By Ricky Rieckert
Dear readers,
This week, during Black History month, I am writing about Martin Luther King, Jr. (MLK). He advanced civil rights for Black individuals in the United States through the use of nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience against Jim Crow laws and other forms of legalized discrimination, which most commonly affected African Americans.
MLK was born Michael King Jr. January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Ga. to Martin Luther King, Sr. and Alberta Williams King.
He married Coretta Scott in 1953 and had four children, Yolanda, Martin III, Dexter, and Bernice.
He received his BA at Morehouse College, his PhD at Boston University and attended Crozer Theological Seminary were he became a Baptist Minister and an American Civil Rights Activist.
He was the leader of the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination, April 4 1968, at the young age of 39.
As a Black church leader, King participated and led marches for the right to vote, desegregation, labor rights, and other civil rights.
He oversaw the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott and was the first president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), leading the unsuccessful Albany Movement in Albany, Georgia, and helping organize nonviolent 1963 protests in Birmingham, Alabama.
In one of his most prominent moments, King was one of the leaders of the 1963 March on Washington, where he delivered his “I have a dream” speech.
He helped organize two of the three Selma to Montgomery marches, during the 1965 Selma voting rights movement. There were dramatic standoffs with segregationist authorities, who often responded violently.
The civil rights movement achieved pivotal legislative gains in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968.
King was jailed several times. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) director J. Edgar Hoover considered King a radical and made him an object of COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program) from 1963.
FBI Agents investigated him for possible communist ties, spied on his personal life, and secretly recorded him.
In 1964, the FBI mailed King a threatening anonymous letter, which he interpreted as an attempt to make him commit suicide.
King won the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize for combatting racial inequality through nonviolent resistance.
In his final years, he expanded his focus to include opposition towards poverty and the Vietnam War.
In 1968, King was planning a national occupation of Washington D.C., to be called the Poor People’s Campaign, until he was assassinated on April 4 in Memphis, Tenn.. James Earl Ray was convicted of the assassination, though it remains the subject of conspiracy theories.
King’s death lead to riots in U.S. cities. I recall individuals marching down East New York Street in Aurora, in 1968 when I was nine years old. Activists marched peacefully from curb to curb.
My dad, loaded his shotgun when there was a knock on our back door. It was an Aurora Police Officer, who told my dad to put the gun down and asked if everybody was okay. My dad replied “Yes, everyone is fine.” The officer told him to stay inside.
King was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 2003.
Martin Luther King Jr. Day was established as a holiday in cities and states throughout the United States beginning in 1971; the federal holiday was first observed in 1986.
The Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. was dedicated in 2011.
Have a great week.