Martin Luther King Essay
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Martin Luther King Obituary
Martin Luther King was one of the most inspiration and influential people ever to have lived, leading the civil rights movement in the United States and protesting, non-violently, against segregation and racial discrimination. His incredible story started in 1955 after an elderly back lady named Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white person. After being ordered by the driver to give up her seat, and still refusing, she was sent to prison. Although that was seen as acceptable by most (as in that time whites were superior to blacks) Martin Luther King had other ideas. He later said that “The day we see the truth and cease to speak is the day we begin to die”. And it is on that day that he chose to make a stand. King and other community leaders called for a boycott of the busses for black people. This meant that instead of using the bus to go somewhere they would walk or cycle. As the majority of the people who took the busses were black the bus company’s lost a lot of money and eventually in 1956 the courts ruled that racial segregation on the buses was illegal. However king did not stop after one small victory. He co-founded and became president of the southern Christian leadership conference and went on from there, travelling over six million miles, giving over two and a half thousand speeches (addressing a quarter of a million people in his 'I have a dream' speech alone) protesting against racial discrimination. He became the first black American to be honoured as Time magazine's Man of the Year, the nearest Monday to his birthday is a national holiday in the U.S.A(The only American to be similarly honoured was the first president, George Washington.) and he also became the youngest person, black or white, to win the Nobel peace prize.
