Person:Martin King (6)

Biographical Summery

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Martin Luther King Jr. (born Michael King Jr.; January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American Baptist minister and activist who became the most visible spokesman and leader in the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968. An African American church leader and the son of early civil rights activist and minister Martin Luther King Sr., King advanced civil rights for people of color in the United States through nonviolence and civil disobedience. Inspired by his Christian beliefs and the nonviolent activism of Mahatma Gandhi, he led targeted, nonviolent resistance against Jim Crow laws and other forms of discrimination.

King participated in and led marches for the right to vote, desegregation, labor rights, and other civil rights. He oversaw the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott and later became the first president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). As president of the SCLC, he led the unsuccessful Albany Movement in Albany, Georgia, and helped organize some of the nonviolent 1963 protests in Birmingham, Alabama. King was one of the leaders of the 1963 March on Washington, where he delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. The civil rights movement achieved pivotal legislative gains in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968.

The SCLC put into practice the tactics of nonviolent protest with some success by strategically choosing the methods and places in which protests were carried out. There were several dramatic standoffs with segregationist authorities, who sometimes turned violent. Several times King would be jailed. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director J. Edgar Hoover considered King a radical and made him an object of the FBI's COINTELPRO from 1963 forward. FBI agents investigated him for possible communist ties, spied on his personal life, and secretly recorded him. The FBI in 1964 mailed King a threatening anonymous letter, which he interpreted as an attempt to make him commit suicide.^[1]

On October 14, 1964, King won the Nobel Peace Prize for combating racial inequality through nonviolent resistance. In 1965, he helped organize two of the three Selma to Montgomery marches. In his final years, he expanded his focus to include opposition towards poverty, capitalism, and the Vietnam War. In 1968, King was planning a national occupation of Washington, D.C., to be called the Poor People's Campaign, when he was assassinated on April 4 in Memphis, Tennessee. His death was followed by national mourning, as well as anger leading to riots in many U.S. cities. King was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 2003. Martin Luther King Jr. Day was established as a holiday in cities and states throughout the United States beginning in 1971; the holiday was enacted at the federal level by legislation signed by President Ronald Reagan in 1986. Hundreds of streets in the U.S. have been renamed in his honor, and the most populous county in Washington State was rededicated for him. The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., was dedicated in 2011.

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1. ↑ ^1.0 1.1 .

   Statement by the President on the Assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
   April 4, 1968
   Lyndon B. Johnson
   1968-69: Book I
   AMERICA is shocked and saddened by the brutal slaying tonight of Dr. Martin Luther King.
   I ask every citizen to reject the blind violence that has struck Dr. King, who lived by nonviolence.
   I pray that his family can find comfort in the memory of all he tried to do for the land he loved so well.
   I have just conveyed the sympathy of Mrs. Johnson and myself to his widow, Mrs. King.
   I know that every American of good will joins me in mourning the death of this outstanding leader and in praying for peace and understanding throughout this land.
   We can achieve nothing by lawlessness and divisiveness among the American people. It is only by joining together and only by working together that we can continue to move toward equality and fulfillment for all of our people.
   I hope that all Americans tonight will search their hearts as they ponder this most tragic incident.
   I have canceled my plans for the evening. I am postponing my trip to Hawaii until tomorrow.
   Thank you.
   ________________________________________
   Note: The President read the statement at 9:07 p.m. outside the entrance to the West Lobby at the White House for broadcast by radio and television.
   Dr. King, president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and a leader in the civil rights movement, was assassinated on April 4 in Memphis, Tenn.
   ________________________________________
   Citation: Lyndon B. Johnson: "Statement by the President on the Assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.," April 4, 1968. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=28781.

2. ↑ ^{2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7} U. S. Department of the Interior. National Park Service. Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site Georgia.

   Martin Luther King, Jr.
   Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) was the nation's most prominent leader in the 20th century struggle for civil rights. He was born in the segregated south of Atlanta, Georgia and after graduating from Morehouse College, Crozer Theological Seminary, and Boston University he entered the Christian ministry. He married Coretta Scott King in 1953, and became a pastor in Montgomery, Alabama. In 1954, he joined the leadership of the local NAACP chapter, the Montgomery Improvement Association, and helped create the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), an organization formed to provide leadership for the burgeoning civil rights movement.
   
