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Martin Luther King Jr.
A leader's biography and a great man!
Martin Luther King Jr. was born in Atlanta, Georgia on January 15, 1929; he was born as Michael Luther King Jr.
In 1954, Martin Luther King Jr. became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Community Church in Alabama. He was a member of the executive committee of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People for he had always been a strong worker for the civil rights.
In December 1955 he was ready to accept the leadership of the first great Negro nonviolent demonstration of contemporary times in the United States, the bus boycott. The boycott lasted 382 days. King was arrested, his home was bombed, he was subjected to personal abuse, but at the same time he emerged as a Negro leader of the first rank.
In 1957 he was elected president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization formed to provide new leadership for the civil rights movement. King traveled over six million miles and spoke over twenty-five hundred times, appearing wherever there was injustice, protest, and action; and meanwhile he wrote five books as well as numerous articles. In these years, he led a massive protest in Birmingham, Alabama, that caught the attention of the entire world, providing what he called a “coalition of conscience”.
He directed a peaceful march on Washington, D.C., of 250,000 people to whom he delivered his address, "l Have a Dream", he conferred with President John F. Kennedy and campaigned for President Lyndon B. He was also awarded five honorary degrees; was named Man of the Year by Time magazine in 1963; and became not only the symbolic leader of American blacks but also a world figure.
At the age of thirty-five, Martin Luther King, Jr., was the youngest man to have received the Nobel Peace Prize.
In April 4, 1968 at age 39 he died in Memphis, Tennessee.
BY: MALU RODRÏGUEZ