Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King Jr.(given name Michael King Jr.; Atlanta, Georgia; January 15, 1929-Memphis, Tennessee; January 4, April 1968) was an American Baptist minister and activist who became the most visible spokesperson and leader of the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968. African-American church leader and son of early civil rights minister and activist Martin Luther King Sr. who carried out work at the head of the civil rights movement for African-Americans and who, in addition, participated as an activist in numerous protests against the Vietnam War and poverty in general. For this activity aimed at ending American segregation and racial discrimination through non-violent means, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. Four years later, at a time when his work had been especially oriented towards the opposition to the war and the fight against poverty, he was assassinated in Memphis, when he was preparing to attend a dinner with friends.
Martin Luther King, an activist for civil rights from a very young age, organized and carried out various peaceful activities demanding the right to vote, non-discrimination and other basic civil rights for people of African descent in the United States. Among his most remembered actions are the bus boycott in Montgomery, in 1955; his support for the founding of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957 (of which he was its first president); and the leadership of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, in August 1963, at the end of which he delivered his "I have a dream" speech, thanks to which it would spread throughout the world. the country public awareness of the civil rights movement and would establish himself as one of the greatest orators in American history. Most of the rights claimed by the movement would be approved with the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
The assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. is considered one of the assassinations of the 20th century. King is remembered as one of the greatest leaders and heroes in American history, and in the modern history of nonviolence. He was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Jimmy Carter in 1977 and the United States Congressional Gold Medal in 2004. Since 1986, Martin Luther King Jr. Day has been a public holiday in the United States.
Biography
Youth
Martin Luther King, Jr. was the son of Baptist minister Martin Luther King, Sr. and Alberta Williams King, a church organist. His father's given name was Michael King; At first he was named by the same name: Michael King, Jr. But on a family trip to Europe in 1934, the father, during a visit to Germany, decided to change the names to Martin Luther in honor of the Protestant reformer Martin Luther (originally Martin Luther). He had an older sister, Christine King Farris, and a younger brother, Alfred Daniel Williams King.
Since he was little, he lived the experience of a segregationist society; at the age of six, two white friends told him that they were not allowed to play with him.
In 1939, she sang with her church choir in Atlanta for the presentation of the film Gone with the Wind.
King attended Atlanta's Booker T. Washington High School. He did not attend the ninth or twelfth grades, and at the age of 15 he entered Morehouse College, a university reserved for black youth, without having graduated from high school. In 1948, he graduated in sociology (Bachelor of Arts) at Morehouse and enrolled at Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania, leaving with a Bachelor of Divinity degree on June 12, 1951. King began in September That same year he completed his doctoral studies in Systematic Theology at Boston University, receiving the degree of Doctor of Philosophy on June 5, 1955.
He married Coretta Scott, who took his name to become Coretta Scott King, on June 18, 1953, in the garden of his parents' home in Heiberger, Alabama. They had four children: Yolanda King, in 1955, Martin Luther King III, in 1957, Dexter Scott King, in 1961, and Bernice King in 1963.
Ministry
King was appointed pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery in 1954 at the age of 25.
From 1960 to 1968, he was assistant pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta with his father.
In 1961, he left the National Baptist Convention, USA, to form the National Progressive Baptist Convention with other pastors.
Montgomery: The Fight for Civil Rights
The southern United States was characterized at that time by violence against blacks, a racism that would lead to the death of three African-Americans in 1955: Emmett Till, a 14-year-old teenager; activist pastor George W. Lee and civil rights activist Lamar Smith (activist).
On December 1, 1955, when Rosa Parks, a black woman, was arrested for violating Montgomery city segregation laws by refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a white man, King initiated a boycott of buses with the help of Pastor Ralph Abernathy and Edgar Nixon, local director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
The black population supported and supported the boycott, and organized a shared ride system. King was arrested during that campaign, which lasted 382 days and which resulted from extreme tension caused by white segregationists who resorted to terrorist methods to try to intimidate blacks: Martin Luther King's house was firebombed on the morning of January 30, 1956, as well as Ralph Abernathy's and four churches.
The boycotters were constantly subjected to physical attacks, but the city's 40,000 blacks continued their protest, sometimes walking up to 30 km to get to their workplaces.
The boycott was ended by a US Supreme Court decision on November 13, 1956, outlawing segregation on buses, restaurants, schools, and other public places.
With that 1957 campaign, King participated in the founding of the SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Conference), a pacifist group of which he would be president until his death and which had been created to participate in the movement for the civil rights organizing African-American churches in nonviolent protests.
King adhered to the philosophy of nonviolent civil disobedience, as described by Henry David Thoreau and used successfully by Gandhi in India. Advised by civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, he decided to use it with reason for the SCLC demonstrations.
King exposed in 1958 his point of view on racial segregation and the spiral of inequality and hatred that it provoked in his book Stride towards freedom; the Montgomery story:
"Often men hate each other because they are afraid; they are afraid because they are not known; they are not known because they cannot communicate; they cannot communicate because they are separated."
While he was signing copies of his book in a Harlem store, on September 20 of that year he was stabbed by Izola Curry († 2015), a black woman who accused him of being a communist leader and who would be tried as unbalanced. King narrowly escaped death as a paperknife wound had grazed his aorta. He forgave his attacker and in a statement to the press he took the opportunity to underline and denounce the presence of violence in American society:
"The pathetic aspect of this experience is not the wound of an individual. It shows the climate of hatred and bitterness that so permeates our nation, that these access to extreme violence must inevitably arise. It's me today. Tomorrow could be another leader or no matter who, man, woman or child, is the victim of anarchy and brutality. I hope that this experience will end up being socially constructive by demonstrating the urgent need for non-violence to govern the affairs of men."
In 1959 he wrote the book The measure of a man, an attempt to describe an optimal structure of political, social and economic society, book from which the essay What is man? (What is a man?) was extracted.
The FBI began keeping Martin Luther King under surveillance in 1961, believing that communists were trying to infiltrate the civil rights movement. Although they did not get any evidence, the agency used certain details recorded over six years to try to remove him from the leadership of the organization.
King clearly foresaw that organized, nonviolent protests against the system of segregation in the South would lead to extensive media coverage of the conflict over equality and voting rights for black people.
Journalists' reviews and television reports depicted the daily deprivation and humiliation of African-Americans in the southern United States, as well as the violence and harassment deployed by segregationists against civil rights activists. As a result, there was a wave of incipient sympathy within public opinion for the movement, which would eventually become the most important political issue in the United States of the 1960s.
Martin Luther King organized and led marches for African American voting rights, desegregation, the right to work, and other basic human rights. Most of them ended up being sanctioned as law in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Together with the SCLC, they successfully applied the principles of nonviolent demonstration, strategically choosing the locations and method of protest, leading to spectacular confrontations with the segregationist authorities.
