What Did Martin Luther King Jr Do
Martin Luther King, Jr., was a Baptist minister and social rights activist in the United States in the 1950s and 60s. He was a leader of the American civil rights movement. He organized a number of peaceful protests as head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, including the in 1963. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, and, at the time, he was the youngest person to have done so. Learn more.
Original Copy Of The Speech
As King waved goodbye to the audience, George Raveling, volunteering as a security guard at the event, asked King if he could have the original typewritten manuscript of the speech. Raveling, a star college basketball player for the Villanova Wildcats, was on the podium with King at that moment. King gave it to him. Raveling kept custody of the original copy, for which he has been offered $3 million, but he has said he does not intend to sell it. In 2021, he gave it to Villanova University. It is intended to be used in a “long-term ‘on loan’ arrangement.”
Character Of The City
Washington is an extraordinary city, one with multiple personalities: a working federal city, an international metropolis, a picturesque tourist destination, an unmatched treasury of the countrys history and artifacts, and a cosmopolitan centre that retains a neighbourly small-town ambience. The role Washington plays as the capital of the United States often overshadows its lively local history and its complex political, economic, and social issues. About half the land in Washington is owned by the U.S. government, which pays no taxes on it. Several hundred thousand people in the D.C. metropolitan area work for the federal government.
During the last half of the 20th century, suburban flight of the middle class contributed to the citys loss of more than one-fourth of its population. As new jobs, especially those in the high-technology industries, were created in Maryland and Virginia, the population of the suburbs increased as much as 50 percent per decade. By the first decade of the 21st century, however, Washingtons population began to increase as younger workers moved into revitalized city neighbourhoods. Despite these shifts in population, the economies of the District and those of nearby Maryland and Virginia remain interdependent.
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Police Observation During The Assassination
A fire station was located across from the Lorraine Motel, next to the boarding house in which James Earl Ray was staying. Police officers were stationed in the fire station to keep King under surveillance. Agents were watching King at the time he was shot. Immediately following the shooting, officers rushed out of the station to the motel. Marrell McCollough, an undercover police officer, was the first person to administer first aid to King. The antagonism between King and the FBI, the lack of an all points bulletin to find the killer, and the police presence nearby led to speculation that the FBI was involved in the assassination.
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And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, “When will you be satisfied?”
We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities.
We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro’s basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one.
We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating “for whites only.”
No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.
I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.
Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream today.
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Criticism Within The Movement
King was criticized by other black leaders during the course of his participation in the civil rights movement. This included opposition by more militant thinkers such as Nation of Islam member Malcolm X.Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee founder Ella Baker regarded King as a charismatic media figure who lost touch with the grassroots of the movement as he became close to elite figures like Nelson Rockefeller.Stokely Carmichael, a protege of Baker’s, became a black and disagreed with King’s plea for racial integration because he considered it an insult to a uniquely African-American culture.
The March Was A Hollywood Star
Popular actor and singer Harry Belafonte used his star power to help bring other celebrities to the March on Washington. Besides reaching out to the stars themselves, Belafonte went to many of the studio heads in Hollywood to get prominent actors and actresses temporarily released from their duties so they could participate.
He was successful. The Hollywood list of attendees that day read like a whos who of A-listers: Marlon Brando, Sidney Poitier, Lena Horne, Sammy Davis Jr., Charlton Heston and Burt Lancaster, who also gave a speech.
But having the Hollywood stars there wasnt just for show or for increased media attention. It also helped calm President John F. Kennedys nerves about the march.
I believe that their presence did a lot to assuage people who were preoccupied with the fact there could be violence, Belafonte said.
One of the things that I said in my conversations with the Kennedys in discussing why they should be more yielding in their support of our demonstration was the fact that there would be such a presence of highly profiled artists that that alone would put anxiety to rest, he added.
People would be looking at the occasion in a far more festive way.
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Sermons And Speeches Of Martin Luther King Jr
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The sermons and speeches of Martin Luther King Jr., comprise an extensive catalog of American writing and oratory some of which are internationally well-known, while others remain unheralded and await rediscovery.
