King attended segregated public schools in Georgia and graduated high school at 15. He later became a co-pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church with his father, Martin Luther King, Sr. Martin later attained a BA at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1948. He went on to acquire a BD at Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania in 1951. In 1955, he met and married Coretta Scott.
King’s first presence in politics was a humble presidency position for the Montgomery Improvement Association – a black activist organization – that had just ordered a boycott of the state’s buses. When the U.S. Supreme Court ordered that Alabama’s segregation laws unconstitutional, the Montgomery buses were desegregated in December of 1956. King was subsequently launched into a name that every schoolchild would read about in their history books.
King’s life from then on was a whirlwind of leadership. He was elected president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1957; and traveled with this conference over 6 million miles speaking over the course of eleven years. He wrote 5 books and numerous articles. In Alabama he directed a march on Washington, D.C., of 250,000 people where he delivered “I Have a Dream” – his most famous speech.
In 1963 he was named Man of the Year by Time Magazine and became a world figure to all. He became the youngest man to receive the Nobel Peace Prize at the age of 35 in 1964. On April 4th, 1968, while leading a protest march in Memphis, Tennessee, Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated from the balcony of his hotel room.
This brief summary of King’s life has not yet answered the question on which this report was based. Has his dream been fulfilled? Are America’s people each treated with the same respect, no matter their skin color? It is a great question and difficult to answer.
Though America may appear to have all the love of every race, I believe that underneath the first impressions, America is still very prejudiced. To stand and fight this discrimination, we must cry,
“…From every mountainside, let freedom ring…And when this happens...we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!””
“…Now is the time to make real promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksand of racial injustice to the sold rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s Children.”
― Martin Luther King, Jr.
Works Cited
- Internet article by Clayborne Carson – ©2002 Martin Luther King Papers Project
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Excerpt from Peace, Noble Lectures, Elsevier Publishing Company, 1964-1970