Albany
In Albany, Georgia, in 1961 and 1962 he had to bring together local activists from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC; Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) directed by William G. Anderson, a black doctor.
King intervened because the SNCC was unable to advance the movement despite effective non-violent actions (occupation of libraries, bus stations, white-reserved restaurants, boycotts and demonstrations) due to the skill of the police chief from Albany, Laurie Pritchett, who conducted mass arrests without violence and organized a dispersal of detainees throughout the county.
He had to intervene because this organization had criticized him for having supported, in his opinion, weakly the "freedom rides" ("freedom buses" against segregation).
Although he did not intend to stay more than a few days and only with the intention of acting as a counselor, he was arrested during a mass detention of peaceful protesters. He refused to post bail until the city made concessions to the claims that had sparked the demonstrations.
Not long after he left, the agreements that had been reached were "disgraced and violated by the city".
He returned in July 1962 and was sentenced to 45 days in prison or a $178 fine. He chose jail, but was quietly released after three days by Police Chief Pritchett, who managed to pay his fine. King would comment:
"We had witnessed people thrown out of restaurants... expelled from the churches... and sent to prison... But for the first time, we were witnesses to someone who was kicked out of prison."
After about a year without tangible results, the movement began to weaken and split between radicals and moderates. During a demonstration, black youths threw rocks at the police; Martin Luther King demanded a halt to all protests and a "day of penance" to promote nonviolence and maintain morale. Later, he was again arrested and imprisoned for two weeks.
Despite the mobilization, the Albany movement failed to achieve immediate results, but it served as a strategic lesson for Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement, who decided to focus on specific issues in order to win symbolic victories:
"The mistake I made was to protest against segregation in general rather than against any of its distinctive facts in particular [...] A victory of this kind would have been symbolic and would have galvanized our support and our morals... When our strategy was planned for Birmingham months later, we spent many hours evaluating Albany and trying to learn from our mistakes. Our examination helped us not only to make our future tactics more effective, but also revealed that Albany's had been far from being a total failure."
Nonetheless, local activism continued as media attention turned to other issues. The following spring, the city would repeal all of its segregation laws.
Birmingham
In 1960, Birmingham's population was 350,000, 65% white and the rest black. It was one of the cities that maintained and ensured by local law the highest degree of racial segregation in the United States United in all aspects of life, and both in public and private establishments. At that time, only 10% of the black population was registered on the electoral rolls, and their average standard of living was less than half that of whites, and salaries for the same position were generally very low. lower.
Birmingham had no black policemen, firemen, grocers, managers, and bank clerks; jobs for the black population were limited to manual labor in the steel mills. A black secretary couldn't work for a white employer. Unemployment among blacks was two and a half times higher than that of whites. Fifty unexplained racist attacks between 1945 and 1962 gave the city the nickname "Bombingham". Black churches where civil rights were discussed were prime targets, and the city unleashed particular violence against the Freedom Riders.
A local civil rights official, Pastor Shuttlesworth, tried to fight through the courts to have the city's parks desegregated, but the city reacted by closing them. The home and the church where the pastor worked were then the object of several bomb attacks. After Shuttlesworth was arrested in 1962 for violating segregation laws and a petition to the mayor had been thrown in the trash , according to the mayor himself, the pastor asked for the help of Martin Luther King and the SCLC, underscoring Birmingham's crucial role in the national fight for racial equality.
The protests began with a boycott on Easter 1963 to encourage company bosses to open sales and other jobs to people of all races, and to stop segregation in stores, manifested, for example, in the existence of collection boxes reserved exclusively for whites.
As business leaders resisted the boycott, Martin Luther King and the SCLC began what they dubbed project C, a series of nonviolent demonstrations, including sit-ins in restaurants and libraries, the kneeling of black people in churches reserved for whites, peaceful protest marches, etc.; all with the aim of provoking arrests.
Martin Luther King summarized the philosophy of the Birmingham campaign as follows:
"The goal of [...] direct action is to create a generalized crisis situation that inevitably opens the door to negotiations."
He himself was arrested on April 13. During his stay in prison, he wrote the famous Letter from Birmingham Jail (Letter from Birmingham Jail), an essay in which he defines his fight against segregation and which constitutes a passionate declaration of his crusade for justice and life.
In such circumstances, he received direct support from President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, and his wife Coretta from Jacqueline Kennedy; he was released a week later.
Although the campaign already did not have many volunteers, the organizers, despite the vacillations of Martin Luther King, recruited students and children in a maneuver that was dubbed by the media as "the children's crusade".
On May 2, hundreds of students of all ages were prepared and trained to participate peacefully in the demonstrations. They were violently arrested by the police who used dogs, as well as high-pressure water jets of such power that they could tear clothing or lift a girl over a car. In reaction, and despite the SCLC's instructions, the parents and guides began to throw objects at the police, although they were corrected by the organizers.
The decision to use children even in a nonviolent demonstration was heavily criticized, among others by Justice Minister Robert Francis Kennedy and activist Malcolm X, who declared that "real men don't put their children in the point of view".
Martin Luther King, who kept quiet and out of town when one of his friends organized the children's demonstrations, understood the success of the event and declared at a religious celebration that:
"This day has inspired me and touched me and I have never seen anything like it."
The scenes of police violence, widely covered in the media, sparked an international reaction and brought to light existing racial segregation in the southern United States. Oregon Senator Wayne Morse compared Birmingham to apartheid in South Africa. Jails filled up and children chanted to be arrested. The city was on the verge of civil and economic collapse because all the shops in the center stopped working.
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Governor George Wallace sent state police to support the local police chief. Robert Kennedy sent the National Guard on May 13 to prevent events from spilling over as a result of two bomb attacks against a hotel where Martin Luther King had stayed and against the house of his brother, which had led to a demonstration against the police.
On May 21, the mayor resigned, the police chief was removed, and in June all segregationist signs were removed and public places open to black women.
By the end of the campaign, Martin Luther King's reputation had been strengthened considerably, and Birmingham became an important element in the success of the future march on Washington.
On Sunday, September 15, a Ku Klux Klan bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church during prayer time killed four black girls and injured 22 children. The attack sparked national outrage and bolstered the civil rights movement.
The March on Washington
Representing the SCLC, Martin Luther King was the leader of one of the six major civil rights organizations that organized the march on Washington for jobs and freedom. And he was one of those who accepted President John F. Kennedy's suggestion to change the message of it.
The president, who had already publicly supported Martin Luther King and had intervened several times to get him released from prison, had initially opposed the aim of the march because he believed it could have a negative impact on the vote on the civil rights law.
That initial objective was to show the desperate situation of African-Americans in the southern states and denounce the failure of the federal government to ensure their rights and security.
The group of six agreed under pressure and presidential influence to present a less radical message. Some civil rights activists thought at the time that the march thus presented an inaccurate and sweetened view of the situation of blacks; Malcolm X called it "The Hoax on Washington" and members of the Nation of Islam organization, who participated in the march, were temporarily suspended.
