Sundardas biography of martin luther king

Daughter Yolanda King, who died in , was a motivational speaker, author and founder of Higher Ground Productions, an organization specializing in diversity training. King's widow Coretta publicly said that she believed her husband would have supported gay rights. Beginning in , cities and states established annual holidays to honor King. Following President George H.

Bush 's proclamation, the holiday is observed on the third Monday of January each year, near the time of King's birthday. Day was officially observed in all fifty U. Utah previously celebrated the holiday under the name Human Rights Day. King is also honored with a Lesser Feast on the liturgical calendar of the Episcopal Church [ ] on April 4 or January 15, the anniversary of his birth.

As a Christian minister, King's main influence was Jesus Christ and the Christian gospels, which he would almost always quote in his speeches. King's faith was strongly based in the Golden Rule , loving God above all, and loving your enemies. His nonviolent thought was also based in the injunction to turn the other cheek in the Sermon on the Mount , and Jesus' teaching of putting the sword back into its place Matthew In another sermon, he stated:.

Before I was a civil rights leader, I was a preacher of the Gospel. This was my first calling and it still remains my greatest commitment. You know, actually all that I do in civil rights I do because I consider it a part of my ministry. I have no other ambitions in life but to achieve excellence in the Christian ministry. I don't plan to run for any political office.

I don't plan to do anything but remain a preacher. And what I'm doing in this struggle, along with many others, grows out of my feeling that the preacher must be concerned about the whole man. King's private writings show that he rejected biblical literalism ; he described the Bible as " mythological ", doubted that Jesus was born of a virgin and did not believe that the story of Jonah and the whale was true.

Among the thinkers who influenced King's theological outlook were L. The sermons argued for man's need for God's love and criticized the racial injustices of Western civilization. World peace through nonviolent means is neither absurd nor unattainable. All other methods have failed. Thus we must begin anew. Nonviolence is a good starting point. Those of us who believe in this method can be voices of reason, sanity, and understanding amid the voices of violence, hatred, and emotion.

We can very well set a mood of peace out of which a system of peace can be built. African-American civil rights activist Bayard Rustin was King's first regular advisor on nonviolence. Rustin had applied nonviolence with the Journey of Reconciliation campaign in the s, [ ] and Wofford had been promoting Gandhism to Southern blacks since the early s.

King initially knew little about Gandhi and rarely used the term "nonviolence" during his early activism. King initially believed in and practiced self-defense, even obtaining guns to defend against possible attackers. The pacifists showing him the alternative of nonviolent resistance , arguing that this would be a better means to accomplish his goals.

King then vowed to no longer personally use arms. In a chapter of Stride Toward Freedom , King outlined his understanding of nonviolence, which seeks to win an opponent to friendship, rather than to humiliate or defeat him. The chapter draws from an address by Wofford, with Rustin and Stanley Levison also providing guidance and ghostwriting.

King was inspired by Gandhi and his success with nonviolent activism, and as a theology student, King described Gandhi as being one of the "individuals who greatly reveal the working of the Spirit of God". In a radio address made during his final evening in India, King reflected, "Since being in India, I am more convinced than ever before that the method of nonviolent resistance is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for justice and human dignity.

When receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in , King hailed the "successful precedent" of using nonviolence "in a magnificent way by Mohandas K. Gandhi to challenge the might of the British Empire He struggled only with the weapons of truth, soul force, non-injury and courage. Another influence for King's nonviolent method was Henry David Thoreau 's essay On Civil Disobedience and its theme of refusing to cooperate with an evil system.

Even after renouncing personal use of guns, King had a complex relationship with self-defense in the movement. He publicly discouraged it as a widespread practice but acknowledged that it was sometimes necessary. King was criticized by other black leaders in the civil rights movement. This included more militant thinkers such as Nation of Islam member Malcolm X.

King was an avid supporter of Native American rights and Native Americans were active supporters of King's civil rights movement. Our nation was born in genocide when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian, was an inferior race. Even before there were large numbers of Negroes on our shores, the scar of racial hatred had already disfigured colonial society.

From the sixteenth century forward, blood flowed in battles over racial supremacy. We are perhaps the only nation which tried as a matter of national policy to wipe out its indigenous population. Moreover, we elevated that tragic experience into a noble crusade. Indeed, even today we have not permitted ourselves to reject or to feel remorse for this shameful episode.

Our literature, our films, our drama, our folklore all exalt it. In the late 's, the remaining Creek in Alabama were trying to completely desegregate schools. Light-complexioned Native children were allowed to ride buses to previously all-white schools, while dark-skinned Native children from the same band were barred from the same buses. Through his intervention the problem was quickly resolved.

