Martin Luther King

Biography

Youth

Martin Luther King Jr is the son of the reverend Martin Luther King, Sr. and of Alberta Williams King. It has an older sister Christine King Ferris and a younger brother Albert Daniel Williams King. Martin Luther King sings with the chorus of her church in 1939 in Atlanta for the first of the film Gone With The Wind .

It enters to the university of Morehouse College at the 19 years age, having jumped two years of college without officially obtaining its certificate of graduation. Martin Luther King in graduate fate with a Bachelor off Arts in Sociology the June 20th 1948 and returns in Crozer Theological Seminary for a Bachelor off Divinity , which corresponds to a license in Théologie, that it obtains on May 12th 1951. It receives off a Doctor Philosophy of the Université of Boston on June 18th 1955.

Charges of plagiarism against its thesis of doctorate at the University of Boston led in 1991 to an official investigation of the persons in charge of this university. Those concluded that approximately a third of the thesis had been plagiarized of an article written by a before graduate student, but it was decided not to withdraw its title with King, because the thesis constituted all the same “an intelligent contribution to the knowledge”. It is the same in certain of its speeches, but Keith Miller supports that in the latter case, it is a current practice of the Afro-Americans and that one cannot regard that as plagiarism. However, as Theodore Pappas notes it in his book on the subject, King had in fact followed a course on the intellectual output norms and plagiarism to the University of Boston.

It Marie the June 18th 1953 with Coretta Scott which will take its name to become Coretta Scott King. It has with it four children: Yolanda, born in 1955, Martin Luther King III, born in 1957, Dexter Scott, born in 1961, and Bernice, born in 1963.

Montgomery and fight for civic rights

In 1953, Martin Luther King becomes Pasteur of the church Baptist of the Dexter avenue to Montgomery, in the Alabama.

In 1955, when Rosa Parks, a black woman, is stopped to have violated the segregationist laws of the city while refusing to yield its place to a white man, it carries out the Boycott of the buses of Montgomery with the assistance of Pasteur Ralph Abernathy and of Edgar Nixon, directing room of the National Association for the Advancement off Colored People. The black population supports the Boycott and organizes a system of Covoiturage. King is stopped during this program which lasts 382 days and which becomes if tended that its house, that of Ralph Abernathy and four churches are attacked with the Bombe flamer. The boycotters are often attacked physically. The boycott ends in a decision of the illegal Supreme court of the United States informant the segregation in the buses, restaurants, schools, and other public places.

Advised by the militant of the civic rights Bayard Rustin, Martin Luther King decides, in 1956, to adopt a strategy of Non-violence in her combat for freedom.

In 1957, it has a key role in the foundation of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC, Conference of the Leader Christians of the South ), is elected by it president and remained it until its death. The SCLC is a peaceful organization which took an active part in the Mouvement for the Civic rights by organizing the churches Afro-Americans to lead non-violent protests. King adheres to philosophy civil Désobéissance non-violent as used successfully in India by Gandhi.

It exposes in 1958 its point of view on the racial segregation and the spiral of inequality and hatred which it causes in the book Stride toward freedom; the Montgomery story ( walk towards freedom ):

In 1959, it does the book The Measure off write has Man ( the measurement of a man ), an attempt to depict an optimal structure of political, social and economic company, of which the part What is Man? ( which is what a man? ) was drawn.

The FBI starts to put Martin Luther King on listening in 1961, fearing that Communiste S try to infiltrate the movement of the civic rights. As no proof is found, the agency uses certain details recorded over one six years duration to try to make return King of its role of leader of the organization.

King precisely provides that organized protests and non-violent against the system of segregation of the known south as the Lois Jim Crow would bring a large press coverage of the conflict for the equality and the right to vote of the people of black skin. The reports of the journalists and the reports of television showing the deprivations and daily humiliations of the Afro-Americans of the south of the United States, as well as the violence and harassing deployed by the segregationists against the militants of the civic rights, then produce a wave of sympathy within the Public opinion for the Mouvement of the civic rights which becomes the political subject most important of America of the years 1960.