The march did, however, raise specific demands:
- ending racial segregation in public schools;
- a significant legislation on civil rights (including a law prohibiting racial discrimination in the world of work);
- protection of civil rights activists from police violence;
- a minimum wage of $2 for all workers without distinction;
- an independent government for Washington D.C., which depended on a committee of Congress.
Despite the tensions, the march was a resounding success. More than 250,000 people of all ethnicities gathered in front of the United States Capitol on August 28, 1963, in what was the largest demonstration ever to take place in the US capital.
What would ultimately be the climax in Martin Luther King's struggle was his famous "I have a dream" speech, in which he expressed his desire and hope to know a brotherly America. This speech is considered one of the best in American history, along with Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.
St. Augustine, the Civil Rights Act and the Nobel Peace Prize
Despite a 1954 Supreme Court ruling (Brown v. Board of Education) declaring racial segregation unconstitutional in public schools, only six black children were admitted to white schools in St. Augustine, Florida). In addition, the houses of two families of these children were burned down by white segregationists and other families were forced to leave the region because the parents had been fired from their jobs and could not find another in the area.
In May and June of 1964, Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders carried out a direct action in that city to denounce the facts. A nighttime march around the former slave market ended with white segregationists attacking protesters and hundreds of people being arrested. As the jails were too small, detainees had to be locked up in the open. Some protesters were thrown into the sea by police and segregationists and escaped drowning during an attempt to reach Anastasia Island's white-reserved beaches.
The tension reached its peak when a group of protesters jumped into the pool of the Monson Motel, which is off-limits to blacks. The photograph of a policeman diving to arrest a protester and that of the motel owner pouring hydrochloric acid into the pool to drive out the activists, became known throughout the world and even served communist countries to discredit the discourse of freedom from United States. Demonstrators endured physical and verbal violence without responding, sparking a national sympathy movement and helping lead to the passage of the Civil Rights Act on July 2, 1964.
On October 14, 1964, Martin Luther King became the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize for leading nonviolent resistance to eliminate racial prejudice in the United States.
"Bloody Sunday"
In December 1964, Martin L. King and the SCLC joined forces again with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in Selma, Alabama, where the SNCC had been working for months on voter registration on the electoral rolls.. Selma was then an important place for the defense of the right to vote for African Americans. Half of the city's inhabitants were black, but only 1% of them were registered on the electoral rolls; the registry office, which was only open two days a month, opened late and suffered delays due to lunch breaks.
On Sunday, March 7, 1965, 600 civil rights advocates left Selma to try to reach Montgomery, the state capital, to present their grievances in a peaceful march. They were arrested a few kilometers away at the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where police and a hostile white-skinned mob prevented them from proceeding and violently repelled them with batons and tear gas. That day would be remembered as "Bloody Sunday" and marked a point of no return in the fight for civil rights.
Reportages depicting police violence enabled the movement to gain public support and underscored the success of the nonviolence strategy of Martin L. King, who was not present at that first march, having been trying to delay it following his meeting with President Lyndon B. Johnson. Two days later, Martin L. King led a symbolic march to the bridge, an action he appeared to have negotiated with local authorities and was misunderstood by Selma activists.
The movement then sought the protection of justice in order to carry out the march, and federal court judge Frank Minis Johnson Jr ruled in favor of the protesters:
"The law is clear about the fact that the right to lodge complaints against the government can be exercised by a large group [...] and these rights can be exercised by a march, even from the extension of a public road."
In the end, 3,200 protesters left Selma on Sunday, March 21, 1965, traveling 20 kilometers a day and sleeping in the fields. It was during this journey that Willie Ricks came up with the expression "Black Power". Arriving at the Montgomery Capitol on Thursday, March 25, the protesters numbered 25,000. Martin L. King then delivered the "How Long, Not Long" speech. That same day, white civil rights activist Viola Liuzzo was killed by the Ku Klux Klan as she was driving protesters in her car. Martin Luther King attended the funerals and President Johnson spoke on television to announce the arrest of the culprits.
Less than five months later, the president signed the Voting Rights Act, guaranteeing the right to vote for black citizens without restrictions of any kind.
Chicago
Following success in the South, Martin L. King and other civil rights organizations tried to spread the movement north in 1966: Chicago became the primary target. Martin Luther and Ralph Abernathy, both middle class, moved to suburban Chicago for an educational experience and to show support and empathy for the poor.
The SCLC formed an alliance with the Coordinating Council of Community Organizations (CCCO), an organization founded by Albert Raby Jr., and with the Chicago Freedom Movement (CFM). During the spring, they carried out a series of experiments (testing) with black and white couples in order to reveal the discriminatory practices of real estate companies. The tests revealed that the selection of couples applying for housing was not based in any way on income, distance to work, number of children, or other socio-economic characteristics (as the couples presented the themselves), but rather because of the color of their skin.
Large peaceful marches were organized in Chicago and, Abernathy would later recount, the reception they received was worse than in the South. They were greeted by a spiteful bottle-throwing mob, and he and Martin L. King began to fear a riot might break out.
The principles of Martin Luther King collided with the responsibility of having to lead his people towards a violent act. If Martin Luther King was convinced that a peaceful march was going to be dispersed with violence, he preferred to cancel it to safeguard everyone's safety, as was the case with Bloody Sunday . Nevertheless, and despite the death threats against him, he led those marches. The violence in Chicago was so intense that it shocked the two friends.
Another problem was the duplicity of the city leaders. Some agreements on actions to be taken by King and Abernathy were later overturned by politicians on Richard Daley's corrupt council.[<citation needed] Abernathy he could not bear the living conditions in the suburbs and secretly left after a short period. Martin Luther King stayed and wrote about the emotional impact on Coretta and her children of living in such harsh conditions.
When Martin Luther King and his allies returned home, they left Jesse Jackson, a young seminarian who had already been involved in actions in the South, to organize the first boycotts aimed at gaining access to the same jobs, something that would prove be such a success that it would lead to the equal opportunity program of the 1970s.
Against the Vietnam War and poverty
Starting in 1965, Martin Luther King began to publicly express doubts about the role of the United States in the Vietnam War. On April 4, 1967, a year before his death, he gave the speech "Beyond Vietnam: Time to Break the Silence" in New York. In it he denounced the US attitude in Vietnam and insisted on the fact that they were occupying the country as an American colony and called the US government "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today." He also insisted that the country needed a great moral change:
"A real revolution of values would then be concerned, embarrassed, with the surprising contrasts between poverty and wealth. With justified indignation, he would look beyond the seas and see the individualist capitalists of the West investing huge amounts of money in Asia, in Africa and in South America, only to gain benefits and without any concern for social improvements in those countries, he would say: “It is not fair.”
He believed that Vietnam made it difficult to achieve the objectives stated by Johnson in his 1964 State of the Union address, in which he announced a "war on poverty."
