Who is Martin Luther King?
Martin Luther King was born on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta (American South). His father, Daddy King, trip to Germany with Martin in 1934 and there his father changes his first name and his son name to Martin (tribute of the great religious leader Martin Luther). When Martin Luther was five years old, he had to change school, because blacks were not allowed to share the classrooms with whites. However, it made no change on Martin Luther King’s mentality then. It happened later, thanks to his religious beliefs. Where he was a child, he went to church every they, and at six he was a member of its choir. The religion became very important in Martin’s life, but when he was fifteen he started to question it. He started to change his mind when he started studying at Morehoue College. King graduated in 1948 and continued the studies in another college near to Philadelphia. He stayed in the north after his graduated in 1951 because he thought about the good live in the north. But in 1954 he returned to the south. In Alabama, King understood the racist injustice to black people, at the time of collecting the salary and the suffering. Is in this moment, when he promoted the change in his church. The maid of Martin changed again, this time riding the teaching of Mahatma Gandhi “We need to love our enemies”. One day (when even King was at school), a white student put a gun at King, but he only did one think: look into the eyes of the student and spoke with calm. After this, the white said sorry and King earned his respect as black[2]. In the late of 1876 and 1965, some state legislatures put into effect the Jim Crow Laws. These laws segregated black people from whites[3]. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), organized in 1909, tried to change the Jim Crow Laws. With the NAACP started the civil rights campaigns, but it was useless since the nephew was directed by whites. One of the injustices they suffered, the black people, it was after the Second World War: after the war ended, millions of black´s soldiers they didn´t get enough money to be able to live, whereas white soldiers received more of money. Many blacks protested against such injustice. At the beginning of December 1955, it was created the Montgomer Improvement Association (MIA) and Martin Luther King became its president
with the collaboration of Ralph David Abernathy[4].
Who is Rosa Parks?
Rosa Parks was born on February 4, 1913, in Tuskegee (Alabama). When Rosa was two years old, his parents separated, and her mother moved all the family to Pine Level (Alabama). The grandparents of Rosa were former slaves, but they managed to become great advocates against racial struggle. Parks has become an icon of racial struggles: she was the secretary of Edgar Daniel Nixon[5] and isn´t forgotten by the bus boycott[6]. After the bus boycott, she wanted to take her fight.
The fight for racial equality.
On November 29, 1959, Martin Luther King was forced to leave Dexter Avenue Baptist Church because his priority was fight for civil rights. On February 1, 1960, four black students sat down at the lunch bar in the Woolworth´s store and they asked for their food, but both customers and waiters forced them to leave.“Whites only”, they screamed. The four braves refused to leave. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) asked Martin to go along with them to sit down at the lunch bar in Rich´s, King initially refused to participate, but he ended up joining them. On Octubre 19, 1960, he was arrested with other students and forced to pay a fine, but he refused and was taken to prison. There was a trial headed by the judge George J. Mitchell, who wished King to be in prison. Seven days later the students, who participated with Martin, were released, but he not. King´s wife, Coretta, knowing the situation, called his lawyer, who made a few calls. One of them was to the president of the United States, John F. Kennedy. Two days later, Martin Luther King was released[7]. Why do you hate the demonstration, but you do not hate the reasons for them? For years, the black man has heard the word “wait” but it has nearly always mean “never”. America´s black people have waited for more than 340 years. White people kill black mothers and fathers. Policemen kill our black brothers and sisters. What will happen next? We never know. When you understand our problems, you will also understand this. We find difficult to wait[8].
The march on Washington
“For the first time, white and black Americans stood together as one nation”[9]. The so called “Freedom buses” and “freedom trains” went all over the United States collecting everyone who would gather in the capital city to listen to Martin Luther King’s famous speech “I have a dream”[10]. Characters like Bod Dylan (singer), Joan Baez (singer) and Marlon Brando (actor) went to the meeting with the intention to help the struggle against racism. All American television chaines postponed the afternoon shows to broadcast live the march on Washington, headed by Martin Luther King. After the speech, he went to visit John F. Kennedy, and this repeated the most powerful prhase of the meeting “I have a dream”.
But it wasn´t all happiness, because the KKK carried out the explosion of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church (Birminghan) and killing four black girls. Authorities didn´t act on behalf of blacks. Martin Luther King travelled there to calm the public and asking for the imprisonment of those responsible[11].
On December 10, 1964, Martin Luther King, 35 years old, received the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo. But he accepted it not for himself but for all the people who fought for the peace “Black people and poor people cannot stay poor for ever”[12]. After receiving the prize, Dr. Mays organized a very expensive dinner for him. Taking advantage of this, the KKK organized a new attack, but they were stopped, for the first time, by the police.
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The explosion of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church |
Malcolm Little and Stokely Carmichael, the opponents of King
Malcolm Little was the leader of the Nation of Islam and he proposed that the back people had their own satte. He didn´t agree with Martin Luther King’s nonviolence, since he, Malcolm, wanted to defend himself with weapons, not with words. He became unpopular among the Nation of Islam, which ended up killing him on February 21, 1965.The example the Martin Luther King provoked thousands of marches in favour of peace and antiracism. But to get peace they had to suffer various consequences: violence and deaths of black people. What difference was there between King and the new leaders? Martin Luther King wished that the blacks could vote, but the others wanted better houses and better jobs.
