals."
After his death, King came to represent black courage and achievement, high moral leadership, and the ability of Americans to address and overcome racial divisions. Recollections of his criticisms of U.S. foreign policy and poverty faded, and his soaring rhetoric calling for racial justice and an integrated society became almost as familiar to subsequent generations of Americans as the Declaration of Independence.
King's historical importance was memorialized at the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Social Justice, a research institute in Atlanta. Also in Atlanta is the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site, which includes his birthplace, the Ebenezer Church, and the King Center, where his tomb is located. Perhaps the most important memorial is the national holiday in King's honor, designated by the U.S. Congress in 1983 and observed on the third Monday in January, a day that falls on or near King's birthday of January 15.
In conclusion, Martin Luther King was one of the first people to use non-violent protests and he made people see that violence wasn’t always the answer. He died for what he believed in and to try to make the world a better place.