King himself observed, “In the quiet recesses of my heart, I am fundamentally a clergyman, a Baptist preacher.”
Activism And Involvement With Native Americans
King was an avid supporter of Native American rights. Native Americans were also active supporters of King’s civil rights movement which included the active participation of Native Americans. In fact, the Native American Rights Fund was patterned after the NAACP’s Legal Defense and Education Fund. The National Indian Youth Council was especially supportive in King’s campaigns especially the Poor People’s Campaign in 1968. In King’s book Why We Can’t Wait he writes:
Our nation was born in genocide when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian, was an inferior race. Even before there were large numbers of Negroes on our shores, the scar of racial hatred had already disfigured colonial society. From the sixteenth century forward, blood flowed in battles over racial supremacy. We are perhaps the only nation which tried as a matter of national policy to wipe out its indigenous population. Moreover, we elevated that tragic experience into a noble crusade. Indeed, even today we have not permitted ourselves to reject or to feel remorse for this shameful episode. Our literature, our films, our drama, our folklore all exalt it.
King was a major inspiration along with the civil rights movement which inspired the Native American rights movement of the 1960s and many of its leaders. John Echohawk a member of the Pawnee tribe and the executive director and one of the founders of the Native American Rights Fund stated:
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Summary Of Indianapolis Speech
WikisourceSpeech on the Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Kennedy began his speech by announcing that King had been killed. He was the first to publicly inform the audience of King’s assassination, causing members of the audience to scream and wail in disbelief. Several of Kennedy’s aides were worried that the delivery of this information would result in a riot. Once the audience quieted down, Kennedy spoke of the threat of disillusion and divisiveness at King’s death and reminded the audience of King’s efforts to “replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand with compassion and love.” Kennedy acknowledged that many in the audience would be filled with anger, especially since the assassin was believed to be a white man. He empathized with the audience by referring to the assassination of his brother, United States PresidentJohn F. Kennedy, by a white man. The remarks surprised Kennedy aides, who had never heard him speak of his brother’s death in public. Quoting the ancient Greek playwright Aeschylus, with whom he had become acquainted through his brother’s widow, Jacqueline Kennedy, Kennedy said, “Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”
Dr Martin Luther King Jr And The Promises Of The American Revolution
Over the course of MLK Weekend, the Museum honors the life, service, and legacy of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Throughout many of his speeches and writings, Dr. King powerfully invoked the words and messages of the American Revolution in his calls for civil and economic rights and in speaking out against racism. By invoking the words of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, Dr. King returned often to a central tenet of his work: holding America and its people to the promise of the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to all men, a promise made by the Founders against the backdrop of the practice of slavery and the displacement of Native peoples.
In his open Letter from Birmingham Jail written on April 16, 1963 following his arrest for participating in a non-violent demonstration against segregation, Dr. King wrote at length about the moral responsibility to fight against injustice with non-violent tactics, using Americas promises, and the peoples ownership to those promises, as a guide.
We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham and all over the nation, because the goal of America is freedom. Abused and scorned though we may be, our destiny is tied up with the destiny of America. Before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, we were here. Before the pen of Jefferson scratched across the pages of history the majestic word of the Declaration of Independence, we were here.
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Structure To Cite A Transcript Of I Have A Dream Found Online In Mla :
Speakers Last name, First name. Title of Speech Transcript.Website Name, Publisher of the Website , Speech Date, URL . Transcript.
Youll notice elements of an MLA website citation, but with additional information on the speaker.
Heres an example of how to cite a transcript of I Have a Dream found online in MLA 9:
King, Martin Luther. I Have a Dream by Martin Luther King, Jr August 28, 1963. The Avalon Project, Yale Law School: Lillian Goldman Law Library, 2008, www.avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/mlk01.asp. Transcript.
