MARTIN LUTHER KING

Martin Luther King

(Atlanta, 1929 - Memphis, USA, 1968)

 American Baptist pastor, civil rights advocate. The son of a Baptist minister, Martin Luther King studied theology at Boston University. From a young age he became aware of the situation of social and racial segregation blacks living in his country, and especially in the southern states.

Become Baptist minister in 1954 he took over a church in the city of Montgomery, Alabama. Very soon showed his charisma and his determination to fight for civil rights by peaceful methods, inspired by the figure of Mahatma Gandhi and the theory of civil disobedience of Henry David Thoreau. Shortly after arriving in Montgomery organized and led a massive boycott of almost a year against segregation on municipal buses.

Martin Luther King

The Martin Luther King fame quickly spread throughout the country and soon assumed leadership of the U.S. peace movement, first through the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and later the Congress of Racial Equality. Also, as a member of the Association for the Advancement of Colored People, opened another front for improvements in their living conditions.

In 1960 took a sit spontaneous black students in Birmingham, Alabama, to start a nationwide campaign. This time, Martin Luther King was jailed and later released through the intercession of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, then a candidate for president of the United States, but managed to blacks equal access to libraries, dining rooms and parking lots.

In the summer of 1963, the struggle reached one of its high points when he led a massive march on Washington, attended by two hundred and fifty thousand people, to whom delivered one of his finest speeches for peace and equality humans. He and other representatives of racist organizations were received by President Kennedy, who promised to streamline its policy against segregation in schools and the issue of unemployment, special way affecting the black community.

However, neither the good intentions of the president, who would die assassinated months later, neither the ethical force of the message of King, the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, appear sufficient to contain the spread of color nationalist groups opposed to integration and favorable to violence, as Black Power, Black Panthers and Black Muslims. The permeability of the groups of color, especially those living in the ghettos of New York and other northern states, the influence of these violent groups, threatened the core of the message of King, pacifism.

In March 1965 led a demonstration of thousands of civil rights advocates who traveled nearly a hundred miles from Selma, where there had been racial violence, to Montgomery. The struggle of Martin Luther King had a tragic end: the April 4, 1968 was assassinated in Memphis by James Earl Ray. While celebrating his funeral in the church Edenhaëser of Atlanta, a wave of violence spread across the country. Ray, who was arrested by the police, the murder was recognized and was sentenced to circumstantial evidence. Years later retracted his statement and, with the support of the King family, ordered the reopening of the case and the sight of a new trial.