Martin Luther King Biography
Fast Facts
Martin Luther King Jr.: The Man and the Dream DVD
Great Quotes by MLK...
"...don't hinder me! We will march non-violently. We shall force this nation, this city, this world, to face its own conscience. We will make the God of love in the white man triumph over the Satan of segregation that is in him.... The struggle is not between black and white. But between good and evil."
" I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality"
"I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits."
A&E's Martin Luther King Jr. Biography
Martin Luther King Biography
Martin Luther King graduated from Crozer with the highest grade average in his class and went on to Boston University as a doctoral student. It was here he met his future wife, Coretta Scott, a young woman of uncommon intellectual and artistic accomplishments. She was studying voice at the New England Conservatory of Music. Martin received his doctorate in 1955, then he was hired as pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama.
Always an active worker for the rights of people of color, King was by this time, a member of the executive committee of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the biggest organization of its kind, at that time.
He was in a good position then to take a leadership role in the cause of the supporters of Rosa Parks. She was a black woman who had refused to give up her seat to a white man while traveling on a bus and had been arrested for this act. Martin Luther led the "bus boycott" which lasted for 382 days and led to the government of the United States striking down its law of segregation on buses as unconstitutional. This was the first great Negro non-violent demonstration in the United States and King was at the forefront of it all.
He took a lot of abuse because of his high visibility...his house and church was bombed, he was arrested many times and he endured personal abuse from all sides, but he was unstoppable. Non-violence "may mean going to jail," he said. "If such is the case the resister must be willing to fill the jail houses of the South. It may even mean physical death. But if physical death is the price a man must pay to free his children and his white brethren from a permanent death of the spirit, then nothing could be more redemptive."
Martin Luther King paid the price of physical death on April 4th, 1968 when an assassin pointed his gun at Martin and pulled the trigger ending a magnificent life.
Martin Luther King succeeded in galvanizing the conscience of the United States, inspiring people to make real change happen. What had been unthinkable....men and women of different color sharing the same counter to eat their lunch....became a common event, because of Martin Luther King's great dedication to the cause of his people and the many courageous people who worked with him to make The Dream come true.
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Who Killed Martin Luther King, Jr.?
Profiles of five influential pastors illuminate the important role of these
figures in American society.