Martin Luther King organizes and carries out steps for the right of Vote of the blacks, the Déségrégation, the Law the labor and other human rights basic. The majority of these rights were voted like laws with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. King and the SCLC successfully applies the principles of non-violent demonstration by strategically choosing the places and the method of protest which leads to spectacular confrontations with the segregationist authorities.

Albany

In Albany, in Georgia, in 1961 and 1962, it joined the Activiste S buildings of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and of the National Association for the Advancement off Colored People carried out by William G. Anderson, a black doctor. Martin Luther King intervenes because the SNCC does not manage to advance the movement in spite of effective non-violent actions (occupation of libraries, stations of bus, restaurants reserved for the white, boycotts and demonstrations) because of the skill of the Shérif local Pritchett which carries out massive arrests without violence and a dispersion of the prisoners in all the county. King also intervenes because he was criticized by this organization mollement to have supported the “Freedom wrinkles S” ( drunk freedom against the segregation).

Whereas there intended to remain only a few days and to have only one role to advise, he is challenged during a massive arrest peaceful demonstrators. He refuses to pay the guarantee as long as the city does not make concessions. The agreements make are " dishonoured and violated by the ville" as of its departure.

Martin Luther King returns in July 1962, and is condemned to 45 days from prison or 178$ of fine. It chooses the prison but is discreetly released at the end of 3 days by the Pritchett sheriff who arranges himself to make pay his fine. King will comment on:

“We had been pilot people thrown out of restaurants… expelled of churches… and thrown in prison… But for the first time, we were pilot thrown somebody with kicks out of prison, was initially opposed to the principle walk because it feared that it has an negative impact on the vote of the law on the civic rights. The initial goal of walk was to show the desperate plight of the Afro-Americans of the states of the south and the failure of the federal government to ensure their rights and their safety. The group of the six accepts under the pressure and the presidential influence to pass a less radical message. Certain activists of the civic rights thought whereas walk presented nothing any more but one inaccurate and edulcorated vision situation of the blacks; Malcolm X called it “the joke on Washington”, and the members of the organization Nation off Islam who take part in walk will be suspended temporarily.

Walk makes specific requests however: end of the racial segregation in the public schools, a significant legislation on the civic rights (including a law prohibiting racial discrimination in the work world), a protection of the activists of the civic rights of the Police violence, a minimum wage of 2$ for all the workers without distinction and an independent government for Washington, D.C, which depends then on a committee of the congress.

In spite of the tensions, walk is an enormous success. More: 250000 people of all the ethnos groups meet on August 28th 1963 vis-a-vis the Capitole, in what up to now is the greatest demonstration having taken place in the history of the American capital.

The point of organ of the combat of Martin Luther King is her famous speech “ I cuts has dream ”, where it expresses its will and its hope to know fraternal America. This declaration is regarded as one of the best speeches of the American history with the Gettysburg Address of Abraham Lincoln.

St Augustine and Civil Rights Act

Nobel Prize of peace

October 14th 1964, Martin Luther King becomes the youngest prize winner of the Nobel Prize of peace to have carried out a nonviolent resistance with an aim of eliminating the racial damages in the United States. Inspired by the work of Gandhi and member of the American branch of the international Movement of the Reconciliation, he is regarded as one of the most important leaders of the Non-violence of the 20th century.

“Bloody Sunday” (bloody Sunday)

In December 1964, King and the SCLC again unite their forces with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) with Selma, Alabama, where the SNCC works with the recording of the voters on the electoral rolls since months. Selma was an important place for the defense of the right to vote of the Afro-Americans. The half of the inhabitants of the city were black but only 1% of them had been able to be registered on the electoral rolls because the registry office was accessible only two days per month, opened late and took pauses lunch with extension.

On Sunday, March 7, 1965, 600 defenders of the civic rights leave Selma to try to join Montgomery, the capital of the state, to present their complaints by means of a peaceful walk. They are stopped at the end of a few kilometers with the bridge Edmund Pettus by the police force and a hostile crowd which violently push back them with truncheon blow and of Teargas. This day became known under the name of “bloody sunday” and marked a turning in the fight for the civic rights. The reports showing police violences make it possible the movement to gain the support of the public opinion and underlines the success of the non-violent strategy of Martin Luther King who was not present at the time of this first walk, having tried to delay it after having met the president Lyndon B. Johnson.

