Dilmika Tennekoon - Martin Luther
Martin Luther King Jr was born on January 15, 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. His original name was Michel Luther King, Jr but later he changed his name to Martin. His father was a Baptist minister and his mother was a school teacher. King acted as co-pastor from 1960 until his death. He received his doctorate of Philosophy in 1955 from Boston University.
 Martin Luther King Jr |
King was a member of the executive committee of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People which was the leading organization of coloured people in the nation. He was the leader of the first great Negro Non-violent Demonstration in the United States, the black boycott of the Montgomery bus system in 1955. This boycott organized as a result of refusal by a black woman, to give up her seat on the bus to a white man.
In the segregated south, black people could only sit at the back of the bus and not allowed to sit in front since those seats were given for whites. However the boycott lasted 382 days.
Segregation
This led the bus company to change its regulations and the Supreme Court declared such segregation on buses unconstitutional and Negroes and whites rode the buses as equals. However during these days of boycott, he was subjected to personal abuse, arrested and had his home bombed by those who hated him. Nevertheless he emerged as a Negro leader of the first rank.In 1957 he became the president of the Southern Leadership Christian Conference (SCLC) which was formed to provide new leadership to the flourishing civil rights movement. He used non-violent direct action, same technique used by Gandhi. This approach was derived from Christianity itself. Wherever there was injustice and protests, King travelled millions of miles to address the issue.
King was known as one of the most powerful speakers of the 20th Century America and a man of great personal courage. He was not driven by financial gain. He was able to give voice to millions of coloured people, to throw off the shackles of racial discrimination and challenge the barbaric racial oppression in the American south.
Despite the power structure of racial discrimination he also challenged war, poverty and the social structure in which he lived.
His dream
He recognized the importance of a wider struggle against the economic conditions that challenged all working people and decided to launch a ‘poor peoples campaign’ in Washington in 1968.King’s 1963 “Letter from Birmingham Jail” a manifesto of the Negro revolution, influenced the end of public and job discrimination completely. He also led a campaign in 1965 for the registration of Negroes as voters.
The famous speech “I have a dream” was delivered by King in a massive march led by him in Washington DC in 1968, predicting a day when the promise of freedom and equality for all would become a reality in America. In a speech two months before his death, King condemned American foreign policy as a ‘bitter, colossal, contest for supremacy.’ Referring to Vietnam, he said “We are criminals in the war and have committed more war crimes than almost any nation in the world.”
Accolades
In 1964 he was awarded the Nobel Prize. He was the youngest man to receive the Nobel Peace Prize at the age of 35. However King was arrested over 20 times and assaulted at least four times during his life. He was awarded five honorary degrees. Time Magazine in 1963 named him the ‘Man of the Year’. He became not only the symbolic leader of American blacks but also a world figure.During his life time King was criticized, spied upon and was targeted for murder. On April 4, 1968, King was assassinated. At the time he was focusing his attention on a nationwide campaign for the poor. He was only 39. The murder of Dr King has key features in common with the other political assassinations of the 1960s; those of President John F. Kennedy and Senator Robert Kennedy.
However 42 years after the murder of King, need for reform still looms large: Social conditions of the majority of black working class await redress in the US.
Martin Luther King is remembered for his famous speeches, for his strong principals and for his tireless work for equality and peace.
He is honoured in the United States annually with a national holiday, called Martin Luther King, Jr Day, celebrated on the third Monday of January.
Martin Luther King was a one of a kind human being who had a cherished dream. A different kind of an American dream: To have everyone in America enjoy equality and justice.
Daily News