Martin Luther King was already hated by many racist whites in southern states, but this speech turned many media outlets against him. Time called the speech "a demagogic smear that sounded like a Radio Hanoi script," and The Washington Post declared that King "had diminished his usefulness to the cause of him, his country, his people."
Martin Luther King frequently expressed the idea that North Vietnam "had not begun sending large numbers of supplies or men until American forces arrived by the tens of thousands." He also praised the agrarian reform undertaken by the north. He accused the United States of having killed a million Vietnamese, "especially children". stop the conflict, for the 1967 Nobel Peace Prize.
He also said in his speech that
"The true compassion is more than giving alms to a beggar; it allows to see that a building that produces beggars needs a restructuring. [...] from Vietnam to South Africa passing through Latin America, the United States is on the bad side of the world revolution."
In addition, he questioned "our alliance with the landowners of Latin America" and wondered why the United States repressed instead of supporting the revolutions of the "barefoot and shirtless peoples" of the third world.
The speech was a reflection of the political evolution of Martin Luther King in his later years, due in part to his affiliation with the progressive Highlander Research and Education Center, and which had led him to speak of a need for fundamental changes in the political and economic life of the nation. He frequently expressed his opposition to the war and the need to redistribute resources to correct racial and social injustices.
And although in his public addresses he was reserved when it came to adhering to the ideological, in order to avoid being labeled as a communist by his political enemies, in private he habitually declared his support for democratic socialism:
"You cannot talk about a resolution of the economic problem of Black people without talking about millions of dollars. You can't talk about the end of the shawls without first saying that the benefits cannot be achieved thanks to the chabolas. You really fake reality because you have business now with people. You have business with the captains of the industry [...] That means now that you move in a rough sea, because that means there is something that doesn't work with... capitalism... There must be a better distribution of wealth and America may have to go towards democratic socialism."
Martin Luther King had read Marx when he was at Morehouse, but while he rejected "traditional capitalism," he also rejected communism because of "its materialist interpretation of history" that denies religion, its "ethnic relativism," and his "political totalitarianism".
The campaign of the poor
Starting in November 1967, King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) team met to discuss new legislation, the hot summers race riots, and the emergence of Black power. They then decided to organize the Poor People's Campaign (the Poor People's Campaign) in order to fight for justice social. Qualified by the pastor as the "second phase in the civil rights movement", it intended to combat poverty, analyzing its origin and not restricting itself only to the defense of African-Americans. King then stated:
"It must not be only black people, but all the poor. We must include the Amerindians, the Puerto Ricans, the Mexicans and even the white poor."
However, the campaign was not supported by all leaders of the civil rights movement, including Bayard Rustin. His opposition was based on arguments that the campaign goals were too broad, the demands unrealizable, and that this would accelerate the crackdown on the poor and blacks.
Martin L. King toured the country from end to end to assemble a "multiracial army of the poor," who would march on Washington and initiate civil disobedience on Capitol Hill, lasting if necessary until Congress signed a " declaration of the human rights of the poor. The Reader's Digest would speak of an "insurrection."
This "declaration of the poor" called for a government jobs program to rebuild America's cities. Martin L. King saw an urgent need to confront Congress, which had demonstrated its "hostility to the poor" by "distributing military funds generously" but giving "funds to the poor greedily."
His vision was for change that was more revolutionary than simple reform: he cited the systematic flaws of racism, poverty, militarism, and indicated that "the very reconstruction of society was the real problem that had to be solved." ».
The assassination of Martin Luther King in April 1968 affected the campaign. This began in May, culminating in a march on Washington, without achieving its objectives.
Murder
In late March 1968, Martin Luther King traveled to Memphis, Tennessee to support local black garbage collectors who had been on strike since March 12 for better pay and treatment.
African-Americans were paid $1.70 per hour, but were not paid when they were unable to work due to weather conditions, unlike white workers.
As a consequence of the peaceful protests, a wave of violence broke out against them that degenerated into the murder of a young African-American man.
On April 3, at the Mason Temple (Church of God in Christ, Inc. - world headquarters), Martin Luther King gave the prophetic "I've Been to the Mountaintop" address. top of the mountain") before an euphoric audience:
"It is not really important what is now happening... Some have begun to [...] talk about threats that arise. What could happen to me from one of our evil white brothers?... Like everyone else, I would like to live a long time. Longevity is important, but that's something I'm not worried about right now. I just want to fulfill God's will. And he did me. authorized to climb the mountain! And I looked around and saw the promised land. I may not go there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we will reach the promised land as a people. And I'm very happy tonight. I have no fear. I'm not afraid of any man. My eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!"
On April 4, 1968 at 6:10 p.m., Martin Luther King was assassinated by a white segregationist on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. For this fact, James Earl Ray is found guilty, who is sentenced to 99 years in prison. King's last words on that balcony were addressed to musician Ben Branch, who was to perform that night at a public meeting attended by Martin Luther King:
“Ben, prepare to play “Priest Lord, Take My Hand” (“Lord, take my hand”) at the meeting tonight. Take it the most beautiful way."
Hearing the shots, his friends, who were inside the room, ran to the balcony where they found Martin Luther King with a bullet in his throat. He was pronounced dead at 7:05 p.m. at St. Joseph's Hospital.
The assassination sparked a wave of race riots in 60 cities across the United States (125 in all) resulting in numerous deaths and forcing the National Guard to intervene. Five days later, President Johnson decreed a day national mourning ceremony (the first for an African-American) in honor of Martin Luther King.
The funerals were attended by 300,000 people, including Vice President Hubert Humphrey (Johnson was at a meeting on Vietnam at Camp David and there were fears that his presence could spark demonstrations by peace activists). Cholera riots broke out in over a hundred cities, causing 46 casualties.
At his widow's request, Martin Luther delivered his own funeral oration with his final sermon, "Drum Major," recorded at Ebenezer Baptist Church. In this sermon, he asked that no mention of his awards be made at his funerals, but that he be told that he had tried to "feed the hungry," "clothe the naked," "be fair about Vietnam," and "to love and serve humanity." At her request, her friend Mahalia Jackson sang her favorite hymn, "Take My Hand, Precious Lord."
Following the murder, the city of Memphis negotiated an end to the strike in a manner favorable to the garbage collectors.
According to biographer Taylor Branch, King's autopsy revealed that although he was only 39 years old, his heart resembled that of a 60-year-old man, showing the physical effect of the stress of 13 years on the civil rights movement.
Between 1957 and 1968, King had driven more than 6 million miles, spoken in public more than 2,500 times, been arrested by police more than twenty times, and been physically assaulted on at least four occasions.
Research and further developments
Two months after the death of Martin Luther King, James Earl Ray, a fugitive on the run, was caught at London Heathrow Airport trying to leave the UK on a fake Canadian passport in the name of Ramon George Sneyd. Ray was soon extradited to Tennessee and charged with the death of Martin Luther King; he acknowledged the murder on March 10, 1969, and recanted three days later. Advised by his attorney Percy Foreman, Ray pleaded guilty in order to avoid the death penalty. He was sentenced to 99 years in prison.
