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MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. On January 19 th, 1929, in the big city of Atlanta, Georgia, Martin Luther King, Jr. , the man who would forever change the course of the civil rights movement for blacks in America, was born. On this day, the man who would incredibly change the lives of African Americans would come into life, and the process in which he would effect the major aspects of the movement would begin. Martin Luther King, Jr.
had an extremely rough childhood, in which he witnessed many things that would later effect the way in which he handled his life. I had passed spots where Negroes had been savagely lynched, and had watched the Ku Klux Klan on its rides at night. I had seen police brutality of the worst kind, and watched Negroes receive the most tragic injustices in the courts. (Martin Luther King 90) The things he saw and the things he experienced were eventually what caused him to strive for freedom for African Americans, and caused him to hate segregation. I had grown up abhorring not only segregation but also the aggressive and barbaric acts that grew out of it. (Martin Luther King 90) King, although going through a lot as a young child, would fight through it all and eventually graduate from high school. One of the many incredible things that Martin Luther King, Jr.
did in his life was he entered Morestown College at the age of fifteen. King always had a talent as a student. He had an amazing will that would never let him give up. (Peck 18). He would later attend Boston College and receive a doctoral degree, something that many blacks did not do in his time. He then went on to Cover Theological Seminary to study ministry. He eventually would become the minister of his church, just as his father had.
During his studies at school and as a minister, two very important people came into Dr. Kings life. One of these men was Ghandi. As Dr. King once said, If humanity is to progress, Ghandi is inescapable.
He lived, thought, and acted, inspired by the vision of humanity evolving toward a world of peace and harmony. We may ignore him at our own risk. ' (Haskins 54) Ghandi was a leader in India that had been in a situation similar to Kings. The lower class of India lived in poverty and hunger, while the upper class Indians and British led a separate life. It was impossible for any of the lower class Indians to move up in society, and Ghandi saw this as unfair. He began to see that India needed to gain its independence from Britain in order for all the horrors of the lower class to stop. Ghandi saw that India was nothing more than a British colony and it was slowly dying under such bondage. (Haskins 32) It was not Ghandi's situation that inspired King as much as it was the way he handled things.
Ghandi performed strikes, boycotts, and fasts against the British Government in order to gain Indias independence, and he did it all in a nonviolent way. King would use Ghandi's nonviolent tactics in much of his involvement with the civil rights movement. He [MLK] called for nonviolence, not only because of his dedication to the teachings of Christ, but also because it was the only practical way of changing the condition of the Negro. (Coretta Scott King 153) King believed that the way Ghandi handled the situation in India was the only way that African Americans would truly achieve freedom in the United States. Kings strong beliefs in Christ also influenced him to use nonviolent tactics during the Civil Rights Movement. Another man who influenced King before he even began his marches toward freedom and emotional speeches of the civil rights movement was Henry David Thoreau. Thoreau was a man who lived in the United States under British rule.
Thoreau believed that he should not have to follow the rules of the government that he did not believe in. He too used nonviolent tactics in order to get his point across, and was not afraid to be arrested for his crimes. Thoreau's Essay on Civil Disobedience was what got King fully interested in the mans beliefs. During my student days at Morehouse I read Thoreau's Essay on Civil Disobedience for the first time. Fascinated by the idea of refusing to cooperate with an evil system, I was deeply moved. I reread the work several times, and was convinced that his mind frame was in the right place. (Martin Luther King 91) King often used this belief of Thoreau's in order to justify opposing the laws of segregation.
Thoreau, Ghandi, and Christ were basically the three people who influenced Kings thoughts and ideas throughout the civil rights movement. King often resorted to borrowing ideas and tactics from all of these men when leading the fight for freedom for blacks in the U. S. After Dr. Kings studying was complete he began to set out to become a leader in the civil rights movement. Perhaps the thing that first put Kings name in the books is The Montgomery Bus Boycott.
It all started when Ms. Rosa Parks refused to abide by the segregation rule that African Americans were unable to sit anywhere but the back of the bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Ms. Parks was arrested for not obeying the bus driver when he told her to move to the back of the bus. Upon hearing the news of her arrest, King and two other men decided to organize a boycott of the Montgomery bus system. The men knew that the African American population made up much of the organizations revenue, and if they could organize the black population in a manner that would convince them not to travel on buses they could get what they were fighting for.