Two days afterwards, King carries out a walk symbolic system to the bridge, an action which it seemed to have negotiated with the local authorities and which caused the incomprehension of the activists of Selma. The movement seeks the protection of justice then in order to achieve walk and the judge of the federal court Frank Minis Johnson Jr slices in favor of the demonstrators:

“the law is clear on the fact that the right to petition its objections near the government can be exerted in group of great amplitude (...) and these rights can be exerted by a walk, even along a public road. ”

: 3200 walkers leave Selma finally on Sunday, March 21 1965, traversing 20km per day and sleeping in the fields. It is during this way that Willie Ricks worked out the term “Black Power”. At the time when they reach the capitole of Montgomery, on Thursday, March 25, the walkers are: 25000. Martin Luther King makes the speech “Long How then, Long Not” ( how long, little time ). The very same day the militant white one of the civic rights Viola Liuzzo is assassinated by the Ku Klux Klan whereas it brings back walkers in his car. King witnesses its funeral and president Johnson intervenes directly on television to announce the arrest of the culprits.

Less than five months later, president Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act granting the right to vote without restriction.

Historical compensation

Several times Martin Luther King Jr. express its opinion that black American, as well as other handicapped American, should be compensated for the wrongs which had been made to them historically.

Person interviewed by Alex Halley in 1965, it says that to give only the equality to the American blacks could not remove the variation of income between them and white. King indicates that he asks a complete restitution of the wages never paid at the time of the Esclavage, which he believed impossible being, but proposes a governmental programme of compensation of 50 billion dollars over 10 years for all the handicapped groups.

It stresses that “the money spent more than would be justified by the benefit that it would bring to the very whole nation thanks to a spectacular fall of the school abandonment, family separations, rate of criminality, illegitimacy, enormous welfare expenditures, riots and of much of other social misfortunes. ”

In its book Why we cannot await of 1964, it develops this idea, explaining why the payment of work not remunerated was an application of the Common law.

Chicago

In 1966, after successes of the south, Martin Luther King and other defense organizations of the civic rights try to extend the movement towards north, Chicago becoming the first target. King and Ralph Abernathy, both of Middle-class, move towards the Bidonville S of Chicago within the framework of an educational experiment and to show their support and empathy with the poor.

The SCLC forms an alliance with the CCCO (Coordinating Council off Community Organizations), an organization rested by Albert Raby Jr., and with the CFM (Chicago Freedom Movement). During the spring of the testing are realized by black or white couples in order to reveal the discriminatory practices of the real estate companies. The tests reveal that the selection of the couples which postulate for a housing is based not on the income, the course, the number of children or other characteristics socio-economic (because the couples have the same ones exactly), but of course the skin color.

Several great peaceful steps are organized in Chicago, and Abernathy will write it later, the reception which is reserved to them is worse than in the south. They are received by a heinous crowd and throws of bottles, and King and start to him with really fearing that it starts a riot. The beliefs of Martin Luther King encountered her responsibility to take along to them his in a violent event. If King had the conviction that a peaceful walk would be dispersed in violence, he preferred to cancel it for the safety of all, as it was the case at the time of the “bloody sunday”. He leads nevertheless these steps in spite of death threats on his person. Violence in Chicago was so intense that it shook the two friends.

Another problem is the duplicity of the leaders of the city. Agreements on the actions to be carried out make by King and Abernathy were cancelled afterwards by politicians being part of the corrupted town hall of Richard Daley. Abernathy could not support any more the living conditions in the slums and moves secretly after a short moment. Martin Luther King remains and written on the emotional impact that represents for Coretta and its children of living under such hard conditions.

When King and its allies turn over on their premises, they leave Jesse Jackson, a young seminarist who had already taken part in the actions in the south, which organizes the first boycotts successful for the right to the access to same employment, which will be a success such as it will lead to the programme of equal opportunities in the years 1970.