Ray fired his lawyer, saying that the culprits in the death had been a certain "Raoul" and his brother Johnny, whom he had met in Montreal, Canada. He further said that "he had not personally shot King," although he may "unknowingly be partly responsible," suggesting a clue to a possible conspiracy. He then spent the rest of his life trying in vain to have his conviction overturned and the trial reopened.
On June 10, 1977, shortly after testifying before a congressional crime committee in which he insisted he had not killed Martin Luther, he and six other convicts escaped from Brushy Mountain Jail., in Tennessee. He was arrested on June 13 and returned to prison.
In 1997, Dexter Scott King, the son of Martin Luther King, met with Ray and supported Ray's efforts to get a new trial.
In 1999, a year after Ray's death, Coretta Scott King, widow of Martin Luther and also a civil rights leader, and the rest of the King family, won a civil suit against Loyd Jowers (owner of a restaurant not far from the Motel) and "other conspirators." In December 1993, Jowers had appeared on ABC News's Prime Time Live and revealed details of a conspiracy involving the mob and the government to assassinate Martin Luther. Jowers recounted during the trial that he had received $100,000 to organize the assassination of Martin Luther King. The jury of six blacks and six whites found Jowers guilty, citing that "federal agents had been involved" in the assassination plot. William F. Pepper, Ray's former attorney, represented the King family during the trial, presenting 70 witnesses.
By the end of the process, the King family had concluded that Ray had nothing to do with the murder.
In 2000, the US Department of Justice completed an investigation into the Jowers disclosures, but found no evidence that could prove a conspiracy. The investigation report recommended that there be no further investigation until new reliable evidence was presented.
Conspiracy Allegations
There has been speculation that Ray was nothing more than a pawn, in the same way that many assume the same of the alleged assassin of John F. Kennedy, Lee Harvey Oswald. The evidence adduced by supporters of this theory are:
- Ray's confession was obtained under pressure, and he was threatened with the death penalty.
- Ray was a small robber and thief, and he had no judicial precedent in which he had been charged with violent crime with a weapon.
- Two ballistic tests performed on the murder weapon, a Remington Gamemaster, never proved that Ray had been the killer or that this weapon would have been the murder weapon.
- The witnesses of King's death say that the shot did not come from the apartments mentioned in the investigation but from a bush near it. A scrub unexplainedly cut days after the murder.
On April 6, 2002, the New York Times reported that a pastor, the Rev. Ronald Denton Wilson, had testified that it was his father Henry Clay Wilson who had assassinated Martin Luther King Jr., and not James Earl Ray. He said that his motives were not racist but political, since he thought King was a communist.
In 2004, Jesse Jackson, who was with King at the time of the crime, explained:
"The fact is that there were saboteurs to prevent the march. Within our own organization, it was discovered that a very important person was paid by the government. Thus, there were infiltrations in the interior, saboteurs abroad and attacks of the press. [...] I'll never believe James Earl Ray had the motive, money and mobility to have done it himself. Our government was very involved in preparing the ground and I think also the way for James Earl Ray's escape."
Biographers David Garrow and Gerald Posner took a position against the conclusions of William F. Pepper, who animated the 1999 trial by accusing the government of involvement in the death of Martin Luther King Jr.
Thought
Civil disobedience and non-violence
In the Letter from Birmingham Jail, written on April 16, 1963 while under arrest for a nonviolent demonstration, Martin Luther King responded to eight white Alabama priests who had written four days earlier a letter titled A call to unity. Although they admitted the existence of social injustices, they expressed the idea that the battle against racial segregation should take place in the courts and not on the streets. King then responded that without direct and strong actions like the ones he led, civil rights would never be achieved.
He also wrote that “waiting has almost always meant never” and asserted that civil disobedience was not only justified in the face of an unjust law, but also that “each has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws."
The letter included the famous quote, "An injustice anywhere is a threat to justice anywhere," as well as a line from Thurgood Marshall that he repeats: "Justice long delayed is justice rejected."
Until the end of his life, Martin Luther King opposed radicalization and violence advocated by Black Power and stressed that "riots do not fix anything", and considered this means ineffective, beyond the nature of the opposite from riots to his doctrine of non-violence, morality and faith:
"If it is said that power is the ability to change things or the ability to achieve their goals, then it is not to be able to engage in an act that does not achieve them: whatever the noise you make and the number of things you burn."
For him, a guerrilla like Che Guevara's was a "romantic illusion." King preferred the discipline of civil disobedience, which he defined not only as a right but also as a tribute to untapped democratic energy. The same for poverty: he asked the militants to "use all the power of nonviolence for the economic problem", even though there was nothing in the US Constitution that guaranteed a roof and a meal. He noted the similarity of his struggle to that of Jesus:
"Public opinion turned its back on him. They said he was an agitator. He used civil disobedience. He rejected the mandates of the law."
For King, non-violence was not only just but indispensable, because no matter how just the root cause, violence means error and the cycle of revenge of the law of Retaliation, and he defended the ethics of reciprocity:
"The last weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, which breeds the same as it seeks to destroy. Instead of weakening evil, it multiplies it. Using violence, you can kill the liar, but you cannot kill the lie, or restore the truth. Using violence, you will be able to murder the grudges, but you cannot kill hatred. In fact, violence makes hatred grow. And this continues. Return hatred for hatred multiplied to hatred, adding even deeper darkness than a starless night. Darkness cannot hide darkness: only light can do this. Hate cannot hide hatred: only love can do this."
He also stated that the end could not justify the means, contrary to what Machiavelli thought:
"I have always preached that non-violence requires that the means we use must be as pure as the end we pursue. I have tried to make it clear that it is wrong to use immoral means to achieve a just end. But I must now say that it is also wrong, even worse, to use moral means to preserve an immoral end."
In the Birmingham Letter, he also responded to priests who accused him of creating opportunities for violence with his peaceful civil disobedience in a racist environment, pointing out that he who non-violently calls for justice cannot be a riot instigator:
« In your statement, you affirm that our actions, though peaceful, must be condemned because they precipitate violence. But is it a logical affirmation? Is it not like you condemn a man who has been robbed because having money is what has caused the act of stealing?».
Racial equality, freedom and pride
Beyond his fight for racial equality, the "I have a dream" speech where he imagines that his "four children will one day live in a nation where they are not judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their person" and the political victory with the votes of the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act, Martin Luther King pointed out that racial equality did not come only from the laws that defend the person, but above all from the way in which that person perceives itself:
"While the spirit is enslaved, the body can never be free. Psychological freedom, a firm sense of self-esteem, is the most powerful weapon against the long night of physical slavery. No proclamation of lincolnial emancipation or a letter of Jordanian civil rights can bring this kind of freedom. Black will be free when he reaches the depths of his being and signs with the pen and ink of his humanity affirmed his own declaration of emancipation. And in a spirit laying toward true self-esteem, black must proudly reject the wives of self-abnegation and say to himself and say to the world: “I am someone. I'm a person. I am a man with dignity and honor. And I have a rich and noble story."
