In preparation for tomorrow ….. Martin Luther King, Jr. celebration!

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~~January 18, 2014~~

More than 45 years after his death and 50 years after his historic “I Have a Dream” speech, Martin Luther King Jr.‘s stirring words and writings remain as relevant and inspiring today as they were when he lived.

Martin Luther King, Jr. (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American pastor, activist, humanitarian, and leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. He is best known for his role in the advancement of civil rights using nonviolent civil disobedience based on his Christian beliefs.

Born Michael King, his father changed his name in honor of German reformer Martin Luther. A Baptist minister, King became a civil rights activist early in his career. He led the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott and helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957, serving as its first president. With the SCLC, King led an unsuccessful struggle against segregation in Albany, Georgia, in 1962, and organized nonviolent protests in Birmingham, Alabama, that attracted national attention following television news coverage of the brutal police response. King also helped to organize the 1963 March on Washington, where he delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech. There, he established his reputation as one of the greatest orators in American history.

He also established his reputation as a radical, and became an object of the Federal Bureau of Investigation‘s COINTELPRO for the rest of his life. FBI agents investigated him for possible communist ties, recorded his extramarital liaisons and reported on them to government officials, and on one occasion, mailed King a threatening anonymous letter that he interpreted as an attempt to make him commit suicide.

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Martin Luther King, Jr.
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King in 1964

BornMichael King, Jr.
(1929-01-15)January 15, 1929
Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.DiedApril 4, 1968(1968-04-04) (aged 39)
Memphis, Tennessee, U.S.MonumentsMartin Luther King, Jr. MemorialAlma materMorehouse College (B.A.)
Crozer Theological Seminary (B.D.)
Boston University (Ph.D.)OccupationClergyman, activistOrganizationSouthern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)

Political movement

African-American Civil Rights Movement, Peace movementReligionBaptist (Progressive National Baptist Convention)Spouse(s)Coretta Scott King (1953–1968)ChildrenYolanda Denise King (1955–2007)
Martin Luther King III (b. 1957)
Dexter Scott King (b. 1961)
Bernice Albertine King (b. 1963)ParentsMartin Luther King, Sr.
Alberta Williams KingAwardsNobel Peace Prize (1964), Presidential Medal of Freedom (1977, posthumous), Congressional Gold Medal (2004, posthumous)

SignatureMartin Luther King Jr Signature2.svg

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On October 14, 1964, King received the Nobel Peace Prize for combating racial inequality through nonviolence. In 1965, he and the SCLC helped to organize the Selma to Montgomery marches and the following year, he took the movement north to Chicago. In the final years of his life, King expanded his focus to include poverty and the Vietnam War, alienating many of his liberal allies with a 1967 speech titled “Beyond Vietnam“.

In 1968 King was planning a national occupation of Washington, D.C., to be called the Poor People’s Campaign, when he was assassinated on April 4, in Memphis, Tennessee. His death was followed by riots in many U.S. cities. Allegations that James Earl Ray, the man convicted of killing King, had been framed or acted in concert with government agents persisted for decades after the shooting, and the jury of a 1999 civil trial found Loyd Jowers to be complicit in a conspiracy against King.

King was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal posthumously. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was established as a U.S. federal holiday in 1986. Hundreds of streets and a county in the U.S. have been renamed in his honor.

An impressive, very fitting memorial statue on the National Mall was opened to the public in 2011.

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Sources:

http://www.parade.com/252644/viannguyen/15-of-martin-luther-king-jr-s-most-inspiring-motivational-quotes/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King,_Jr.

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Martin Luther King’s Last Speech: “I’ve Been To The Mountaintop”

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Uploaded on Apr 4, 2010

The final part of Martin Luther King’s last speech. He delivered it on April 3, 1968, at the Mason Temple in Memphis, Tennessee.

The next day, King was assassinated.

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“15 of Martin Luther King Jr.’s Most Inspiring Motivational Quotes ”

1. “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.”

2. “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

3. “Forgiveness is not an occasional act. It is a permanent attitude.”

4. “I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.”

5. “Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.”

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6. “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’”

7. “Never succumb to the temptation of bitterness.”

8. “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”

9. “We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now.”

10. “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”

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11. “Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle.”

12. “Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into friend.”

13. “There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right.”

14. “Let no man pull you so low as to hate him.”

15. “If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.”

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THE POWER OF THE SPOKEN WORD.

THE POWER OF THE MESSENGER. NEVER FORGOTTEN. 

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~~THE OPPRESSED MUST DO THEIR PART~~

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~~”I HAVE A DREAM”~~

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THE CONCEPT OF HONOR, COMMITMENT, STRENGTH AND STEADFASTNESS …. REASONS FOR LIVING

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We ALL are ONE!!

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We ALL are connected through a DREAM!!! 