In 1966, the new leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was Stokely Carmichael. He respected King, but not his ideas. Carmichael said: “If you want freedom, you will have to take it from the whites!”. He and his follower didn´t hesitate to carry out a violent action, but that´s not what King wanted. For him, Carmichael, King became a hindrance “[…] For years he gave them hope and dreams, but nothing was happening”.
Two years later, the afternoon of Abril 4, 1968, James Earl Ray shot Martin in a parking. After his death, Carmichael said: “This is an act of war! Get your gun!”.
[1] On August 28, 1963, Martin Luther King stood in front of more than 250000 protest marchers in Washington D.C. and gave one of the most famous speeches.
[2] After this, Martin was voted president of his class.
[3] DEGNAN, COLEEN, Martin Luther King, PEARSON, 2008: They could not go to the white people´s restaurants, hotels, churches, or schools.
[4] Ralph David Abernathy was another black preacher in Montgomery.
[5] Edgar Daniel Nixon was the leader of civil rights. “The leader.
[6] On Thursday December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested for sitting in a white place and for not having a white woman sit down. After her arrest, she telephoned Edgar Daniel Nixon who paid the bail.
[7] After this, Daddy”Daddy”??? ¡No puede ser! King said in the Ebenezer Church: “Don´t vote for Richard Nixon, vote for John F.Kennedy”. Can be deduced that behind the help of JFK, there were political interests.
[8] WASHINGTON, JAMES MELVIN, A testament of hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, HARPER, SANFRANCISCO, 1991.
[9] DEGNAN, COLEEN, Martin Luther King, PEARSON, 2008
[10] WASHINGTON, JAMES MELVIN, A testament of hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, HARPERSANFRANCISCO, 1991. “A dream for the future was for all children, all Americans. […] The colour of a person´s skin didn´t matter. Only a person´s heart and mind were important.
[11] Robert Chambliss was one of the authors, but he wasn´t judged until 1977. Another one, Herman Cash, never went to court and died in 1994. And it wasn´t until 2003, when Bobby Frank Cherry, the third one, was finally sent to prison.
[12] WASHINGTON, JAMES MELVIN, A testament of hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, HARPERSANFRANCISCO, 1991.
">“I have a dream today… one day little black boys and little black girls Will be able to join hands with little white boys and little white girls as sisters and brothers.”[1] Today, many people of all the word share the same dram. Leader such as Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Malcom Little and Stokely Carmichael, in different ways, tried to make this dream become true.
Who is Martin Luther King?
Martin Luther King was born on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta (American South). His father, Daddy King, trip to Germany with Martin in 1934 and there his father changes his first name and his son name to Martin (tribute of the great religious leader Martin Luther). When Martin Luther was five years old, he had to change school, because blacks were not allowed to share the classrooms with whites. However, it made no change on Martin Luther King’s mentality then. It happened later, thanks to his religious beliefs. Where he was a child, he went to church every they, and at six he was a member of its choir. The religion became very important in Martin’s life, but when he was fifteen he started to question it. He started to change his mind when he started studying at Morehoue College. King graduated in 1948 and continued the studies in another college near to Philadelphia. He stayed in the north after his graduated in 1951 because he thought about the good live in the north. But in 1954 he returned to the south. In Alabama, King understood the racist injustice to black people, at the time of collecting the salary and the suffering. Is in this moment, when he promoted the change in his church. The maid of Martin changed again, this time riding the teaching of Mahatma Gandhi “We need to love our enemies”. One day (when even King was at school), a white student put a gun at King, but he only did one think: look into the eyes of the student and spoke with calm. After this, the white said sorry and King earned his respect as black[2]. In the late of 1876 and 1965, some state legislatures put into effect the Jim Crow Laws. These laws segregated black people from whites[3]. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), organized in 1909, tried to change the Jim Crow Laws. With the NAACP started the civil rights campaigns, but it was useless since the nephew was directed by whites. One of the injustices they suffered, the black people, it was after the Second World War: after the war ended, millions of black´s soldiers they didn´t get enough money to be able to live, whereas white soldiers received more of money. Many blacks protested against such injustice. At the beginning of December 1955, it was created the Montgomer Improvement Association (MIA) and Martin Luther King became its president
with the collaboration of Ralph David Abernathy[4].
Who is Rosa Parks?
Rosa Parks was born on February 4, 1913, in Tuskegee (Alabama). When Rosa was two years old, his parents separated, and her mother moved all the family to Pine Level (Alabama). The grandparents of Rosa were former slaves, but they managed to become great advocates against racial struggle. Parks has become an icon of racial struggles: she was the secretary of Edgar Daniel Nixon[5] and isn´t forgotten by the bus boycott[6]. After the bus boycott, she wanted to take her fight.
The fight for racial equality.