Pacifism and personal commitment
Martin Luther King stressed that nonviolence was not only a just method, but also a principle that should be applied to all human beings, wherever they came from, and compared the campaign of nonviolence acclaimed in the United States to the violence of the Vietnam War sustained by a part of the American public opinion:
“There is something strangely inconsistent in a nation that acclaims them when they say “Be non-violent with Jim Clark”, but that curses them and condemns them when they say, “be not violent with the Vietnamese brown children.”
For King, nonviolence should lead to pacifism, especially in the context of the cold war and the military strategy of mutual assured destruction that could lead to apocalypse:
"Men, throughout history, have spoken of war and peace. But now they can't stay alone in talking. It is not a choice between violence and non-violence in this world; it is a choice between non-violence and non-existence”.
Luther King frequently invoked personal responsibility to develop world peace. For him, the triumph of good over evil was inevitable, despite the frequent setbacks and wars of history:
"I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nations after nations should descend the military staircase into the hell of thermonuclear destruction. I think the unarmed truth and unconditional love will finally have the word. For good, even at a time overcome, is stronger than triumphant evil."
He admitted that this idealistic and moral opinion was difficult to defend in this historical context, but stressed that conscience and the ideal of justice should not recoil from unfavorable public opinion, a political calculation or a task that seemed insurmountable:
"In relation to some positions adopted, cowardice raises a question: "Is it dangerous?"; opportunism raises the question: "Is it political?"; and vanity puts it together and raises the question: "is it popular?" But consciousness raises the question: “Is it fair?” And then there comes a time when one must stand before something that does not lack danger, which is not political, nor popular, but must do so because his conscience tells him that it is just. I believe that today it is necessary for all people of good will to meet in a great act of consciousness and to say the words of the old black spiritual, “We will not study the war anymore.” Here is the challenge of modern man."
Spiritual life versus material comfort
Martin Luther King, without advocating a return to voluntary simplicity or becoming a critic of development like Gandhi, warned against the American way of life in terms of its tendency towards consumerism and materialism could divert man from the cause of goodness and spirituality:
"Today, the great temptation and the great tragedy of life is that we often allow the outside of our lives to absorb within our lives. The great tragedy of life is that we too often authorize the means with which we live to move away from the end for which we live. [...] What is the benefit for a man to fill the entire world of media - planes, televisions, electric light - and lose the end: the soul?».
In his opinion, this profound change was linked to a revolution of values that would make it possible to defeat the greatest evils of civilization:
"I am convinced that if we want to be on the good side of the world revolution, we must as a nation undertake a radical revolution of values. We must quickly start moving from a “orientated to things” society to a “person-oriented” society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered to be more important than individuals, the giant triplet composed of racism, materialism and militarism is impossible to overcome."
Faith, love and power
Because of his vocation as a pastor, King placed the Bible at the heart of his message, considering that humanity had long been "on the mountain of violence" and that it must go to "the promised land of justice and brotherhood." For him, this goal was a divine mission insofar as "it was never to be satisfied with unfinished goals, [...] but a kind of divine discontent must always be maintained".
This divine will and this message of love transmitted by the Gospel implied, according to him, an unwavering will in the face of adversity, "a hard spirit and a tender heart", as Jesus taught his disciples:
"Jesus recognized the need to confuse the opposites. He knew that his disciples should face a difficult and hostile world, where they would face the recalcitrant politicians and the intransigence of the protectors of the old order [...] And he gave them a formula of action, “Be as cunning as serpents and as innocent as doves.”
Love is not, then, for King only an end or an objective, but also the means to achieve world peace and justice. In this way, he refutes the idea of love as something weak , which some philosophers like Nietzsche had coined.
"This call for a world community to bring the problems of neighbourhood beyond the tribal, race, class and nation spheres is actually a call to a universal and unconditional love of the whole humanity. This often incomprehensible, misinterpreted concept, as soon as evaded by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force, has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of the human being. When I talk about love, I don't talk about a kind of sentimental and weak response. I'm not talking about a force that's just a sentimental nonsense. I speak of a force that all the great religions of the world have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is the key that opens the door that leads to the ultimate reality."
Luther King considered that power, in this context, was not something bad in itself as long as it was understood and used correctly; that is, when it was not considered the exact opposite of love. In his opinion, the perverse misinterpretation according to which love is seen as the "abandonment of power" and power as a denial of love, is the reason why Friedrich Nietzsche rejected Christian love and Christian theologians the Nietzschean concept of love. the will to power.
"The power without love is dangerous and abusive, love without power is sentimental and anemic. The best power is the love that implies the request for justice, and the best justice is the power that corrects everything that hinders love."
The struggle for power, without love or conscience, is then doomed to failure, whether by black or white. For him, "it is this collision between immoral power and impotent morality that constitutes the greatest crisis of our time."
King inveighed against the Nietzschean concept of the death of God, drawing on the biblical affirmation of God's love. For him, "God's love is unceasing and eternal" and therefore cannot die. to a man? in which, taking up the Parable of the rich fool, he stated:
“This man was a fool because he could not realize his dependence on God... this man-centered folly is still alive today. In fact, today it has reached the point where even some are saying that God is dead. What bothers me most about all that is that they don't give me the full information, because at least I would have liked to attend God's funeral. And today I want to ask, what forensic doctor declared him dead? I want to ask, how long have you been sick? I want to know if he had a heart attack or died of chronic cancer. These questions have been answered, and then I will believe and know that God is alive. You know, as long as love is around, God is alive. As long as justice is around, God is alive. There are certain conceptions of God that had to die, but not God. You know, God is the supreme substantive of life; He is not an adjective. He is the supreme object of life; He is not a verb. It is the independent supreme clause; He is not a dependent clause. Everything else depends on Him, but He does not depend on anything."Why Jesus Called A Man A Fool (1967)
Though a man of faith, King advocated secularism and approved a Supreme Court decision banning the imposition of prayer in public schools. He commented that “this was not intended to outlaw prayer or belief in God. In a pluralistic society like ours, who should determine which prayer should be said and by whom? From legal, constitutional or otherwise, the State does not have that right."
Science and religion
For King, if violence and war had become so destructive, it was because the speed of scientific progress had surpassed that of the development of ethics and morality, that they were unable to restrict their negative applications. Contrary to humanist claims, however, King states:
"The problem is with man himself and the soul of man. We have not learned to be righteous and honest and kind and true and loving. And that's the basis of our problem. The real problem is that through our scientific genius we have made the world a neighborhood, but through our moral and spiritual genius we have failed to make it a brotherhood."Rediscovering Lost Values.
