Martin Luther King

Essay by Hitmanz0rHigh School, 12th gradeC-, April 2004

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The life story of The Civil Rights Patriot Martin Luther King Jr. was born in Atlanta Georgia in 1929. His father, Martin Luther King Sr. Was a Baptist minister and also preached for civil rights. When young Martin grew up he knew he wanted to follow in his father footsteps and become a minister. After his graduation from the Crozer Theological Seminary, when he began postgraduate work at Boston University, he studied the works of Mohandas Gandhi, from whom he derived his own view of nonviolent protest. He moved to Alabama to become pastor for a Baptist church. Just after he received his Ph. D. in 1955, King was asked to lead a bus boycott in Montgomery. It started when Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give her seat to a white passenger. For one year, which the boycott lasted, he was arrested and jailed, repeatedly threatened, and his home was bombed.

The boycott ended later that year when the Supreme Court outlawed segregation in public transportation in Alabama. This was his first victory in the civil rights movement. In the following year he decided to move back to Atlanta to become co-pastor with his father. In 1963 he was back in Birmingham, Alabama, where he led a massive civil rights campaign, organizing drives for black voter registration, desegregation, and better education throughout the South. During that time he led the unforgettable March on Washington where he delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech to millions of viewers across the nation. The next year he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. He went on to launching his first major northern campaign in Chicago. Black Baptists were there opposing him, and a mob of Ku Klux Klan members and Neo-Nazis met his marchers. With all that he had said...