On November 29, 1959, Martin Luther King was forced to leave Dexter Avenue Baptist Church because his priority was fight for civil rights. On February 1, 1960, four black students sat down at the lunch bar in the Woolworth´s store and they asked for their food, but both customers and waiters forced them to leave.“Whites only”, they screamed. The four braves refused to leave. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) asked Martin to go along with them to sit down at the lunch bar in Rich´s, King initially refused to participate, but he ended up joining them. On Octubre 19, 1960, he was arrested with other students and forced to pay a fine, but he refused and was taken to prison. There was a trial headed by the judge George J. Mitchell, who wished King to be in prison. Seven days later the students, who participated with Martin, were released, but he not. King´s wife, Coretta, knowing the situation, called his lawyer, who made a few calls. One of them was to the president of the United States, John F. Kennedy. Two days later, Martin Luther King was released[7]. Why do you hate the demonstration, but you do not hate the reasons for them? For years, the black man has heard the word “wait” but it has nearly always mean “never”. America´s black people have waited for more than 340 years. White people kill black mothers and fathers. Policemen kill our black brothers and sisters. What will happen next? We never know. When you understand our problems, you will also understand this. We find difficult to wait[8].
The march on Washington
“For the first time, white and black Americans stood together as one nation”[9]. The so called “Freedom buses” and “freedom trains” went all over the United States collecting everyone who would gather in the capital city to listen to Martin Luther King’s famous speech “I have a dream”[10]. Characters like Bod Dylan (singer), Joan Baez (singer) and Marlon Brando (actor) went to the meeting with the intention to help the struggle against racism. All American television chaines postponed the afternoon shows to broadcast live the march on Washington, headed by Martin Luther King. After the speech, he went to visit John F. Kennedy, and this repeated the most powerful prhase of the meeting “I have a dream”.
But it wasn´t all happiness, because the KKK carried out the explosion of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church (Birminghan) and killing four black girls. Authorities didn´t act on behalf of blacks. Martin Luther King travelled there to calm the public and asking for the imprisonment of those responsible[11].
On December 10, 1964, Martin Luther King, 35 years old, received the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo. But he accepted it not for himself but for all the people who fought for the peace “Black people and poor people cannot stay poor for ever”[12]. After receiving the prize, Dr. Mays organized a very expensive dinner for him. Taking advantage of this, the KKK organized a new attack, but they were stopped, for the first time, by the police.
|
The explosion of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church |
Malcolm Little and Stokely Carmichael, the opponents of King
Malcolm Little was the leader of the Nation of Islam and he proposed that the back people had their own satte. He didn´t agree with Martin Luther King’s nonviolence, since he, Malcolm, wanted to defend himself with weapons, not with words. He became unpopular among the Nation of Islam, which ended up killing him on February 21, 1965.The example the Martin Luther King provoked thousands of marches in favour of peace and antiracism. But to get peace they had to suffer various consequences: violence and deaths of black people. What difference was there between King and the new leaders? Martin Luther King wished that the blacks could vote, but the others wanted better houses and better jobs.
In 1966, the new leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was Stokely Carmichael. He respected King, but not his ideas. Carmichael said: “If you want freedom, you will have to take it from the whites!”. He and his follower didn´t hesitate to carry out a violent action, but that´s not what King wanted. For him, Carmichael, King became a hindrance “[…] For years he gave them hope and dreams, but nothing was happening”.
Two years later, the afternoon of Abril 4, 1968, James Earl Ray shot Martin in a parking. After his death, Carmichael said: “This is an act of war! Get your gun!”.
[1] On August 28, 1963, Martin Luther King stood in front of more than 250000 protest marchers in Washington D.C. and gave one of the most famous speeches.
[2] After this, Martin was voted president of his class.
[3] DEGNAN, COLEEN, Martin Luther King, PEARSON, 2008: They could not go to the white people´s restaurants, hotels, churches, or schools.
[4] Ralph David Abernathy was another black preacher in Montgomery.
[5] Edgar Daniel Nixon was the leader of civil rights. “The leader.
[6] On Thursday December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested for sitting in a white place and for not having a white woman sit down. After her arrest, she telephoned Edgar Daniel Nixon who paid the bail.
[7] After this, Daddy”Daddy”??? ¡No puede ser! King said in the Ebenezer Church: “Don´t vote for Richard Nixon, vote for John F.Kennedy”. Can be deduced that behind the help of JFK, there were political interests.
[8] WASHINGTON, JAMES MELVIN, A testament of hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, HARPER, SANFRANCISCO, 1991.
[9] DEGNAN, COLEEN, Martin Luther King, PEARSON, 2008
[10] WASHINGTON, JAMES MELVIN, A testament of hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, HARPERSANFRANCISCO, 1991. “A dream for the future was for all children, all Americans. […] The colour of a person´s skin didn´t matter. Only a person´s heart and mind were important.
[11] Robert Chambliss was one of the authors, but he wasn´t judged until 1977. Another one, Herman Cash, never went to court and died in 1994. And it wasn´t until 2003, when Bobby Frank Cherry, the third one, was finally sent to prison.
[12] WASHINGTON, JAMES MELVIN, A testament of hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, HARPERSANFRANCISCO, 1991.
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