Although he stressed that “our scientific power had overwhelmed our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and disoriented men”, he did not point, however, to science as the real culprit of all evils. King points out that the essential problem in society does not lie in the progress of knowledge, but in the loss of morality of the human being:
"The problem is not so much that we do not know enough, but we are not good enough. The problem is not so much that our scientific genius is left behind, but our moral genius is left behind."
In this sense, he appealed to the complementarity of science and religion, recognizing the importance of each of these social spheres:
"Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man the knowledge that is power; religion gives man the wisdom that is control. Science deals with facts; religion deals with values. Both of them are not rivals. They are complementary."
Historical Compensation
On several occasions, King expressed the view that African-Americans, like other oppressed Americans, should be compensated for wrongs suffered throughout history.
Interviewed by Alex Haley in 1965, he said that just giving equality to African-Americans could not eliminate the difference in income between them and whites. He indicated that he was not asking for full restitution of wages never paid during slavery, something he believed impossible, but was proposing a $50 billion government compensation program over 10 years for all oppressed groups.
He stressed that «the money spent would be more than justified by the benefits it would bring to the entire nation thanks to a spectacular drop in school dropouts, family separations, crime rates, illegitimacy, huge social expenses, riots and many other social ills".
In his 1964 book Why We Can't Wait, he developed this idea, explaining that the unpaid work regulation was an application of common law.
Sources and inspirations
Martin Luther King wrote that his first encounter with the idea of nonviolent civil disobedience was reading Henry David Thoreau's On Civil Disobedience in 1944 while at Morehouse College:
"There, with that courageous refusal of a man from New England to pay his taxes and his choice to go to prison before holding a war that would extend the territories of slavery to Mexico, I had my first contact with the theory of nonviolent resistance. Fascinated by the idea of refusing to cooperate with a malicious system, I was deeply so moved that I rereaded the book several times."
Thoreau makes him realize that an active but non-violent fight against evil was just as just and necessary as helping good, and that the means and forms of this fight were innumerable:
"I have come to convince myself that non-cooperation with evil is as moral obligation as cooperation with good. No other person has been more eloquent and passionate about spreading this idea than Henry David Thoreau. As a result of his writings and his personal testimony, we are the heirs of a legacy of creative protest. Thoreau's teachings have revived in our civil rights movement; in fact, it is more alive than ever. To be expressed by a sit-in in a restaurant, a bus of freedom in Mississippi, a peaceful demonstration in Albany (Georgia), a bus boycott in Montgomery (Alabama), all this is the harvest of Thoreau's insistence that evil should be resisted and that no moral man can conform, patient, with injustice."
Civil rights leader, theologian, and educator Howard Thurman also had an early influence on him. He was a classmate of Martin's father at Morehouse College, and became a mentor to the young Martin Luther and his friends. Thurman's missionary work had taken him abroad where he had met and conversed with Mahatma Gandhi. When Martin Luther King was at Boston University, he frequently visited Thurman, who was the dean of Marsh Chapel.
Civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, who had taught Mahatma Gandhi, advised Martin Luther King to follow the principles of nonviolence since 1956. He served as his early adviser and mentor and would be the primary organizer of the march on Washington. However, Bayard's acknowledged homosexuality, his commitment to democratic socialism and his relations with the Communist Party of the United States caused numerous black and white leaders to ask King to keep his distance from him.
Heavily inspired by the successes of Mahatma Gandhi's nonviolent activism, Martin Luther King visited his family in India in 1959, with the help of the Quaker group the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) and the NAACP. The trip affected him profoundly, enhancing his understanding of nonviolent resistance and his involvement in the fight for American civil rights. In a radio message during his last day in India, he announced:
"After my stay in India, I am more convinced than ever that the nonviolent method of resistance is the most powerful weapon possible for the oppressed peoples in their struggle for justice and human dignity. In a literal sense, Mahatma Gandhi embodies in his life certain universal principles that are inherent in the moral structure of the universe, and these principles are as ineluctable as the law of gravity."
King and the FBI
The FBI and its director J. Edgar Hoover had an antagonistic relationship with Martin Luther King. Following a written order from Attorney General Robert Francis Kennedy, the FBI began investigating him and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1961.
Investigations were superficial until 1962, when the FBI discovered that one of King's top advisers, Stanley Levison, had ties to the American Communist Party. According to one of his sworn statements to the House Un-American Activities Committee, one of King's aides, Hunter Pitts O'Dell, also had ties to the Communist Party. The FBI tapped the phone lines at King's and Levison's homes and offices, as well as at the hotels where they stayed when they traveled across the country. The FBI informed Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and President John F. Kennedy, who tried in vain to persuade King to part with Levison.
King denied any ties to communists, saying in an interview "that there were as many communists in his liberties movement as there were Eskimos in Florida"; Hoover responded by accusing him of being "the biggest liar in the country".
This attempt to prove that Martin Luther King was a communist was due in large part to the fact that many of the segregationists believed that black people in the South had so far been happy with their situation but were being manipulated by "communists" and " foreign agitators”. Stanley Levinson, an attorney, had had relations with the Communist Party throughout business negotiations, but the FBI refused to believe reports that he had no association with them.
Since nothing could be found politically against King, the FBI's objectives and investigations shifted to trying to discredit him through his private life. An attempt was made to prove that he was an unfaithful husband. The recordings, some of them made public some time later, did not provide any conclusive evidence, despite the observations of certain officers or President Johnson who had even called him a "hypocritical preacher." Some books that appeared in the 1980s could not provide evidence either.
The FBI distributed reports of these alleged deviations in his private life to journalists who were friends, allies, or potential funding sources of the SCLC, and even to Martin Luther's own family. The agency also sent anonymous letters to the person concerned threatening to reveal more information if he did not abandon his militancy for civil rights. Some letters have even been interpreted as an invitation for King to commit suicide.
The FBI abandoned its investigations into Martin Luther King's private life and harassment to focus on the SCLC and the Black Power movement. But after a peaceful demonstration in Memphis in March 1968 was overwhelmed by violent black power elements, Hoover, who had an agent planted in the SCLC hierarchy, launched a new smear campaign against Martin Luther King.
Thus, on April 2, he learned that the wiretapping had resumed. On the same day as his assassination, the FBI's Mississippi office proposed two new counter-information programs (COINTELPRO) using rumors and disinformation "to discredit King to the poor blacks whose support he seeks."
The last FBI contact with Martin Luther King was at the time of his assassination. The agency was watching him at the Lorraine Motel from a building across the street, very close to where James Earl stood. Members of the FBI were the first to come to King's side to provide him with the first care as soon as he was shot. For supporters of a conspiracy theory, his presence so close to the scene of the crime is confirmation of his involvement in the murder.