Against the war of Vietnam and poverty

As from 1965, Martin Luther King starts to express her doubts about the role of the United States in the Guerre of Vietnam. April 4th, 1967, one year before its death, it makes in New York the speech “Beyond Vietnam: moment to break silence”. It there denounces the attitude of State-plain in Vietnam and insists on the fact “that they occupy the country like an American colony” and calls the US government “the largest supplier of violence in the world today”. He also insists on the fact that the country needs a greater moral change:

Martin Luther King was already haï by many racist white of the states of the south, but this speech turns over many important media against him. Time calls the speech “a demagogic calumny which resembled a script of Radio operator Hanoi”, and the The Washington Post declares that King “decreased its utility with its cause, its country, its people”.

King often declares that the Vietnam of north “had not started to send a great number of provisions or men as long as the American forces had not arrived per tens of thousands”. It also acclaims the Land reform undertaken by north. He showed also the United States to have killed a million Vietnamese, “especially of the children”. He proposes in a letter the buddhist monk and pacifist Vietnamese Thich Nhat Hanh, which fights for the stop of the conflict, with the Nobel Prize of peace in 1967.

Martin Luther King as says in her speech as “the true compassion, it is more than to throw a part with a beggar; it makes it possible to see that a building which produces beggars with need for a reorganization. (...) of Vietnam in South Africa while passing by the Latin America, the United States is bad side of the world revolution”. King questions “our alliance with the landowners of the Latin America” and request why the United States represses instead of supporting the revolutions of the “foot-naked people and without shirt” of the third world.

The speech is a reflection of the political evolution of Martin Luther King in her last years, partly due to its affiliation with the Highlander Research and Education Center progressist. King starts to speak about a need for fundamental changes in the political life and economic for the nation. It more frequently expresses its opposition to the war and the need to redistribute the resources to correct the racial and social injustices. Although its public short speeches are reserved in order to avoid being labelled communist by its political enemies, into private, it often states to support the democratic Socialisme:

Martin Luther King read Marx whereas it was in Morehouse, but while it rejects “traditional capitalism”, it also rejects Communism because " of its interpretation materialist of the histoire" who denies the religion, his " relativism ethnique" and its “political totalitarianism”.

In 1968, King and the SCLC organize the “Countryside of the poor” to solve the problems of economic justice. However, the countryside is not supported by all the leaders of the movement of the civic rights, including Bayard Rustin. Their opposition includes arguments on the fact that the goals of the countryside were too broad, the unrealizable requests and they think that would accelerate the movement of repression against the poor and the blacks.

The countryside culminates with a walk on Washington, requiring an economic aid for the poorest communities of the United States. Martin Luther King crosses the country length into broad to gather a “multiracial army of the poor” which would go on Washington and would engage a peaceful civil disobedience to the capitole, if need be until the congress signs a declaration of the human rights of poor. The Reader' S Digest spoke about a “insurrection”.

This “declaration of the poor” asks for a program of governmental employment to rebuild the American cities. Martin Luther King sees an urgent need confront himself with the congress which had shown its “hostility with the poor” in “distributing the military funds with generosity” but giving “funds to the poor with avarice”. Its vision was that of a change which was more revolutionist than a simple reform: it quoted the systematic defects of racism, poverty, the Militarisme and the Matérialisme, and that “the rebuilding of the company itself was the true problem which it was necessary to solve”.

Assassination

At the end of March 1968, Martin Luther King goes to Memphis, Tennessee to support the street sweeper S local blacks which are in strike since March 12th in order to obtain better wages and a better treatment. The Afro-Americans were paid 1,70 dollar of the hour and were not paid when they could not work for climatic reason, contrary to the white workers. Violences burst around the peaceful steps, a young black is killed.

