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 spokesperson and leader in the civil rights movement. He
is best known for his role in the advancement of civil rights using
the tactics of nonviolence and civil disobedience based on his
Christian beliefs and inspired by the nonviolent activism of Mahatma
Gandhi.
King
became a civil rights activist early in his career. He led the 1955
Montgomery bus boycott and helped found the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957, serving as its first president.
With the SCLC, he led an unsuccessful 1962 struggle against
segregation in Albany, Georgia, and helped organize the nonviolent
1963 protests in Birmingham, Alabama. He also helped to organize the
1963 March on Washington, where he delivered his famous "I Have
a Dream" speech.
On
October 14, 1964, King received the Nobel Peace Prize for combating
racial inequality through nonviolent resistance. In 1965, he helped
to organize the Selma to Montgomery marches, and the following year
he and the SCLC took the movement north to Chicago to work on
segregated housing. In the final years of his life, he expanded his
focus to include opposition towards poverty and the Vietnam War,
alienating many of his liberal allies with a 1967 speech titled
"Beyond Vietnam".
In
1968, King was planning a national occupation of Washington, D.C., to
be called the Poor People's Campaign, when he was assassinated by
James Earl Ray on April 4 in Memphis, Tennessee. King's death was
followed by riots in many U.S. cities. Ray, who fled the country, was
arrested two months later at London Heathrow Airport. Ray was
sentenced to 99 years in prison for King's murder, and died in 1998
from hepatitis while serving his sentence.
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