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Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King was born in 1929 on January 15th as the son of the teacher Alberta King and the Baptist minister Michael Luther King in Atlanta (Georgia).
In 1948 he left the Morehouse College in Atlanta and went to the University, where he studied theology. When he was 24 years old he got married to Corretta Scott in Alabama. Later they had four children together.
M. L. King fought always for the colored's rights and in 1956 he had get to know the hatred against coloreds as someone attacked his house with a bomb. That was one reason why he and some other black priests founded the "Southern Christian Leadership Conference". In 1957 he traveled about 1 million sqm and hold over 200 speeches to find more civil right activists. One year later King released his first book "Stride Toward Freedom" in memory of the bus-boycott in Montgomery. As he advertised for his book an African- American attacked him, but he survived it. In 1959 his dream became true. He traveled to India because he admired Mohandas (Mahatma= the great soul) K. Gandhi for his passive resistance, which had big success. Once M. L. King said about Gandhi: "Gandhi was unavoidable. If the humanity wants to go on, Gandhi is (unausweichlich). He lived, thought and acted in the faith of the humanity, which will develop to a world of peace and harmony. We just may ignore Gandhi for the danger of ourselves."
In 1960 he left Atlanta and worked at his father's church. Two years later he met President John F. Kennedy and asked him for help for the civil rights. In 1963 on August 28th, as he didn't get help, he organized the famous "March on Washington ", in which 250 000 civil right activists took part. At the Lincoln Memorial Martin Luther King hold his famous speech "I have a dream". In 1964 he met Willy Brandt and talked to him about the discrimination of coloreds. In the same year on December 10th M. L. King got the Nobel Prize for peace. Even he got this prize he still protested against the discrimination and he got arrested for that.
In 1968 on April 4th Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was killed in a motel by a white man called James Earl Ray in Memphis, Tennessee.
18 years later in 1986 on January 20th the first national day of remembrance for M. L. King was celebrated.
The bus-boycott
Rosa Parks, an 43-year-old black tailor, was arrested because she didn't stand up from the front seat of a bus. The night after that, 50 important people of the
civil right movement met in church for a discussion about this problem. With them was a young priest, Dr. M. L. King Jr. The leaders organized the "Montgomery bus-boycott". Because of that the bus-company lost two thirds from its money. M. L. King had to pay $ 500 and had to go in jail for 386 days. He paid the money and after eight month the Supreme Court determined to abolish the segregation in buses, because that is against the constitution.
From Selma to Montgomery- The Bloody Sunday
Outraged about a killed demonstrator, the colored from Marion in Alabama decided to make a march. M. L. King should lead this march from Selma to the capital Montgomery where he had to talk to the governor. They wanted the police to stop their violence and they were searching for attention they needed to fight for their rights. As the governor didn't accept this march, M. L. King went to Washington to talk to President Johnson. The demonstrators couldn't wait and begun their march. As they reached the town boarder, the police was already waiting for them. As they crossed the bridge, which leaves Selma, the police ordered them to stop the march. But the police didn't wait until their warning was understand, instead of that, they attacked the crowd. With tear gas and hitsticks the police pushed them into a colored neighborhood where they hit innocent citizens.
This day is called the "Bloody Sunday". It got national attention and many marches were organized as answers to that day. President Johnson hold a very intensive speech and in the same year the "Voting Rights Act" was accepted for everyone, as a result of the Bloody Sunday.
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