In September , after giving a speech at the University of Arizona on the ideals of using nonviolent methods in creating social change, King stated his belief that one must not use force in this struggle "but match the violence of his opponents with his suffering. During the March on Washington there was a sizable Native American contingent, including many from South Dakota and from the Navajo nation.

King was a major inspiration, along with the civil rights movement , of the Native American rights movement of the s and many of its leaders. Inspired by Dr. King, who was advancing the civil rights agenda of equality under the laws of this country, we thought that we could also use the laws to advance our Indianship, to live as tribes in our territories governed by our own laws under the principles of tribal sovereignty that had been with us ever since We believed that we could fight for a policy of self-determination that was consistent with U.

They both have weaknesses And I'm not inextricably bound to either party. Actually, the Negro has been betrayed by both the Republican and the Democratic party. The Democrats have betrayed him by capitulating to the whims and caprices of the Southern Dixiecrats. The Republicans have betrayed him by capitulating to the blatant hypocrisy of reactionary right-wing northern Republicans.

And this coalition of southern Dixiecrats and right-wing reactionary northern Republicans defeats every bill and every move towards liberal legislation in the area of civil rights. Although King never publicly supported a political party or candidate for president, in a letter to a civil rights supporter in October he said that he had not decided whether he would vote for Democrat Adlai Stevenson II or Republican Dwight D.

Eisenhower at the presidential election , but that "In the past, I always voted the Democratic ticket. Kennedy : "I felt that Kennedy would make the best president. I never came out with an endorsement. My father did, but I never made one. In , King urged his supporters "and all people of goodwill" to vote against Republican Senator Barry Goldwater for president, saying that his election "would be a tragedy, and certainly suicidal almost, for the nation and the world.

Kennedy would make for a good president, but also believed that he wouldn't beat Johnson in the Democratic Party presidential primaries. He also expressed support for the possible presidential candidacies of Republicans Nelson Rockefeller , George Romney and Charles Percy. King rejected both laissez-faire capitalism and communism ; King had read Marx while at Morehouse but rejected communism because of its " materialistic interpretation of history " that denied religion, its " ethical relativism ", and its " political totalitarianism ".

He stated that one focused too much on the individual while the other focused too much on the collective. In a letter to Coretta Scott, he said: "I imagine you already know that I am much more socialistic in my economic theory than capitalistic King was critical of American culture saying "when machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered" and that America must undergo a "radical revolution of values".

King stated that black Americans, as well as other disadvantaged Americans, should be compensated for historical wrongs. In an interview conducted for Playboy in , he said that granting black Americans only equality could not realistically close the economic gap between them and whites. He posited that "the money spent would be more than amply justified by the benefits that would accrue to the nation through a spectacular decline in school dropouts, family breakups, crime rates, illegitimacy, swollen relief rolls, rioting and other social evils.

He stated, "It should benefit the disadvantaged of all races. Actress Nichelle Nichols planned to leave the science-fiction television series Star Trek in after its first season. King explained that her character signified a future of greater racial cooperation. Keep doing what you're doing, you are our inspiration. Star Trek was one of the only shows that [King] and his wife Coretta would allow their little children to watch.

And I thanked him and I told him I was leaving the show. All the smile came off his face. And he said, 'Don't you understand for the first time we're seen as we should be seen. You don't have a black role. You have an equal role. The series' creator, Gene Roddenberry , was deeply moved upon learning of King's support. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover personally ordered surveillance of King, with the intent to undermine his power as a civil rights leader.

Kennedy to proceed with wiretapping of King's phone lines, purportedly due to his association with Stanley Levison. The Bureau placed wiretaps on the home and office phone lines of both Levison and King, and bugged King's rooms in hotels as he traveled across the country. King was also the subject of extensive surveillance by local police agencies throughout the United States, including years before the FBI initiated wiretaps on the SCLC leader.

The Memphis Police Department also spied on King in the spring of , as the civil rights leader was taking part in a campaign to support striking sanitation workers in the Tennessee city. A fire station was located across from the Lorraine Motel, next to the boarding house in which James Earl Ray was staying. Police officers were stationed in the fire station to keep King under surveillance.

Marrell McCollough, an undercover police officer, was the first person to administer first aid to King. In a secret operation code-named " Minaret ", the National Security Agency monitored the communications of leading Americans, including King, who were critical of the U. For years, Hoover had been suspicious of potential influence of communists in social movements such as labor unions and civil rights.

Due to the relationship between King and Stanley Levison, the FBI feared Levison was working as an "agent of influence" over King, in spite of its own reports in that Levison had left the Party and was no longer associated in business dealings with them. Despite the extensive surveillance, by the FBI had acknowledged that it had not obtained any evidence that King himself or the SCLC were actually involved with any communist organizations.

For his part, King adamantly denied having any connections to communism. In a Playboy interview, he stated that "there are as many Communists in this freedom movement as there are Eskimos in Florida. The attempts to prove that King was a communist was related to the feeling of many segregationists that blacks in the South were content with the status quo but had been stirred up by "communists" and "outside agitators".

