Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr. was an American Baptist minister and activist who was a leader in the Civil Rights Movement.

The Civil Rights Movement or 1960s Civil Rights Movement encompasses social movements in the United States whose goals were to end racial segregation and discrimination against African Americans and to secure legal recognition and federal protection of the citizenship rights enumerated in the Constitution and federal law.

Martin Luther was a German professor of theology, composer, priest, monk and a seminal figure in the Protestant Reformation.

YO TENGO UN SUEÑO DISCURSO MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. by ntiffin1

He is best known for his role in the advancement of civil rights using nonviolent civil disobedience based on his Christian beliefs.

Civil disobedience is the active, professed refusal to obey certain laws, demands, and commands of a government, or of an occupying international power.

A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ.

Mini Bio: Martin Luther King, Jr. by BIO

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 in 1957, serving as its first president.

The Montgomery bus boycott, a seminal event in the Civil Rights Movement, was a political and social protest campaign against the policy of racial segregation on the public transit system of Montgomery, Alabama.

With the SCLC, King led an unsuccessful 1962 struggle against segregation in Albany, Georgia, and helped organize the 1963 nonviolent protests in Birmingham, Alabama.

Birmingham is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Alabama and the county seat of Jefferson County.

Albany is a city in the U.S. state of Georgia, and is the seat of Dougherty County.

King also helped to organize the 1963 March on Washington, where he delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech.

"I Have a Dream" is a public speech delivered by American civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963, in which he calls for an end to racism in the United States and called for civil and economic rights.

On October 14, 1964, King received the Nobel Peace Prize for combating racial inequality through nonviolent resistance.

The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the five Nobel Prizes created by the Swedish industrialist, inventor, and armaments manufacturer Alfred Nobel, along with the prizes in Chemistry, Physics, Physiology or Medicine, and Literature.

Nonviolent resistance is the practice of achieving goals such as social change through symbolic protests, civil disobedience, economic or political noncooperation, satyagraha, or other methods, without using violence.

In 1965, he helped to organize the Selma to Montgomery marches, and the following year he and SCLC took the movement north to Chicago to work on segregated housing.

The three Selma to Montgomery marches in 1965 were part of the voting rights movement underway in Selma, Alabama.

Bloody Sunday may refer to:

In the final years of his life, King expanded his focus to include opposition towards poverty and the Vietnam War, alienating many of his liberal allies with a 1967 speech titled "Beyond Vietnam".

The Vietnam War, also known as the Second Indochina War, and known in Vietnam as Resistance War Against America or simply the American War, was a war that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975.

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.

Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as "Washington", "the District", or simply "D.C.", is the capital of the United States.

The Poor People's Campaign, or Poor People's March on Washington, was a 1968 effort to gain economic justice for poor people in the United States.

Memphis is a city in the southwestern corner of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the county seat of Shelby County.

His death was followed by riots in many U.S. cities.

King was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal.

The Presidential Medal of Freedom is an award bestowed by the President of the United States and is—along with the comparable Congressional Gold Medal—the highest civilian award of the United States.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day was established as a holiday in numerous cities and states beginning in 1971, and as a U.S. federal holiday in 1986.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day is an American federal holiday marking the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. It is observed on the third Monday of January each year, which is around King's birthday, January 15.

Hundreds of streets in the U.S. have been renamed in his honor, and a county in Washington State was also renamed for him.

The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., was dedicated in 2011.

The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial is located in West Potomac Park in Washington, D.C., southwest of the National Mall.