On January 31, 1977, in the cases "Bernard S. Lee v. Clarence M. Kelley, et al.” and “Southern Christian Leadership Conference v. Clarence M. Kelley, et al.”, Judge John Lewis Smith Jr. ordered that all known extant hand recordings and transcriptions resulting from spying on King between 1963 and 1968 be preserved in the National Archives and Records Administration and its public consultation prohibited until the year 2027.
Legacy
Tributes
Martin Luther King was named Time person of the year in 1963.
King is recognized as a martyr by three Christian Churches: Episcopalian, Lutheran in the United States and the United Methodist Church. All three have holidays dedicated to his memory: April 4 for Episcopalians and January 15 for Lutherans and Methodists, incorporated into their saints' calendars. On September 9, 2016 he was canonized by the Holy Orthodox Christian Church (no relation to the main Orthodox Church).
In the presentation speech given to him by the organizers on the occasion of the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, Martin Luther King was described as "the first person in the Western world who has shown that a struggle can be won without violence, the first to have made her message of brotherly love a reality throughout that struggle, and the one who has carried that message to all men, to all nations, and to all races."
He was awarded the American Jewish Committee's Medal of American Liberties in 1965 "for his outstanding advancement of the principles of human liberties." At the award reception ceremony, he said that freedom was one thing, and that either you had it whole or you were not free.
The same year he received the Pacem in Terris (peace on earth, in Latin) award based on the encyclical Pacem in Terris of Pope John XXIII.
In 1966, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America awarded her the Margaret Sanger Award "for her courageous resistance to sanctity and for her life devoted to the advancement of social justice and human dignity."
Martin Luther King received 20 honoris causa doctorates from US and foreign universities.
He also posthumously received the Marcus Garvey Award from the Jamaican government in 1968 and in 1971 received the Grammy Award for Best Spoken Recording for his speech Why I Oppose the War in Viêt Nam (Why I am opposed to the Vietnam War).
President Jimmy Carter awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously in 1977.
In 1980, the neighborhood where he spent his youth was declared a historical monument.
On November 2, 1983, President Ronald Reagan signed into law creating a holiday in his honor, Martin Luther King Jr. Day. The first states applied it in 1986 and on January 17 From 2000 the holiday was officially celebrated in all 50 states of the country.
In 1998, the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, to which he belonged, was authorized by the United States Congress to create a memorial.
Martin Luther King was the first African American and the second non-president to be honored with a monument on the National Mall in Washington.
Martin Luther King is considered the author of the greatest historical speeches in the United States, along with Abraham Lincoln or John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
More than 730 cities in the United States had a Martin Luther King street in 2006, and many others have been named after him around the world.
Supporters and influence
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Martin Luther King is one of the most admired personalities in the history of the United States.
Inspired by Gandhi, numerous personalities on the international scene such as José Bové and Jesse Jackson have taken him as an example for their fight in favor of human rights and his method of civil disobedience through non-violence as the appropriate mechanism to get it.
He has influenced human rights movements in South Africa and has been cited as an inspiration by another Nobel Peace Prize winner who has fought for equality in those countries: Albert Luthuli.
Martin Luther's wife, Coretta Scott King, followed in her husband's footsteps and was very active on social justice and civil rights issues until her death in 2006. The year of her husband's assassination, she founded the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social in Atlanta, dedicated to preserving her legacy and her work promoting nonviolent conflict resolution and tolerance. in the world.
His son, Dexter King, is currently the center's president and his daughter Yolanda has founded Higher Ground Productions, an organization specializing in addressing diversity.
In 2008, during the US presidential election, Barack Obama filled his campaign with references to Martin Luther King and paid tribute to him. Jesse Jackson, a fellow fighter of King, stated that he would have liked King to have witnessed the victory of Barack Obama, the first black president of the United States.
Criticism
Beyond the accusations of infidelity or academic plagiarism, the most radical militants, such as those of the Black Power movement or Malcolm X, directed various political criticisms at him, although they did not excessively damage his image.
Thus, Stokely Carmichael disagreed with Martin Luther King's will to integrate, which he considered as a means to achieve his ends and not as a principle. Stokely Carmichael therefore viewed Martin Luther King's fight as an insult to African-American culture.
Omali Yeshitela, who had led the more radical International People's Democratic Uhuru Movement (UnPDUM), also called on Africans to remember that European colonization had been done violently and forcibly, and not for integration into African culture. Trying to integrate into the culture of the colonizer is for her also an insult to the original African culture.
Presence in popular culture
Several artists have been inspired by the message of Martin Luther King.
- The singer Stevie Wonder wrote the song “Happy birthday” for the album Hotter Than July (1980), in honor of Martin Luther King. The end of the song quotes a large number of historical events and records starring Blacks.
- The U2 group, a great admirer of Martin Luther King, wrote the songs "MLK" and "Pride (In the Name of Love)" of the album The Unforgettable Fire (1984). «Pride» was his greatest success at that time and was recorded again in concert for the album Rattle and Hum. Repeat the words of the speech I have a dream"At last they took your life, but they could not take your pride."
- Martin Luther King inspired Stan Lee for the character of Charles Xavier of X-Men. Javier predicted the integration of mutants into the bosom of the rest of humans, unlike Magneto, inspired by Malcolm X.
- The Rage Against the Machine group, in the song "Wake up" (1992), mentions the murder of King as a result of his fight against the Vietnam War and poverty.
“You know that they were for King, When he talked about Vietnam, He returned power to the poor, And then came the shot” (You know they went after King, When he spoke out on Vietnam, He turned the power to the have-nots, And then came the shot)
- This song was used in the soundtrack The Matrix.
- In Renegades of Funk (2000) is mentioned next to Sitting Bull, Malcolm X or Thomas Paine as "renegades of his time and time."
- The Downset group quotes MLK together with Rubén Salazar, Malcolm X and John Fitzgerald Kennedy in the song "My American Prayer" (1994).
- In his song “They Don’t Care About Us” (1995), Michael Jackson evokes the names of Roosevelt and Martin Luther. The song says that these two characters, of living, would not have allowed him to suffer police violence or have been the victim of hatred.
- The Common rapper wrote, in collaboration with Will.i.am, a song in which he takes up words from the speech "I have a dream".
- Ben Harper, a great admirer, said:
"The most amazing thing about Martin Luther King is that he breathed peace: he emanated from him, from all his being, from the least gesture and from the least glance. When you're in it, you can move forward. It is “the” great man, one of the most peaceful beings the world has known; everything was prayer for him and that is exactly the way to follow”.
- In 2010 the American metal band Linkin Park included, in his album A Thousand Suns, the song Wisdom, Justice And Love that quotes MLK's speech Beyond Vietnam: a time to break the silence.
- In 2014 the director Ava DuVernay carried out the film Selma, in which the activist was played by David Heylowo and he got two nominations for the Oscar Awards (picture and original song), achieving the second for the song of John Legend and Lonnie Lynn (Common) "Glory".
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