Heres how the above example would be cited in an in-text citation in MLA 9:
Read A Brief Summary Of This Topic
, original name Michael King, Jr., , Baptist minister and social activist who led the civil rights movement in the United States from the mid-1950s until his death by assassination in 1968. His leadership was fundamental to that movements success in ending the legal segregation of African Americans in the South and other parts of the United States. King rose to national prominence as head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which promoted nonviolent tactics, such as the massive , to achieve civil rights. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.
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Activism And Organizational Leadership
The Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, where King was called to be a minister in 1954, was influential in the Montgomery, Alabama, African-American community. As the church’s pastor, he became known for his oratorical preaching in Montgomery and the surrounding region.
In March 1955, Claudette Colvina fifteen-year-old black schoolgirl in Montgomeryrefused to give up her bus seat to a white man in violation of Jim Crow laws, local laws in the Southern United States that enforced racial segregation. King was on the committee from the Birmingham African-American community that looked into the case E. D. Nixon and Clifford Durr decided to wait for a better case to pursue because the incident involved a minor.
Nine months later on December 1, 1955, a similar incident occurred when Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a city bus. The two incidents led to the Montgomery bus boycott, which was urged and planned by Nixon and led by King. King was in his twenties, and had just taken up his clerical role. The other ministers asked him to take a leadership role simply because his relative newness to community leadership made it easier for him to speak out. King was hesitant about taking the role but decided to do so if no one else wanted it.
King’s role in the bus boycott transformed him into a national figure and the best-known spokesman of the civil rights movement.
It Wasnt The First Planned March On Washington
Labor leader and civil rights advocate A. Philip Randolph had threatened a March for Freedom on the National Mall in 1941 to pressure then-President Franklin Roosevelt to provide equal opportunity for defense jobs. Randolph hired Rustin to organize part of the march, which they felt was the only way to prompt action after numerous appeals.
It worked: The march was called off after Roosevelt established the Fair Employment Practices Committee, abolishing racial discrimination in hiring.
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Selma Voting Rights Movement And Bloody Sunday 1965
In December 1964, King and the SCLC joined forces with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Selma, Alabama, where the SNCC had been working on voter registration for several months. A local judge issued an injunction that barred any gathering of three or more people affiliated with the SNCC, SCLC, DCVL, or any of 41 named civil rights leaders. This injunction temporarily halted civil rights activity until King defied it by speaking at Brown Chapel on January 2, 1965. During the 1965 march to Montgomery, Alabama, violence by state police and others against the peaceful marchers resulted in much publicity, which made racism in Alabama visible nationwide.
Acting on James Bevel‘s call for a march from Selma to Montgomery, Bevel and other SCLC members, in partial collaboration with SNCC, attempted to organize a march to the state’s capital. The first attempt to march on March 7, 1965, at which King was not present, was aborted because of mob and police violence against the demonstrators. This day has become known as Bloody Sunday and was a major turning point in the effort to gain public support for the civil rights movement. It was the clearest demonstration up to that time of the dramatic potential of King and Bevel’s nonviolence strategy.
Chicago Open Housing Movement 1966
In 1966, after several successes in the south, King, Bevel, and others in the civil rights organizations took the movement to the North, with Chicago as their first destination. King and Ralph Abernathy, both from the middle class, moved into a building at 1550 S. Hamlin Avenue, in the slums of North Lawndale on Chicago’s West Side, as an educational experience and to demonstrate their support and empathy for the poor.
The SCLC formed a coalition with CCCO, Coordinating Council of Community Organizations, an organization founded by Albert Raby, and the combined organizations’ efforts were fostered under the aegis of the Chicago Freedom Movement.During that spring, several white couple/black couple tests of real estate offices uncovered racial steering: discriminatory processing of housing requests by couples who were exact matches in income, background, number of children, and other attributes. Several larger marches were planned and executed: in Bogan, Belmont Cragin, Jefferson Park, Evergreen Park , Gage Park, , and others.
When King and his allies returned to the South, they left Jesse Jackson, a seminary student who had previously joined the movement in the South, in charge of their organization. Jackson continued their struggle for civil rights by organizing the Operation Breadbasket movement that targeted chain stores that did not deal fairly with blacks.
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