Kings views on the whole situation can be compared to that of Thoreau's. Both men began to fight against a law that they believed was unjust and did not wish to abide by any longer. Even King said himself that he felt Henry David Thoreau influenced him. At this point I began to think about Thoreau's Essay on Civil Disobedience I became convinced that what we were preparing to do in Montgomery was related to what Thoreau had expressed.
We were simply saying to the white community, We can no longer lend our cooperation to an evil system. (Martin Luther King 51) King also mirrored the whole boycott after one of Ghandi's actions in India. On March 12 th, 1930, Ghandi began his salt march to the sea. The British government had a monopoly on salt in India. They had laws that made it impossible for anyone other than British Government to produce salt. However, Ghandi felt he needed to defy this law and make his own salt. When Ghandi was jailed for this, many Indians began a boycott on all British goods.
Indians protested the laws, and were beaten for it. When Indians did not fight back, the British Officials looked bad, and the Indian people got their point across. King felt that if the African Americans could pull off the same thing, they too would get their point across. In dealing with the boycott, Martin often referred back to Ghandi's salt march against the British Government, and how it worked for them whenever any of our people had any doubts, Martin would speak of the salt march and try and convince everyone to keep fighting. (Coretta Scott King 56) Kings nonviolent ways also mirrored that of Ghandi's and Thoreau's. Ghandi once fasted, refused to eat for a long period of time, until the Indian people would agree to use nonviolent ways in order to get their point across. King, like Ghandi, although he was not prepared to physically damage himself in the process, desperately urged his people to use nonviolent ways throughout the boycott. (Haskins 34) The more the people resisted violence and the more whites carried out violence, the better the press coverage the boycott received and the better the boycott was looking each day.
Many blacks were fired by their employers because of their participation in the boycott, but King urged his people to fight on. Even when white supremacy groups began to threaten King and his family, they continued their boycott. Even after January 30, 1956 when the King household was bombed, King urged the blacks continued their fight for freedom. King said to an angry mob that filled the front yard of his house after the incident, Remember if I am stopped, this movement will not stop because God is with his movement. Go home with this glowing faith and radiance assurance. (Haskins 52) Many people of the Indian movement were also beaten and arrested for taking part in protests or strikes, but Ghandi urged his people to continue. On November 3 rd, 1956, the U.
S. Supreme Court had decided the segregation of the Montgomery buses unconstitutional. All the hard work and determination that came from the boycott finally came to an end with this decision. King had proved that nonviolence pays off, and now blacks were really starting to make an improvement on their status in society. Kings next move in the civil rights movement came with the foundation of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1957. The purpose of this organization was to, urge the Federal government to pass civil rights laws and to promote the movement for black equality in the South. (Haskins 49) The most specific of the groups issues were Negro-voting rights.
The leaders of the SCLC knew that it was the African Americans right to vote under the Constitution and the denial of this right was unlawful. King felt very strongly about blacks gaining the right to vote. The denial of this sacred right is a tragic betrayal of the highest mandates of our democratic traditions and it is democracy turned upside down. (Haskins 50) King and the SCLC also believed that African American power lied in gaining the right to vote. If blacks were finally allowed to vote, they would be able to choose who they wanted in power which would help them out a lot. As King once said, Give us the ballot and we will no longer plead to the federal government for passage of an anti lynching law; we will by the power of our vote write the law on the statute books of the southern states and bring an end to the dastardly acts of the hooded perpetrators of violence. (Haskins 52) The SCLC under Martin Luther King Jr. also did many other things for the civil rights movement.
They started many marches, sit-ins and protests for the advancement of the cause. They launched a giant campaign in Birmingham, Alabama for desegregation. During this campaign King was arrested at one of the many student sit-ins. It is in jail where he best explains his reasoning behind the Alabama campaign. You may well ask: Why direct action?
Why sit-ins, marches, and so forth? Isnt negotiation a better path? You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of the direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. (Haskins 64) King felt that their sit-ins were causing such chaos throughout the cities that they performed them in, that people were now being forced to confront the issue of segregation instead of ignoring it as they had. Overall, King was probably the most influential person in all of the civil rights movement.
His great leadership quality and tremendous speeches moved the nation as whole to be persuaded to confront the civil rights issue. His fight eventually led to his assassination on April 4 th, 1968, but Dr. King did not die in vein. He died for the cause of his people, and like he said, the fight continued even after his death.
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