   Following Rosa Parks' arrest in 1955 for refusing to move to the back of a bus in Montgomery, he organized a year-long bus boycott. The "Montgomery Movement" led to the integration of the city's buses and launched a non-violent protest movement that spread across the United States. King, along with Fred Shuttleworth and others led the Birmingham Campaign to desegregate Birmingham, Alabama. The brutality displayed towards the Campaign's demonstrators and King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail", written while he was incarcerated, brought national and international attention to the civil rights movement. Ultimately, King was arrested 30 times for his participation in civil rights activities. In 1963, he was one of the organizers for the March on Washington and the following year he received the Nobel Peace Prize. In 1965, King helped to organize the Selma to Montgomery marches. He worked tirelessly to assure the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and was in attendance when President Johnson signed both that Act and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 into law. In the final years of his life, he expanded his focus to include poverty and the Vietnam War.
   
   In 1968, Martin Luther King was assassinated while in Memphis, Tennessee, to help striking sanitation workers. His legacy lives on and his writings and speeches, including "I Have a Dream", from the March on Washington and "I've Been to the Mountaintop," given just hours before his death, continue to inspire new generations.
   https://www.nps.gov/subjects/civilrights/martin-luther-king.htm

3. ↑ Library of Congress The LOC Wise Guide.

   The 20th century's most influential civil rights leader, Martin Luther King Jr., was born on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Ga. King entered the civil rights movement in 1955. That same year, he led a bus boycott that was initiated by Rosa Parks in Montgomery, Ala., where blacks were made to sit at the back and give up their seats to whites. In 1963, King participated in the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. From the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, he delivered his famous "I Have A Dream" speech to a crowd of 250,000.
   https://www.loc.gov/wiseguide/jan03/kingjr.html

4. ↑ ^4.0 4.1 Library of Congress America's Story from America's Library.

   Born: January 15, 1929
   Died: April 4, 1968
   
   Martin Luther King Jr. was the most important voice of the American civil rights movement, which worked for equal rights for all. He was famous for using nonviolent resistance to overcome injustice, and he never got tired of trying to end segregation laws (laws that prevented blacks from entering certain places, such as restaurants, hotels, and public schools). He also did all he could to make people realize that "all men are created equal." Because of his great work, in 1964 King received the Nobel Peace Prize -- the youngest person ever to receive this high honor. King was also a Baptist minister. He was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, when he was just 39 years old. His birthday is now observed as a national holiday on the third Monday in January.
   http://www.americaslibrary.gov/aa/king/aa_king_subj.html

5. ↑ ^{5.00 5.01 5.02 5.03 5.04 5.05 5.06 5.07 5.08 5.09 5.10 5.11 5.12 5.13 5.14 5.15} Stanford University: The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute.

   https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-resources/major-king-events-chronology-1929-1968
   Major King Events Chronology: 1929-1968

6. ↑ Find A Grave.