April 3rd, with the Mason Temple (Church off God in Christ, Inc. - world seat), King makes the prophetic speech “I' ve Been to the Mountaintop” (“I was at the top of the mountain”) in front of an euphoric crowd:

It is not really important what arrives now… Some started with… speaking about the threats which were profiled. That is what could arrive to me on behalf of one of our sick white brothers… Like everyone, I would like to live a long life. Longevity is important but I am not concerned with that now. I want just to achieve the will of God. And it has me authorized to be climbed on the mountain! And I looked around me, and I saw the promised land. I would perhaps not go over there with you. But I want that you know this evening, that we, like people, will reach the promised land. And I am so happy this evening. I do not have any fear. I am not afraid of any man. My eyes saw the glory of the arrival of the lord!

April 4th 1968 with 18:01, Martin Luther King is assassinated by a white segregationist on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel with Memphis in the Tennessee. Its last words on the balcony are to the musician Ben Branch who was to occur this evening a public meeting to which King assisted:

“Ben, envisage to play Precious Lord, Take My Hand (Lord, take my hand) with the meeting of this evening. Play it in good manners the”.

His/her friends inside the room of the motel hear the shots and run on the balcony to find Martin Luther King cut down of a ball in the throat. He is declared died with St Joseph' S Hospital with 19:05. The assassination causes a wave of racial riots in 60 cities of the United States (125 on the whole) which makes many deaths and obliges the intervention of the National guard.

Five days later president Johnson states one day of mourning national (the first for an Afro-American) in the honor of Martin Luther King. : 300000 people witness its funeral the same day as well as the Vice-president Hubert Humphrey (Johnson was with a meeting on Vietnam with Camp David and there were fears which the presence of the president causes of the manifestations of pacifist).

At the request of its widow, King made her own funeral oration with its last sermon “Drum Major” recorded in Ebenezer Baptist Church. In this sermon, he asks that with its funeral no mention of its honors be made, but which it is known as that it had tried “to nourish the famished ones”, “to equip the naked ones”, “to be right on the question of Vietnam” and “to like and serve humanity”. With her request, his/her friend Mahalia Jackson sings her favorite anthem, Take My Hand, Precious Lord .

The town of Memphis negotiates the end of the strike in a way favorable to the street sweepers after the assassination.

According to the biographer Taylor Branch, the autopsy of King revealed that although it is only 39 years old, its heart appeared as old as that of a 60 year old man, physically showing the effect of the 13 years stress in the movement of the civic rights.

Inquire and recent developments

Two months after the death of King, James Earl Ray, an escaped prisoner, is captured with the Aéroport of London Heathrow whereas it tried to leave the United Kingdom with a Canadian false passport in the name of Ramon George Sneyd. Ray is very quickly extradited in Tennessee and is shown murder of Martin Luther King, having acknowledged the assassination on March 10th, 1969, before retracting three days afterwards. On the council of its lawyer Percy Foreman, Ray chooses to plead guilty in order to avoid the capital punishment. He is condemned to 99 years of prison.

Ray returns its lawyer, protesting that the culprits of the murder are a certain “Raoul” and his/her Johnny brother whom it met with Montreal in Canada. He tells moreover than “he had not drawn personally on King” but which he could “be partially responsible without the knowledge”, indicating a track of Conspiration. He then passes the remainder of his life to be vainly tempted to withdraw his judgment and to make reopen the lawsuit.

June 10th 1977, to have testified shortly after before a commission to the congress on the assassinations which it had not killed King, it escapes with six others condemned from the penitentiary from Brushy Mountain to Tennessee. It is recaptured on June 13rd and turns over in prison.

In 1997, Dexter Scott King, the son of Martin Luther King, meets Ray and publicly supports the efforts of Ray to obtain a new judgment.

In 1999, one year after the death of Ray, Coretta Scott King, widow of Martin Luther and leading of the civic rights it also, and the remainder of the King family gain a suit at law against Loyd Jowers (owner of a restaurant non-loin of the Motel) and “other conspirators”. In December 1993, Jowers had appeared in the Prime Time Live of ABC News and had revealed details of a conspiracy implying the Mafia and the government to kill King. Jowers tells at the time it lawsuit to have received 100.000 dollars to organize the assassination of Martin Luther King. The jury of six blacks and six white consider Jowers guilty and mentions that “federal agencies were associated” with the plot of the assassination. William F. Pepper, former lawyer of Ray, represents the family of King at the time of the lawsuit and produces 70 witnesses. At the conclusion of the lawsuit, the family of Martin Luther King does not believe that Ray has something to see with the assassination of this one.