CIA files declassified in revealed that the agency was investigating possible links between King and Communism after a Washington Post article dated November 4, , claimed he was invited to the Soviet Union and that Ralph Abernathy, as spokesman for King, refused to comment on the source of the invitation. The FBI attempted to discredit King through revelations regarding his private life.

FBI surveillance of King, some of it since made public, attempted to demonstrate that he had numerous extramarital affairs. The American public, the church organizations that have been helping—Protestants, Catholics and Jews will know you for what you are—an evil beast. So will others who have backed you. You are done. King, there is only one thing left for you to do.

You know what it is. You have just 34 days in which to do this exact number has been selected for a specific reason, it has definite practical significant [ sic ]. There is but one way out for you. You better take it before your filthy fraudulent self is bared to the nation. The letter was accompanied by a tape recording—excerpted from FBI wiretaps—of several of King's extramarital liaisons.

King to resign from the SCLC. In May , an FBI file emerged on which a handwritten note alleged that King "looked on, laughed and offered advice" as one of his friends raped a woman. Historians of the period who have examined this notional evidence have dismissed it as highly unreliable. The professor of American studies at the University of Nottingham , Peter Ling, pointed out that Garrow was excessively credulous, if not naive, in accepting the accuracy of FBI reports during a period when the FBI was undertaking a massive operation to attempt to discredit King.

Theoharis commented "Most scholars I know would penalize graduate students for doing this. King records at Stanford University states that he came to the opposite conclusion of Garrow:. None of this is new. Garrow is talking about a recently added summary of a transcript of a recording from the Willard Hotel that others, including Mrs. King, have said they did not hear Martin's voice on it.

The added summary was four layers removed from the actual recording. This supposedly new information comes from an anonymous source in a single paragraph in an FBI report. You have to ask how could anyone conclude King looked at a rape from an audio recording in a room where he was not present. The tapes that could confirm or refute the allegation are scheduled to be declassified in In his autobiography And the Walls Came Tumbling Down , Ralph Abernathy stated that King had a "weakness for women", although they "all understood and believed in the biblical prohibition against sex outside of marriage.

It was just that he had a particularly difficult time with that temptation. According to Garrow, "that relationship Garrow asserted that King's supposed promiscuity caused him "painful and at times overwhelming guilt". King was awarded at least fifty honorary degrees from colleges and universities. You have it all or you are not free.

There are three urgent and indeed great problems that we face not only in the United States of America but all over the world today. That is the problem of racism, the problem of poverty and the problem of war. The citation read:. He gazed upon the great wall of segregation and saw that the power of love could bring it down. From the pain and exhaustion of his fight to fulfill the promises of our founding fathers for our humblest citizens, he wrung his eloquent statement of his dream for America.

He made our nation stronger because he made it better. His dream sustains us yet. King and his wife were also awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in Among the planned designs are images from King's "I Have a Dream" speech. Memorial Library in Washington, D. King has received several honorary doctorates. Contents move to sidebar hide.

Augustine, Florida, Article Talk. Read View source View history. Tools Tools. Download as PDF Printable version. In other projects. Wikimedia Commons Wikiquote Wikisource Wikidata item. American civil rights leader — The Reverend. Coretta Scott. Martin Luther King Sr. Alberta Williams King. Christine King Farris sister A. King brother Alveda King niece.

Civil rights peace anti-war. This article is part of a series about. See also: Martin Luther King Jr. Activism and organizational leadership. Montgomery bus boycott, Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Survived knife attack, Atlanta sit-ins, prison sentence, and the elections. Albany Movement, Main article: Albany Movement.

Birmingham campaign, Main article: Birmingham campaign. March on Washington, Main article: March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. I Have a Dream. Problems playing this file?

Sundardas biography of martin luther king

See media help. Main article: St. Augustine movement. Biddeford, Maine, New York City, Scripto strike in Atlanta, Main article: — Scripto strike. Selma voting rights movement and "Bloody Sunday", Main article: Selma to Montgomery marches. Chicago open housing movement, Main article: Chicago Freedom Movement. Opposition to the Vietnam War.

It reveals systemic rather than superficial flaws and suggests that radical reconstruction of society itself is the real issue to be faced —Martin Luther King Jr. Poor People's Campaign, Main article: Poor People's Campaign. Assassination and aftermath. I've Been to the Mountaintop. Further information: King assassination riots. Allegations of conspiracy.

Main article: Martin Luther King Jr. See also: Black Consciousness Movement. See also: Northern Ireland civil rights movement. Ideas, influences, and political stances. Criticism within the movement. Activism and involvement with Native Americans. See also: Reparations for slavery debate in the United States. State surveillance and coercion. FBI surveillance and wiretapping.

