Martin Luther King Jr. was one of the great icons of the 20th century. Its great popularity was due to its leadership in the struggle for the civil rights of blacks in the United States of America in the 1950s and 1960s. King had a great ability to speak in public and to bring together a large number of people in peaceful demonstrations against the laws of racial segregation of the southern states of the USA. For this characteristic, he received the award peace Nobel in 1964. Four years later, his life was interrupted at the hands of James Earl Ray.
Read too: Malcolm X—Another Leading Black Civil Rights Activist in the US
From protestant pastor to activist
Luther King born in the city of Atlanta, in the state of Georgia, in January 15, 1929. His parents were Baptist Christians, his father also being a pastor. Like his father, King followed the vocation of pastor of the Baptist Church, having graduated from Crozer Theological Seminary in the state of Pennsylvania. It was in this state that he met the woman he would marry, Coretta Scott, then a music student.
In 1954, King, already graduated, moved with Coretta to the city of Montgomery, in the state of Alabama, where he became pastor of the local Baptist Church. Alabama was one of the states in which they guard racial segregation laws, that is, laws that discriminated against the black population, depriving them of basic benefits, such as education, health, public transport, such as whites enjoyed. These services were always offered to blacks in terrible quality.
Racial segregation in the US South went back to that region's slavery past. Until 1865 - the year in which the Civil War between North and South – slave labor had not yet been abolished in the US. The South region, eminently agrarian, used black slave labor in its plantations. With the end of the Civil War, there was the abolition of slavery, and southerners began to be incorporated into the federative system structured by the North. However, the aversion to blacks was already deeply rooted in southern culture and ended up resulting in racial segregation laws and acts of violence against blacks, practiced by sects such as theKu Klux Klan.
King, in addition to theology studies, was also involved with studies on personalities who dedicated themselves to the struggle for civil rights and peaceful protest, such as Gandhi, in India. These studies gave him theoretical support and inspiration to practice the same type of fighting in his country.
In defense of Rosa Parks and the speech "I have a dream..."
The first case in which Luther King was directly involved in the struggle for black civil rights was that of Rosa Parks. She was a black woman from Montgomery who was arrested on December 1, 1955, for refusing to get up and give her seat to a white man. The city's segregation law was also applied to public transport. On the day in question, there were no seats available in the whites' wing. The driver then forced Parks to get up from the black wing so that a white man could take his place.
Parks' arrest has sparked a huge uproar, not just in Alabama but across much of the US South. King stood out for publicly defending Parks and organizing demonstrations that denounced the arbitrariness of the bus company and the courts. Still in the 1950s, King gained national notoriety as an activist, but it was in the beginning of the following decade that his name became known worldwide. In day August 28, 1963, Luther King spoke to an audience of 250,000 people in Washington, capital of the USA. It was in this speech that he expressed the desire to see his country without racial segregation, as shown in the excerpt below:
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live the true meaning of its belief: “We regard these truths as self-evident that all men are created equal.” I have a dream that one day, in the red mountains of Georgia, the children of descendants of slaves and the children of descendants of slave owners will be able to sit together at the table of fraternity.
Inscription for the speech "I Have a Dream" on the pavement of the Lincoln Memorial, in the United States.
A year later, King received the award Nobel of peace as a way of acknowledging their leading role in the struggle for black civil rights and the pacifist method employed.
Accessalso: Understand what racism is and see why it is so harmful to humanity
Murder in Memphis, Tennessee
In April 4, 1968, Luther King was on the balcony of an apartment at the Hotel Lorraine, in the city of Memphis, Tennesse state, when he was hit by a shotgun blast that killed him. The author of the shot was James Earl Ray, a fugitive inmate. Police investigations at the time followed the lead that Ray had been hired by politicians and other people of high social influence to kill King. However, over time, there was no evidence to prove it. More likely, Ray, who was outspokenly racist, acted out of his own conviction.
By Me. Cláudio Fernandes
Source: Brazil School - https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/historiag/martin-luther-king.htm