On This Day In TCXPI History
We Remember Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Pastor, Civil Rights Leader, and Nobel Peace Prize Winner.
One
of the most visible advocates of nonviolence and direct action as methods of
social change, Martin Luther King, Jr. was born in Atlanta, Georgia on January
15, 1929.
As
the grandson of the Rev. A.D. Williams, pastor of Ebenezer Baptist church and a
founder of Atlanta's NAACP chapter, and the son of Martin Luther King, Sr., who
succeeded Williams as Ebenezer's pastor, Dr. King's roots were in the African
American Baptist church. After attending Morehouse College in Atlanta, King
went on to study at Crozer
Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania and Boston University in Massachusetts,
where he deepened his understanding of theological scholarship and explored
Mahatma Gandhi's nonviolent strategy for social change.
Dr.
King married Coretta Scott in 1953, and the following year he accepted the
pastorate at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. He received
his Ph.D. in systematic theology in 1955.
On
December 5, 1955, after Civil Rights activist Rosa Parks refused to comply with
Montgomery's segregation policy on buses, Black residents launched a bus
boycott and elected King president of the newly-formed Montgomery Improvement
Association.
The boycott continued throughout 1956 and King gained national
prominence for his role in the campaign. In December 1956 the United States
Supreme Court declared Alabama's segregation laws unconstitutional and
Montgomery buses were desegregated.
Seeking
to build upon the success in Montgomery, King and other southern Black
ministers founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in
Atlanta in 1957.
In
1959, Dr
King toured India and further developed his understanding of Gandhian
nonviolent strategies. Later that year, King resigned from Dexter and returned
to Atlanta to become co-pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church with his father.
In
1960, Black college students in Greensboro, North Carolina initiated a wave of
sit-in protests that led to the formation of the Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee (SNCC). King supported the student movement and
expressed an interest in creating a youth arm of the SCLC. Student activists
admired King, but they were critical of his top-down leadership style and were
determined to maintain their autonomy.
As an
advisor to SNCC, Ella Baker, who had previously served as associate director of
SCLC, made clear to representatives from other civil rights organizations that
SNCC was to remain a student-led organization. The 1961 "Freedom
Rides" heightened tensions between King and younger activists, as he faced
criticism for his decision not to participate in the rides. Conflicts between
SCLC and SNCC continued during the Albany (Georgia) Movement of 1961 and 1962.
In the spring of 1963, King and SCLC lead mass demonstrations in Birmingham,
Alabama, where local white police officials were known for their violent
opposition to integration.
Clashes
between unarmed Black demonstrators and police armed with dogs and fire hoses
generated newspaper headlines throughout the world. President Kennedy responded
to the Birmingham protests by submitting broad civil rights legislation to
Congress, which led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Subsequent
mass demonstrations culminated in the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom
on August 28, 1963, in which more than 250,000 protesters gathered in
Washington, D.C. It was on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial that King
delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech. King's renown continued
to grow as he became Time magazine's Man of the Year in 1963 and the recipient
of the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway in 1964…….
To
read the complete article, please visit:
Blackpast.org
http://www.blackpast.org/aah/king-martin-luther-jr-1929-1968
(Accessed
on 01/15/2016)
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