Democracia

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|Martin Luther, Jr King Biography (1929–68) |
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Baptist minister andcivil rights leader. Born Michael Luther King, Jr., on January 15, 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia. The grandson and son of Baptist ministers, King grew up singing in his church choir. In 1935, his father changed both of their names to Martin to honor the German Protestant. Young Martin attended segregated public schools and graduated from high school at age 15. In 1948, he received his B.A. degree fromMorehouse College in Georgia, the alma mater of both is father and grandfather, and in 1951 he earned is B.D. from Crozer Theological Seminary. While at Crozer, King was elected president of a predominantly white senior class. In 1955, he received a Ph.D. from Boston University, where he also met his future wife, Coretta Scott , with whom he had four children.
King was ordained a minister in1947 at his father's Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. He became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1953 at age 24. Committed to black civil rights from an early age, King was an active member of the executive committee of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Relatively untested when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat in a bus inDecember 1955, King led the boycott of Montgomery's segregated buses for over a year. The situation became so intense that he was arrested, he and his family were threatened, and his home was bombed. But eventually the Supreme Court outlawed discrimination in public transportation and King emerged a prominent leader of the civil rights movement.
In 1957, King was elected president of the newlyformed Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), a group designed to harness the moral authority and organizing power of black churches to conduct non-violent protests in the interest of civil rights reform. His approach was based on the ideas of Henry David Thoreau and Mohandas Gandhi as well on Christian teachings. A trip to India in 1959 to meet the Gandhi family cemented his belief innonviolent resistance and his commitment to civil rights in the United States.
In 1959, King moved to Atlanta to become co-pastor of his father's church, and in the ensuing years gave much of his energies to organizing protest demonstrations and marches in such cities as Birmingham, Alabama (1963), St. Augustine, Florida (1964), and Selma, Alabama (1965). The marches were for the right to vote,desegregation, labor rights, and other basic civil rights. The protests won media attention and public sympathy for the indignities suffered by Southern blacks, providing what he called "a coalition of conscience" and bringing the civil rights movement to the forefront of American politics in the 1960s.
Between 1957 and 1968, King canvassed the country and appeared more than 2500 times to speak inprotest against injustices toward his race. He wrote five books and numerous articles. King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail," written in 1964, was a manifesto for the revolution, drawing on his experience as a preacher to galvanize and inspire an audience. During these years, King was arrested and jailed by Southern officials on several occasions, was stoned and physically attacked, and his house wasbombed. He was also placed under secret surveillance by the FBI due to the strong prejudices of its director, J Edgar Hoover, who wanted to discredit King as both a leftist and a womanizer.
King's finest hour came on August 28, 1963 when he led the great march in Washington, DC, that culminated with his famous "I Have a Dream" speech at the Lincoln Memorial. The March on Washington for Jobs and...