In 2000, the Département of the Justice of the United States finishes an investigation into the revelations of Jowers, but does not find any proof which could show a conspiracy. The report/ratio of investigation recommends that there is no new research as long as new reliable facts would not be presented.

Allegations of conspiracy

Some speculate that Ray was only a Pion, in the same way that the supposed assassin of John F. Kennedy, Lee Harvey Oswald was supposed to have been it (see Assassinat of John F. Kennedy). The evidence advanced by its partisans is:

the confession of Ray was obtained under the pressure, and he was threatened with the Capital punishment.
Ray was a small robber and burglar, it did not have any police records mentioning a violent crime with detention of weapon.
Two ballistic tests conduits on the weapon of the crime, Remington Gamemaster, never proved that Ray had been the assassin or that this weapon was really that which had been used for the murder.
the witnesses of the murder of King say that the shot did not come the house from report/ratio mentioned by the investigation, but of a bush beside it. A bush inexplicably removed a few days after the assassination.

April 6th 2002, the NewYork Times reported that Pasteur, the Reverend Ronald Denton Wilson, declared that it was his/her father Henry Clay Wilson who had assassinated Martin Luther King Jr, and not James Earl Ray. He says that his reasons were not racist but political, thinking that King was communist.

In 2004, Jesse Jackson, which was with King at the time of its assassination, foot-note:

“the fact is that there were saboteurs to disturb walk. Inside our own organization, one discovered that a very important person was paid by the government. Thus infiltration inside, saboteurs outside and attacks of the press. … I will never believe that James Earl Ray had the reason, money and mobility to have done that itself. Our government was very implied to prepare the ground and I think the road of escape of James Earl Ray”.

A friend and colleague of King, James Bevel, summarize more abruptly:

“It has no means there that a white boy to 10 hundreds can develop a plan to kill a black man to 10 million dollars”.

Relations with the FBI

The FBI and its director J. Edgar Hoover had antagonistic relations with Martin Luther King. Under written order of the Minister for justice Robert Francis Kennedy, the FBI started to inquire into King and the SCLC in 1961. The investigations were surface up to 1962, where the FBI learned that one of the most important advisers of King Stanley Levison had been implied with the Communist party of the United States. One of lieutenants de King, Hunter Pitts O' Dell, was also related to the PC according to one of its declarations under oath with the Comité of the anti-American businesses.

The FBI put King and Levinson under Surveillance, and installed microphones hidden in the hotel rooms which Pasteur used during his displacements through the country. The FBI informed Robert and the president John F. Kennedy who tried to convince without Martin Luther King success to separate from Levinson. On its side, King categorically denied to have bonds with the Communists, saying in an interview “which there was as many Communists in his movement of freedoms than of Eskimo S in Florida”; Hoover answered by showing King to be “the most famous liar of the country”. This letter was often interpreted like a request with King to commit suicide.

Finally, the FBI stopped its investigations into the private life of King and harassing to concentrate on the SCLC and the movement of the Black Power.

January 31st 1977, in the businesses “Bernard S. Lee v. Clarence Mr. Kelley, and Al” and “Southern Christian Leadership Conference v. Clarence Mr. Kelley, and Al”, judge John Lewis Smith, Jr. ordered that all the recordings and known and existing manual transcriptions on the espionage of King of 1963 to 1968 are preserved at the National Files and Records Administration and are prohibited public access until 2027.

The last contact of the FBI with King was right after its death. The agency supervised King in Lorraine Motel in a building on other side of the street, very close of where James Earl was located. As soon as King was cut down, they were thus the first to arrive on the spot to manage first aid to him. For the partisans of a theory of the conspiracy, their presence so close to the places of the crime was a confirmation which the FBI was implied in the assassination.

