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Credits |
Biography
of Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King came of a deeply religious family tradition. His great grandfather was a slave exhorter. His maternal grandfather, the Rev. Adam Daniel Williams, was the second pastor of Atlanta's Ebenezer Baptist Church where for eight years, Dr. King and his father were co-pastors. This lineage which permeated his life was an enormous influence on him and what he would ultimately become. Martin's father, born at the turn of the century in Stockbridge, Georgia, came to Atlanta in 1916. In 1925, Martin Luther King Sr. married Alberta Williams. They were blessed with a daughter and two sons. The youngest son is the Reverend Alfred Daniel Williams King Of Louisville, Kentucky, who went to Memphis, Tennessee, one infamous day "to help my brother." The daughter is Chrisitine King Farris of Atlanta, who went to a home that night to comfort her brother's wife. The other son was Martin Luther King, Jr. Reared in a home of love, understanding, and compassion, young Martin was to find 501 Auburn Avenue a buffer against the rampant injustices of the "sick society" for which he would become the physician. A serious student, Martin Luther King was an early admission student at Morehouse College in Atlanta, from which he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1948. King earned his own Bachelor of Divinity degree from Crozier Theological Seminary in 1951, and a Doctor of Philosophy degree from Boston University in 1955. While at seminary King became acquainted with Mohandas Gandhi's philosophy of nonviolent social protest. On a trip to India in 1959 King met with followers of Gandhi. During these discussions he became more convinced than ever that nonviolent resistance was the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom. Martin's great "wrestling inside with the problem of a vocation" must have been prophetic of the many agonizing hours which he would eventually characterize his life. Having felt the stings of "man's inhumanity to man," Martin Luther King believed law would be his sphere for combating injustices. The ministry as he saw it was not socially relevant; however, at Morehouse, in the brilliant Dr. Benjamin E. Mays, he saw the ideal of what he wanted a minister to be. In his junior year, he gave himself to the ministry. At Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania, Martin Luther King was further stimulated but still his quest for a method to end social evil continued. Through courses at the university of Pennsylvania, deep, serious reading, and provocative lectures, he began to find answers which would crystallize his thinking and give him the philosophy by which he would be typical of his response to later threats, he disarmed his attacker. King was the first Negro to be elected president of Crozer's student body, and this began what would become a series of firsts for this son whose roots were in slavery. With a partially satisfied, but still fermenting mind, Luther matriculated at Boston University, at the time the center of personalism, the philosophical posture which he had adopted. Studying under two of the greatest exponents of his philosophy, Martin King was to find his theory an enormously sustaining force in the future. In Boston, Martin met Coretta Scott, an equally concerned and talented New England Conservatory student from the South. On June 18, 1953, at her Marion, Alabama home she became Mrs. Martin Luther King, Jr. She was later to realize her highest dreams, not in concertizing, but in singing the songs of freedom and being her husband's disciple from "Montgomery to Montgomery." This happy marriage brought into life four children; Yolanda Denise, born November 17, 1955; Martin Luther III, born October 23, 1957; Dexter Scott, born January 30, 1961; and Bernice Albertine, born March 28, 1963. The Ph.D. degree was awarded to Martin Luther King in 1955, and again there was a great "wrestling inside." Sensitive to the needs of his native South, he decided to return to the land from whence he had sprung, and preach a "socially relevant and intellectually responsible" gospel. He accepted the "call" to Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, and began his pastorate September 1, 1954. As a pastor of the Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, King lead a Black bus boycott. He and ninety others were arrested and indicted under the provisions of a law making it illegal to conspire to obstruct the operation of a business. King and several others were found guilty, but appealed their case. As the bus boycott dragged on, King was gaining a national reputation. His "Letter from Birmingham Jail" inspired the growing civil rights movement. When the bus company finally capitulated, dropping its policy of segregated seating, King became a national hero. In 1963 he led a massive march on Washington DC where he delivered his now famous, "I Have A Dream" Speech. King's tactics of active nonviolence (sit-ins, protest marches) had put civil-rights squarely on the national agenda. The cradle of the Confederacy was a seething cauldron of racial injustice, and his grandson of a founder of the Atlanta Branch NAACP was asked to assume the presidency of the Montgomery Branch NAACP. Again the wrestle. Finally, Martin Luther King answered negatively, but on December 1, 1955, the refusal of Mrs. Rosa Parks to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery bus made the young, erudite minister answer affirmatively when asked to chair the newly formed Montgomery Improvement Association. Mrs. Parks' arrest for violation of the system of racial segregation set off a new American Revolution. Daring to do what was right, Ralph and Juanita Abernathy stood up with Martin and Coretta King when there were nothing but "valleys of despair," and their loyalty has never known the midnight. Now, the myriad religious and philosophical forces which had shaped his life would be put to the test and this selfless, compassionate man would "forget himself into immortality." "Christian love can bring brotherhood on earth. There is an element of God in every man," said he after his home was bombed in Montgomery. This new attack on America's social system gave every day application to the teachings of Jesus, and captured the conscience of the world. King was turning his attention to a nationwide campaign to help the poor at the time of his assassination. He was shot while standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee on April 4, 1968. King was only 39 at the time of his death. He had never wavered in his insistence that nonviolence must remain the central tactic of the civil-rights movement, nor in his faith that everyone in America would some day attain equal justice. Profound, but unpretentious; gentle, but valiant; Baptist, but ecumenical; loving justice, but hating injustice; the deep roots of this Great Spirit resolved the agonizing wrestling and gave all mankind new hope for a bright tomorrow. It is, now, for us, the living to dedicate and rededicate our lives to the Cause which Martin Luther King so nobly advanced. He Had a Dream. |
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