Martin Luther King

Martin Luther King

Thanks to Marin Luther group, they really had good presentation with a well preparation. I really like that they dressed according to the role, Dear Nasrah since your previous presentation so far I have seen you improved well, she spoke slower and clearer. And dear Tasnim you also had good presentation, masallah you have good command of English but I guess if you could speak a bit slower it was going to be much more better.

Comment on King’s speech:

“I HAVE A DREAM”

Content of the speech is very impressive and brave in terms of the sentences that carry ideas led even his assassination.
The sentences “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’ … I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” Are really felt from the heart and call anyone from any nation and skin color. It is because those sentences don’t carry any discrimination and prejudice to anyone and in fact they directly address the wishes that pure human nature keeps. That’s why, he found many supporters even among the whites and was accepted as a kind of hero that he fought for equal human rights. It is even possible to say that, since he combined his moral stance with his speech, this speech became much more effective. I believe that when we talk from the heart, especially when we practice the thing we have been talking, words that we use, even though they might not be perfect with the high structured sentences, will have acceptance from the people more than the words, that we don’t practice in life but only talk, have.
The speech and the march built on the Birmingham demonstrations to create the political momentum that resulted in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibited segregation in public accommodations, as well as discrimination in education and employment. As a result of King’s effectiveness as a leader of the American civil rights movement and his highly visible moral stance he was awarded the 1964 Nobel Prize for peace.
“There are some people whom their death serves the humanity more than their life do” says a thinker. This means; some people’s death is like an explosion, they give a speech as they light a small fire but once they are attacked and dead, that light cause an explosion on the civilizations and people’s minds. Soon after their ideas are started to be understood by even the ignorant. Martin Luther King’s speech and assassination also can be considered in these big explosions in the civilization’s mind set.

About Martin Luther King;
King, Martin Luther, Jr. (1929-1968), American clergyman and Nobel Prize winner, one of the principal leaders of the American civil rights movement and a prominent advocate of nonviolent protest. King’s challenges to segregation and racial discrimination in the 1950s and 1960s helped convince many white Americans to support the cause of civil rights in the United States. After his assassination in 1968, King became a symbol of protest in the struggle for racial justice.
King’s public-speaking abilities—which would become renowned as his stature grew in the civil rights movement—developed slowly during his collegiate years. He won a second-place prize in a speech contest while an undergraduate at Morehouse, but received Cs in two public-speaking courses in his first year at Crozer. By the end of his third year at Crozer, however, professors were praising King for the powerful impression he made in public speeches and discussions.
Throughout his education, King was exposed to influences that related Christian theology to the struggles of oppressed peoples. At Morehouse, Crozer, and Boston University, he studied the teachings on nonviolent protest of Indian leader Mohandas Gandhi. King also read and heard the sermons of white Protestant ministers who preached against American racism. Benjamin E. Mays, president of Morehouse and a leader in the national community of racially liberal clergymen, was especially important in shaping King’s theological development.
ASSASINATION
This emphasis on economic rights took King to Memphis, Tennessee, to support striking black garbage workers in the spring of 1968. He was assassinated in Memphis by a sniper on April 4. News of the assassination resulted in an outpouring of shock and anger throughout the nation and the world, prompting riots in more than 100 United States cities in the days following King’s death. In 1969 James Earl Ray, an escaped white convict, pleaded guilty to the murder of King and was sentenced to 99 years in prison. Ray later recanted his confession. Although over the years many investigators have suspected that Ray did not act alone, no accomplices have ever been identified. In 1999 a jury in a Memphis civil trial brought by King’s family found that a widespread conspiracy not involving Ray led to King’s assassination. However, most investigators continued to believe that Ray was the killer.
After King’s death, historians researching his life and career discovered that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) often tapped King’s phone line and reported on his private life to the president and other government officials. The FBI’s reason for invading his privacy was that King associated with Communists and other “radicals.”
After his death, King came to represent black courage and achievement, high moral leadership, and the ability of Americans to address and overcome racial divisions. Recollections of his criticisms of U.S. foreign policy and poverty faded, and his soaring rhetoric calling for racial justice and an integrated society became almost as familiar to subsequent generations of Americans as the Declaration of Independence.
King’s historical importance was memorialized at the Martin Luther King, Jr., Center for Nonviolent Social Change, a research institute in Atlanta where his tomb is located. The King Center is located at the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site, which includes King’s birthplace and the Ebenezer Church. Perhaps the most important memorial is the national holiday in King’s honor, designated by the Congress of the United States in 1983 and observed on the third Monday in January, a day that falls on or near King’s birthday of January 15.