Scholl

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

(Atlanta, 1929 - Memphis, United States, 1968) American Baptist minister, civil rights advocate. Son of a Baptist minister, Martin Luther King studied theology atBoston University. From a young age he became aware of the situation of social and racial segregation blacks living in their country, and especially in the southern states.Become Baptist minister, in 1954took over a church in the city of Montgomery, Alabama. Very soon showed his charisma and his determination to fight for the defense of civil rights by peaceful methods, inspired by the figure ofMahatma Gandhi and the theory of civil disobedience of Henry David Thoreau. Shortly after arriving in Montgomery organized and led a massive boycott of almost a year against segregation on municipal buses.However, neither the good intentions of the president, who would die assassinated months later, neither the ethical force of the message of King, the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, seemed sufficient tocontain the spread of color nationalist groups opposed to integration and favorable to violence, such as Black Power, Black Panthers and Black Muslims. The permeability of the groups of color,especially those living in the ghettos of New York and other northern states, the influence of these violent groups, threatened the core message of King, pacifism.

In March 1965 he led a rally ofthousands of civil rights advocates who traveled almost a hundred miles from Selma, where there had been racial violence, to Montgomery. The struggle of Martin Luther King had a tragic end: the April 4,1968 was assassinated in Memphis by James Earl Ray. While their funerals were held in the church Edenhaëser of Atlanta, a wave of violence spread across the country. Ray, who was arrested by the police,the murder was recognized and was convicted with circumstantial evidence. Years later retracted his statement and, with the support of the King family, requested the reopening of the case and the...