Difference between revisions of "Martin Luther King"
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Revision as of 19:04, May 16, 2009
Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., Ph.D. (1929-1968) was by far the most important black leader of the 1960s. Since his assassination in 1968, he has been the single most important exemplar of liberalism in recent U.S. history.[1]
| “ | To be a Christian without prayer is no more possible than to be alive without breathing. | ” |
Education and early career
King was educated in Boston, where he earned his advanced degree in theology. He became the pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia.
Civil rights
He became an advocate against racial discrimination.
On Dec. 31, 1955, he led the nonviolent boycott of city buses of Montgomery, Alabama, after Rosa Parks was arrested for not moving to the back of the bus.[2]
Rev. King wrote his most famous writing, “Letter From A Birmingham Jail” (1963), while imprisoned for demonstrating against segregated eating facilities.
| “ | Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. | ” |
Foreign policy
By 1966 his attacks on the Vietnam War led to a break with Lyndon Johnson and the labor unions that had been his base of support in the white community (along with the liberal churches).
King founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
Rev. King's most famous speech, delivered to a huge crowd gathered in Washington, D.C. in 1964, chanted the refrain "I Have a Dream" of an end to segregation and discrimination. It was a brilliant Christian sermon that drew upon verses and images in the Bible,[3] ending in "Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"[4] The same year Rev. King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Rev. King was assassinated by James Earl Ray on April 4, 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee.
On April 16, 1963, Rev. King wrote:
- "As the Apostle Paul carried the gospel of Jesus Christ ... so am I compelled to carry the gospel... I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers ...
- I stand in the middle of two opposing forces ... One is a force of complacency ... The other force is one of bitterness and hatred, and it comes perilously close to advocating violence. It is expressed in the various black nationalist groups ... the largest being Elijah Muhammad's Muslim movement.
- Nourished by frustration over racial discrimination, this movement is made up of people who have lost faith in America ...
- I have tried to stand between these two forces ... for there is the more excellent way of love ...
- One day the South will know that when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters they were standing up for what is best in the American dream and for the most sacred values in our Judeo-Christian heritage."
In his 1964 book, WHY WE CAN'T WAIT, Rev. King wrote:
- "Whenever this issue of compensatory or preferential treatment for the Negro is raised, some of our friends recoil in horror. The Negro should be granted equality, they agree, but he should ask for nothing more. On the surface, this appears reasonable, but it is not realistic. For it is obvious that if a man enters the starting line of a race three hundred years after another man, the first would have to perform some incredible feat in order to catch up."
His last major public speech became known as "I've Been to the Mountaintop" [5]
Although King is generally embraced by the American cultural establishment today, he and the authorities did not always have such a cordial relationship. In 1967, King called the United States "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today." The FBI, under the direction of J. Edgar Hoover, kept King under surveillance from 1961 until his death in 1968. The Bureau tapped his phones and bugged his hotel rooms. The FBI did not end its surveillance of King's wife, Coretta Scott King, until many years after her husband's death.
See also
References
- ↑ Alonzo Hamby, Liberalism and Its Challengers: From F.D.R. to Bush (1992)
- ↑ http://www.thekingcenter.org/mlk/chronology.html
- ↑ For example, the speech recited Isaiah 40:4-5.
- ↑ http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkihaveadream.htm
- ↑ http://www.afscme.org/about/1549.cfm