   Dr Martin Luther King, Jr
   Birth: 15 Jan 1929 Atlanta, Fulton County, Georgia, USA
   Death: 4 Apr 1968 Memphis, Shelby County, Tennessee, USA
   Burial: Martin Luther King, Jr. Center, Atlanta, Fulton County, Georgia, USA
   GPS: Latitude: 33.75504, Longitude: -84.37342
   Memorial #: 582
   Bio: Social Reformer. He was the recipient of the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize for his work for racial equality in the United States, President of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and the most prominent African American leader in the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. In the eleven-year period between 1957 and 1968, he traveled over six million miles and spoke over twenty-five hundred times, appearing wherever there was injustice, protest, and action; and he wrote five books as well as numerous articles. He organized and led marches for the right to vote, desegregation, fair hiring practices, and other basic civil rights. His pleas won the support of millions of people, black and white, and made him internationally famous. Most of these rights were successfully enacted into United States law with the passage of the U.S. Civil Rights Act and the U.S. Voting Rights Act. He is perhaps most famous for his "I Have A Dream" speech, which was given in front of the Lincoln Memorial during the 1963 March on Washington D.C. King was born the eldest son of Rev. Martin Luther "Daddy King" King, Sr. and Alberta Williams King. The church and education were the central forces that shaped his early life. He was educated in Atlanta, graduating from Booker T. Washington High School in 1944. He then followed in the path of his maternal grandfather Rev. A.D. Williams and his own father and enrolled at Morehouse College. There he became a admirer of its president Dr. Benjamin E. Mays. Under May's influence, King entered the ministry. He first considered studying medicine or law but decided to major in sociology, however ultimately found the call to the ministry irresistible. He served as assistant pastor to his father at Ebenezer Baptist Church while studying at Morehouse College. In February 1948 he was ordained as a Baptist Minister by his father. After graduating from Morehouse in 1948, King studied for a divinity degree at Crozer Theological Seminary in Upland, Pennsylvania, graduating in 1951. The following September he enrolled at Boston University in the Ph.D. program in systematic theology later earning his doctoral degree. There he met his future wife, Coretta Scott whom he later married in 1953. The couple had four children. In 1954 he accepted his first pastorate at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. He became active with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Alabama Council on Human Relations. He was selected to head the Montgomery Improvement Association, whose boycott efforts eventually ended the city's policies of racial segregation on public transportation resulting from the arrest of Rosa Parks. In 1957 he along with close friend Rev. Ralph D. Abernathy and others later formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), an organization of black ministers and churches aimed to challenge racial segregation. The ideals for this organization he took from Christianity; its operational techniques from Gandhi. At the time widespread segregation existed throughout the South in public schools, transportation, recreation and such public facilities as hotels and restaurants. Many states also used various methods to deprive African Americans of their voting rights. In 1958 he was stabbed by a mentally deranged woman, while on a book tour in New York City. In 1960, King moved from Montgomery to Atlanta to devote more effort to SCLC's work. He became co-pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church with his father. Throughout this time period heavy news coverage of the violence across America produced a national outcry against segregation. Under his leadership in the late 1950s and 1960s, civil disobedience and non-violent tactics, like the Washington March of 250,000 people in 1963, brought about major victories with the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights act in 1965. By the mid-1960s his role as the leader of the Civil Rights Movement was questioned by many black militants. Continued violence against civil rights workers of the south frustrated many African-American leaders. Some urged a more aggressive response to the continuing violence and began to use the slogan "Black Power." King repeated his commitment to nonviolence, but disputes among civil rights groups over "Black Power" suggested that he no longer spoke for the movement. In 1966 he extended his campaign to slums conditions in the Northern cities of the U.S. such as Chicago and later set up the Poor People's Campaign in 1968. He was less successful in this area since the Vietnam War distracted national attention from civil rights and urban issues. In 1967, he attacked the U.S. support of South Vietnam in the Vietnam War (1957-1975) which was denounced by supporters of the war. While organizing the Poor People's Campaign, he went to Memphis, Tennessee, to support a strike of black garbage men. There he was shot and killed by gunman James Earl Ray at the Lorraine Motel at 6:01 in the evening. The night before he was killed, he gave his “I've Been to the Mountaintop" speech at Mason Temple that drew upon the biblical images of the old slave spirituals, to instill hope and at the same time seemed to anticipate his own death. As a controversial public figure whose was repeatedly praised and vilified, his life had been threatened many times. King himself had said that he did not expect to live a long life. People throughout the world mourned King's death. His assassination produced immediate shock, grief, and anger across America. African-Americans rioted in more than 100 cities and on innumerable campuses and several lives were lost resulting in roughly $50 million in damage. His funeral in Atlanta days later was broadcast to the world. Three hundred thousand people gathered around and in Ebenezer Baptist Church. Inside the packed church included many of the country's political leaders, as well as quite a few labor leaders, foreign dignitaries, entertainment and sports figures and leaders from numerous religious faiths. A few month's later, the United States Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1968, which prohibited racial discrimination in the sale and rental of most housing in the nation. The same year Coretta Scott King founded the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center of Non-Violent Social Change in Atlanta as a memorial to her husband. The center seeks to advance King's philosophies of justice and nonviolence through its educational programs, exhibitions, and tours. His remains were later moved to an area what later in 1980 became known as the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site, which includes The King Center, his birth home and Ebenezer Baptist Church. In 1983 Congress passed legislation to make the third Monday in January as Martin Luther King Day, a national holiday in honor of King with the first observed on January 20, 1986. Since his death, Martin Luther King Jr. has come to represent black courage and achievement, high moral leadership, and the ability of Americans to address and overcome racial divisions. He received numerous honors throughout his life and since his death including posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Jimmy Carter in 1977, the Congressional Gold Medal in 2004 and the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Major collections of his papers are now owned by Boston University, the King Center, and Morehouse College. King published five books: “Stride to Freedom” in 1958, “Strength to Love” in 1963, “Why We Can't Wait” in 1964 “Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? “ in 1967, and “The Trumpet of Conscience” in 1968.
   Family Members
   Parents
   Martin Luther King 1899-1984
   Alberta Christine Williams King 1904-1974
   Spouse
   Coretta Scott King 1927-2006
   Siblings
   Alfred Daniel Williams King* 1930-1969
   Children
   Yolanda Denise King* 1955-2007
   Maintained by: Find A Grave
   Added: 1 Jan 2001
   URL: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/582/martin-luther-king
   Citation: Find A Grave, database and images (https://www.findagrave.com : accessed 01 February 2018), memorial page for Dr Martin Luther King, Jr (15 Jan 1929–4 Apr 1968), Find A Grave Memorial no. 582, citing Martin Luther King, Jr. Center, Atlanta, Fulton County, Georgia, USA ; Maintained by Find A Grave .