NSA monitoring of King's communications. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN X. The New York Times. Voice of America. Archived from the original on August 2, Board of Education. ISBN The King Center. The Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change. Archived from the original on January 22, Retrieved January 22, March 9, Archived from the original on March 10, Retrieved September 2, Archived from the original on December 17, Retrieved June 24, Archived from the original on January 18, Retrieved May 29, Beacon Press.

January 15, The Washington Post. Archived from the original on December 31, Retrieved January 20, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Archived from the original on January 20, Retrieved February 3, Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Abdo Pub Co. Stanford University. June 12, Archived from the original on April 27, Retrieved September 17, Archived from the original on July 13, Research and Education Institute.

Archived from the original on December 18, Retrieved November 15, If you can't be a sun, be a star. For it isn't by size that you win or fail. Be the best of whatever you are. A look at one of the defining social movements in U. You can opt out at any time. You must be 16 years or older and a resident of the United States. Your Profile.

Email Updates. Montgomery Bus Boycott. Read more. Sign Up. Related: How to actually stop police brutality, according to science. On Aug. The speech's most famous phrases include:. Related: A dream deferred: America's changing view of civil rights. The speech inspired the nation and solidified King's status as a national civil rights leader.

After the march, King and other leaders met with President John F. Kennedy to discuss equal rights and an end to segregation. Two days after the speech, the FBI wrote a memo detailing their suspicions that King was a communist. While FBI surveillance failed to find communist ties, the agency did find evidence that King was having extramarital affairs.

FBI Domestic Intelligence Chief William Sullivan decided to use this information against King, and wrote an anonymous letter to him in urging King to kill himself, Yale historian Beverly Gage reported in The New York Times in , after she found an unredacted version of the letter. Edgar Hoover, wanted to discredit King. He donated the winnings to the civil rights movement.

King received hundreds of other awards and several honorary degrees. In addition to his work on racial issues, King became an activist for economic justice and a critic of the Vietnam War. He formed an organization called the Poor People's Campaign, which was unpopular among some Black activists who wanted to take more radical approaches to social change, such as those advocated by the Black Power campaigns.

Related: What was the Black Panther Party? To address this criticism, King began making a link between discrimination and poverty, and he began to speak out against the Vietnam War. He sought to broaden his base by forming a multiracial coalition to address the economic and unemployment problems of all disadvantaged people. By , the years of demonstrations and confrontations were beginning to wear on King.

He had grown tired of marches, going to jail, and living under the constant threat of death. He was becoming discouraged at the slow progress of civil rights in America and the increasing criticism from other African American leaders. In the spring of , a labor strike by Memphis, Tennessee, sanitation workers drew King to one last crusade.

Longevity has its place. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. In September , King survived an attempt on his life when a woman with mental illness stabbed him in the chest as he signed copies of his book Stride Toward Freedom in a New York City department store. King died at age The shocking assassination sparked riots and demonstrations in more than cities across the country.

The shooter was James Earl Ray , a malcontent drifter and former convict. He initially escaped authorities but was apprehended after a two-month international manhunt. In , Ray pleaded guilty to assassinating King and was sentenced to 99 years in prison. Another complicating factor is the confession of tavern owner Loyd Jowers, who said he contracted a different hit man to kill King.

In June , more than two years after Ray died, the U. Years after his death, he is the most widely known Black leader of his era. His life and work have been honored with a national holiday, schools and public buildings named after him, and a memorial on Independence Mall in Washington D. Over the years, extensive archival studies have led to a more balanced and comprehensive assessment of his life, portraying him as a complex figure: flawed, fallible, and limited in his control over the mass movements with which he was associated, yet a visionary leader who was deeply committed to achieving social justice through nonviolent means.

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Malcolm X. Ethel Kennedy. Huey P. Dred Scott. Benjamin Banneker. Marcus Garvey. Madam C. Legacy Quotes. Date: May 17, Six years before he told the world of his dream, King stood at the same Lincoln Memorial steps as the final speaker of the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom. Give us the ballot, and we will no longer plead to the federal government for passage of an anti-lynching law Give us the ballot, and we will transform the salient misdeeds of bloodthirsty mobs into the calculated good deeds of orderly citizens.

Date: December 10, Speaking at the University of Oslo in Norway, King pondered why he was receiving the Nobel Prize when the battle for racial justice was far from over, before acknowledging that it was in recognition of the power of nonviolent resistance. Date: March 25, At the end of the bitterly fought Selma-to-Montgomery march, King addressed a crowd of 25, supporters from the Alabama State Capitol.

How long? Not long, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.

Date: April 3, The well-known orator delivered his final speech the day before he died at the Mason Temple in Memphis, Tennessee. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. Their daughter Bernice was born the next year. Memorial in Washington, D.