Heritage

Homages

After having gained the Nobel Prize of peace 1964, Martin Luther King received in 1965 the medallion of American freedoms of the American Jewish Committee “for her exceptional advance on the principles of human freedoms”. King said to the ceremony reception of the price, “freedom is a thing. You have it whole or you are not free”. The same year it receives the Prix Pacem in Terris (peace on the ground in Latin) based on the encyclical Pacem in Terris of the pope Jean XXIII.

In 1966, the federation of the Family planning of America decrees to him the price Margaret Sanger “for its courageous resistance to the religious bigotry and its life of devotion to the progression of social justice and human dignity”. Martin Luther King receives on a purely posthumous basis the price Marcus Garvey of the government of the Jamaica in 1968. In 1971, it receives the Grammy Award better recording spoken for its speech Why I Opposes the War in Vietnam (Why I oppose the war of Vietnam) .

The president Jimmy Carter decrees off to him the Presidential Medal Freedom in 1977.

In 1980, the district where Martin Luther King passed her youth is declared historic building. November 2nd, 1983, the president Ronald Reagan sign a law creating a Bank holiday honouring King, the Martin Luther King Day. The first states apply it in 1986 and on January 17th, 2000, bank holiday is officially observed in the 50 states.

In 1998, the fraternity Alpha Phi Alpha, whose made King party, was authorized by the Congrès of the United States to create a memorial. Martin Luther King will be it first Afro-American and the second not-president with being honoured by a monument in the National Evil with Washington, cd.. More than 730 cities of the United States had a street Martin Luther King in 2006.

Partisans and influence

Martin Luther King is one of the most admired personalities American History. As it had been inspired by Gandhi, of many personalities on the international scene whose Colin Powell, Jose Bove and Jesse Jackson took it as example for its fight in favor of the human rights and its method of civil disobedience through non-violence to reach that point. It influenced the movements of the human rights in South Africa and was quoted as inspiration by another Nobel Prize of the peace which fought for the equality in this country, Albert Luthuli.

The woman of Martin Luther, Coretta Scott King, followed the traces of her husband and was very active on the problems of social justice and the civic rights until her death in 2006. The year of the assassination of her husband, it founded the King Center in Atlanta, dedicated to preserve its heritage and its work of promotion of the non-violent resolution of the conflicts, and to the tolerance in the world.

His/her son, Dexter King, are currently the president of the center and his/her Yolanda daughter founded Higher Ground Productions, an organization specialized in the drive of diversity.

Criticisms

Even charges of inaccuracy or academic plagiarism, the attacks of more radical militants like the movement Black Power or Malcolm X did not damage the image of Martin Luther King.

Others critical, as Stokely Carmichael was in disagreement with the will of Intégration of King, than he regarded a means of arriving at his ends and not as a principle. Carmichael thus saw the combat of Martin Luther King like an insult with the culture Afro-American.

Omali Yeshitela which will direct the International People' S Democratic Uhuru Movement (UnPDUM), more radical, also required of African to remember that European colonization had been done in a violent and forced way and not by integration in the African culture. Thus to try to be integrated in the culture of the “colonizer” was there too an insult with the African original culture.

Influence in the popular culture

the singer Stevie Wonder wrote the song Happy birthday in the album Hotter Than July (1980), in the honor of Martin Luther King. The end of the song quotes most of the historical events and records achieved by blacks.
the group U2, large admiror of Martin Luther King, wrote the songs MLK and Pride (in the name off coils) in the album The Unforgettable Fire (1984). Pride is their greater success obtained at the time and was taken again in version concert in the album Rattle and Hum .
Martin Luther King inspired Stan Lee for the character of the Professor Xavier of X-Men . Xavier preaches the integration of the mutants within the remainder of human, contrary to Magneto, inspired of Malcolm X.
the group Rage against the machine in the song Wake up mentions the assassination of King following its fight against the war of the Vietnam and poverty.
the rappor Afro-American Common wrote, in collaboration with Will.i.am, a song taking again part of the famous speech " I cuts has dream" , of the name of " I amndt I cuts has dream".

See too

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