7.   .

   1930 United States Federal Census
   Name: Marvin L King
   [Martin L King]
   [Martin Luther King]
   Birth Year: abt 1929
   [15 Jan 1929]
   Gender: Male
   Race: Negro (Black)
   Birthplace: Georgia
   Marital Status: Single
   Relation to Head of House: Son
   Home in 1930: Atlanta, Fulton, Georgia, USA
   Street address: Auburn Avenue
   Ward of City: 4
   Block: 186
   House Number: 501
   Dwelling Number: 157
   Family Number: 190
   Attended School: No
   Father's Birthplace: Georgia
   Mother's Birthplace: Georgia
   Household Members:
   Name Age
   Marvin L King 31
   Elberta King 30
   Willie C King 3
   Marvin L King 1
   Ida Worthen 49
   Joel King 14

8.   Martin L King, in United States. 1940 U.S. Census Population Schedule. (National Archives Microfilm Publication T627)
   1940.

   1940 United States Federal Census
   Name: Martin L King [Martin Luther King Jr.] [Martin Luther King]
   Age: 11
   Estimated birth year: abt 1929
   Gender: Male
   Race: Negro (Black)
   Birthplace: Georgia
   Marital Status: Single
   Relation to Head of House: Son
   Home in 1940: Atlanta, Fulton, Georgia
   Map of Home in 1940: View Map
   Street: Auburn Avenue NE
   House Number: 501
   Inferred Residence in 1935: Atlanta, Fulton, Georgia
   Residence in 1935: Same House
   Sheet Number: 13B
   Attended School or College: Yes
   Highest Grade Completed: Elementary school, 5th grade
   Neighbors: View others on page
   Household Members:
   Name Age
   Marvin L King 40
   Alberta W King 35
   Willie Christine King 12
   Martin L King 11
   Alfred D King 9
   Jennie C Williams 65
   Ida Wartham 63
   Carrie Rutland 44

9.   Rev Martin L King, in U.S. City Directories, 1821-1995: [database on-line]. (Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011)
   1959.

   Name: Rev Martin L King
   Gender: Male
   Residence Year: 1959
   Residence Place: Montgomery, Alabama, USA
   Occupation: Pastor
   Spouse: Coretta S King
   Publication Title: Montgomery, Alabama, City Directory, 1959