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27 thoughts on “In preparation for tomorrow ….. Martin Luther King, Jr. celebration!”

  4. The first day of the Montgomery Bus Boycott was coordinated to take place on the same day as Rosa Parks trial. Fred Gray represented her in the trial.

    That evening Martin Luther King gave the speech of what Fred Gray described as “what would become know as the pep-talk for each of the Monday night mass meetings” during the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

    Here is an excerpt that I copied from Attorney Fred Gray’s book “Bus Ride to Justice” (pp. 57-58):

    These talks were for many their first glimpse of the genius that was within Martin Luther King, Jr. He was elected president of the MIA at a meeting at which he was not present, at Zion A.M.E. Church on South Holt and Stone streets. He presided over a cross section of preachers, three college professors (including one woman), two physicians, three housewives, a Pullman porter, and most of the rest being preachers. He soon became the favorite of all of them. He rose in stature to the point that many of the women who attended mass meeting after mass meeting could be heard to say, “Just let me touch his garmet.”

    Yet Martin appeared to have never lost the common touch. He could calm the rivalries which arose among some of the ministers on occasion. Before MIA board meetings, Martin was always alert to congratulate someone for some deed of kindness. He was jovial, at a well-bred ease and aware of events in the neighborhood, or asking those present about matters which might have escaped him. But those qualities were qualities which were generally not yet realized on the night of the first mass meeting.

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    • Such interesting story …. I can understand the value of this man.
      Can you imagine … all the ones that have been killed for similar beliefs? And so wrong … they are gone. No more like them .. and we need them so bad!!!
      Hugs!!

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      • Rev. William Barber is a great leader. Here he is speaking about “fusion politics”:

        In this talk, Rev. Barber points out that he and his group are the real conservative Christians because they want to conserve love; they want to conserve justice; and they want to conserve righteousness. Rev. Barber has been leading “Moral Mondays” in North Carolina this year.

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      • I am now going to copy what John Lewis (in his autobiography) wrote about Martin Luther King when he heard him for the first time. (in a sermon on the radio in 1955)

        I will be back when I finish copying that excerpt 🙂

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  5. Maybe I’m a visual learner but I love the photo of King on the mall with the people and the Washington Monument. The videos I will listen to while I work. Thank you for this.

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  7. Okay, I just finished copying the excerpt.
    Horty, here is what John Lewis wrote about Martin Luther King in his autobiography entitled “Walking with the Wind.” —

    And, then on a Sunday morning in early 1955, I was listening to our radio, turned to WRMA out of Montgomery, as always, when on the air came a sermon by a voice that I’d never heard before, a young minister from Atlanta. I didn’t catch his name until the sermon was finished, but the voice held me from the start. It was a strong voice, a deep voice, clearly well trained and well schooled in the rhythmic singsong, old-style tradition of black Baptist preaching we call whooping. There’s a creative pacing to that style of sermonizing, a cadence, with lots of crescendos and dramatic pauses and drawing out of word endings as if holding a note of a song. It’s so much like singing. He really could make his words SING.

    But, even more than his voice, it was his message that sat me bolt upright with amazement. His sermon was titled “Paul’s Letter to the American Christians.” He’d taken it from Paul’s letter to the church at Corinth, in which Paul criticized complacent Christians for their selfishness and failures of brotherhood. He adapted it to what was happening here, right now, on the streets of Montgomery, Alabama. I listened, as this man spoke about how it wasn’t enough for black people to be concerned only with getting to the Promised Land in the hereafter, about how it was not enough for people to be concerned with roads that are paved with gold, and the gates to the Kingdom of God.

    He said we needed to be concerned with the gates of schools that were closed to black people and the doors of stores that refused to hire or serve us. His message was one of love and the Gospel, but he was applying those principles to NOW, to today. Every minister I’d ever heard talked about “over yonder,” where we’d put on the white robes and golden slippers and sit with the angels. But this man was talking about dealing with the problems people were facing in their lives right now, specifically black lives in the South.

    This was the first time I had ever heard something I would soon learn was called the social gospel–taking the teachings of the Bible and applying them to the earthbound problems and issues confronting a community and a society.

    I was on fire with the words I was hearing. I felt that this man–his name was Martin Luther King Jr.–was speaking directly to me. This young preacher was giving voice to everything I’d been feeling and fighting to figure out for years.

    When I got to school that Monday, I went straight to the library to find out anything I could about this man. There wasn’t much, but I did come across a small newspaper article describing his appointment the previous September as resident pastor at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery.

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  9. Thank you for sharing, Horty, this wonderful tribute to a remarkable man worthy of the legacy he left behind. We’ve made progress but have many more miles to travel and the road is long.

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  10. Pingback: To start the day ….. | It Is What It Is

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