Martin Luther King

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Martin Luther King
Coleen Degnan-Veness
big farms in the South. Many people in the North hated slavery but it did not end until 1865, after a civil war between the North and South. African-Americans were free after the war, but were poor and could not read or write. In the South, ‘Jim Crow’ laws were passed to segregateblack people from white people. In 1909, the NAACP was formed to fight these laws. In 1954, segregated schools were made illegal, which angered many white people in the South. But more was needed to be done to end segregation. Pages 8–14: King married Coretta Scott, a music student, in 1953. He persuaded her to return to the South. In 1955, he became president of the MIA, a black organization inMontgomery, Alabama, that fought segregation. King’s public life began in 1955 with the Montgomery bus boycott. Rosa Parks, an African-American, refused to give her seat on a bus to a white passenger. She was arrested. King, the MIA and others began a boycott of city buses which became nationally famous. The Ku Klux Klan firebombed King’s home, but in 1956, the US government made segregation onbuses illegal. King was influenced by Thoreau, who said that sometimes laws are not right and honest people must break them; and by Gandhi, who said people should fight violence with peace. Pages 15–21: King began to teach non-violent resistance to his followers. He traveled to Africa, started making speeches all over America and fought to stop segregation in schools. Violent acts were committedagainst AfricanAmericans, and politicians were divided about segregation. Inspired by King, students around the South began protests. In 1960, King joined one such protest and was sent to prison. John F. Kennedy, who was running for President, offered to help and King was freed. Violence continued between blacks and whites in the South as blacks tried to challenge segregationist policies with directaction. Freedom Riders rode buses in the South to protest segregation. They were often beaten and buses were burned but in 1961, segregation in bus stations became illegal. Pages 22–29: Politicians in the South tried to continue segregation in high schools and colleges. From jail in Birmingham, Alabama, King wrote a famous letter

Summary
This biography follows the dramatic life story of one ofthe world’s most famous campaigners for peace. The writer has divided the story into the events that first brought Martin Luther King, Jr. to the civil rights movement and the many episodes on the road to a better life for blacks in America. Pages 1–7: In 1963, more than 250,000 people listened as Martin Luther King, Jr. gave one of the most famous speeches in American history. He spoke of hisdream that one day black and white children will be sisters and brothers. Born in 1929 into a comfortable home in the southern United States, King first learned about the importance of skin color when he was five years old and could not go to the same school as his white friend. King’s grandfather and father were both preachers and religion was important in his early life. At fifteen, after someindecision, he decided to become a preacher. He went to the North to study and graduated as Dr. Martin Luther King in 1955. He was tempted to stay in the North but, at 25, decided to move back to the segregationist South, to Montgomery, Alabama, to help the poor black people there. King’s opinions of white people began to change. As a student in the South, he experienced racism, which made him angry,but found that in the North relations between blacks and whites were better. He also became influenced by the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi. The book describes the origins of slavery in America and how the North and South of the United States came to have very different attitudes to blacks. The first Europeans in America brought slaves from Africa to work on their

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