NAME: Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.
COUNTRY: United States Of America.
DATE OF BIRTH: January 15, 1929.
DEATH OF DEATH: April 4, 1968.
The Dream That Refused to Die.
SUPERVISOR/EDITOR: Harry Agina.
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On January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia, a child was born into a family deeply rooted in the Black Baptist church. His name was Michael King Jr. He would later become known to the world as Martin Luther King Jr.
Hello! I am Asma’u Suleiman, and I am here to tell you about that hero of African descent. A Baptist minister by training, King entered adulthood at a time when racial segregation in the United States of America was enforced through law, custom and violence. Black Americans could be denied equal access to schools, restaurants, transportation, voting and other public institutions simply because of the color of their skin.
King chose to challenge that system. But he did not begin alone. In 1955, Rosa Parks, anther African American was arrested after refusing to surrender her seat to white people on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Black residents responded with the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and the young King, then only 26, emerged as one of its principal leaders.
The boycott lasted more than a year and helped establish King as a national figure. It also revealed something that would define much of his work: Organised, sustained, nonviolent protest could confront an unjust system.
In 1957, King helped establish the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), bringing Black ministers and activists together to coordinate the growing civil-rights movement. From there came marches, sit-ins, boycotts and voter-registration campaigns. There were also arrests, threats, violence and intimidation. King himself was arrested repeatedly. His home was bombed. He was attacked and subjected to intense government surveillance.
Yet, he continued to advocate nonviolent resistance. For King, nonviolence did not mean passively accepting injustice. It meant confronting injustice without allowing hatred to become the answer.
Then came 1963. The civil-rights campaign in Birmingham, Alabama, brought the brutality of segregation before the world. Peaceful demonstrators, including children, were met with police dogs, high-pressure water hoses and mass arrests.
Later that year, hundreds of thousands gathered in Washington, D.C., for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. On 28 August 1963, from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, King delivered the speech that would become one of the most recognised addresses in modern history:
“I have a dream…”
He imagined a country where equality would not merely be promised but lived; where his children would one day be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.
The speech was powerful because it did more than describe an injustice. It described a destination. But the speech itself was not the achievement…
The struggle was.
(NOTE: See the full text of his dream at the very end of this).
In 1964, the United States passed the Civil Rights Act, outlawing racial segregation and discrimination in many areas of public life. That same year, King received the Nobel Peace Prize at the age of 35, becoming the youngest recipient of the prize at that time. He donated the prize money to the civil-rights movement.
But his concerns continued to expand. King increasingly spoke about poverty, economic inequality and the Vietnam War. He argued that the fight for racial justice could not be separated from the broader question of human dignity.
By 1968, he had turned his attention to Memphis, Tennessee, where sanitation workers were striking for better working conditions and economic dignity. On 3 April 1968, King delivered what would become his final major public address, known as “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop.”
This speech was very different in mood from the dream he had described five years earlier. There was still hope, but there was also an awareness of danger and uncertainty. King spoke of the journey of the struggle and declared:
“I’ve been to the mountaintop.”
He acknowledged that he might not personally reach the promised land with his people. But he was not surrendering the journey. The following day, 4 April 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel. He was 39 years old.
THE LEGACY:
Martin Luther King Jr. did not single-handedly create the American civil-rights movement. He was part of a much larger movement made up of thousands of ordinary people, activists, organisers, lawyers, students, ministers and communities who challenged racial segregation and discrimination.
But King became one of its most recognizable voices. His speeches travelled far beyond the United States. His philosophy of nonviolent resistance influenced movements around the world. His work became part of the history surrounding landmark legislation, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which gave Blacks the right to vote during elections across the United States of America.
And Martin Luther King, Jr’s concerns extended beyond race. He spoke about poverty…
About workers…
About war…
About dignity…
About the responsibility of a society to make freedom meaningful for everyone.
That is why remembering Martin Luther King Jr. only as the man who said “I have a dream” is to remember only one part of the story…
He was a preacher…
A strategist…
A protest leader…
A husband…
A father…
A scholar…
A Nobel Peace Prize laureate. A man who was watched, threatened, arrested and ultimately killed because of the movement he helped lead.
But above all, Martin Luther King, Jr. was a man who believed that justice could be pursued without surrendering humanity in the process.
His life ended in violence…
His dream did not…
This has been the African Heroes Hall of Fame…
Africa’s story does not end at the continent’s shores…
It travelled with her people…
It survived across oceans…
And wherever her people stood to demand dignity, justice and freedom, the story continued…
Africa celebrates her legends…
Africa remembers her own…
And Afro-Scope celebrates and echoes the African story all over the world.
FULL TEXT OF MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.:
“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed – we hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.
“I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave-owners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood.
“I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.
“I have a dream today!
I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama little black boys and little black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
“I have a dream today!
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.
“This is our hope. This is the faith that I will go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope.
“With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.
“This will be the day, this will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with a new meaning: “My country, ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.” And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.
“And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.
Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.
Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!
Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.
Let freedom ring from the curvaceous peaks of California.
But not only that.
Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.
Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.
Let freedom ring from every hill and every molehill of Mississippi, from every mountainside, let freedom ring!
“And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: “Free at last! Free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”