Martin Luther King, Jr.

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The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is, hands-down, the most exalted figure in the Civil Rights Movement, which mobilized to expand the rights and freedoms of African Americans in the 1950s and '60s. He was born Michael King, Jr., in...
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The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is, hands-down, the most exalted figure in the Civil Rights Movement, which mobilized to expand the rights and freedoms of African Americans in the 1950s and '60s. He was born Michael King, Jr., in Atlanta, Georgia, on January 15, 1929, and he was assassinated on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee, when he was only 39 years old. Over the course of his short life, his anti-racism activism, nonviolent philosophy, and stirring speeches changed the United States forever. Dr. King, also known as MLK, was a controversial figure when he was alive. But in the decades since his death, he's come to symbolize a gentle ideal of racial harmony that's palatable across the political spectrum and preached in churches and classrooms around the United States—particularly on the January federal holiday honoring the activist's birth. The scholar Cornell West refers to this white-washing as the "Santa Clausification" of Martin Luther King. King was born into the segregated Jim Crow South, where black Americans were forced to use separate and subpar water fountains, bathrooms, and schools—and were unwelcome in white-owned businesses. Black Southerners were tormented by regular acts of white terrorism, including lynchings, police brutality, intimidation, and night rides by racist vigilantes like the Ku Klux Klan. Poll taxes and literacy tests prevented most black Southerners from registering to vote. As a young man, King studied sociology, divinity, and theology at, respectively, Morehouse College in Atlanta; Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania; and Boston University. When he was 24, in 1953, King married Coretta Scott, who was an Alabama-born music student in Boston. In 1954, King began to serve as minister of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. In 1955, MLK received his Ph.D. in systematic theology from Boston University. Eventually, the couple had four children, Yolanda (1955–2007), Martin...
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