Martin Luther King, Junior

by Read Listen Learn


Martin Luther King, Junior was born in the southern U.S.A. state of Georgia in 1929. He was a clever student at school and went to university. When he was a teenager, he was not sure about his Christian beliefs, but he later decided that the religion had many important truths. After completing a degree in sociology, he trained to become a man of religion, like his father. But he was also interested in the rights of Afro-Americans and how to make America a better place for black people to live and work.

Although King understood that America must change, he could not find a way for this to happen until he heard about Mahatma Gandhi, the great Indian freedom fighter. After reading about Gandhi’s ideas on peaceful protest against British rule in India, King decided to use these to help Afro-Americans to get their rights in the U.S. Like Gandhi, he believed that freedom and killing did not go together.

In 1955, King organised his first big protest in Montgomery, Alabama, another southern state in America. A black woman, called Rosa Parks, had worked all day at her job sewing and was tired. She sat down on the bus that was taking her home. In those days, black people sat at the back of the bus and whites at the front. When the bus got fuller, the blacks’ and whites’ seats met in the centre. If new white travellers got on the bus, black customers stood up. Rosa Parks refused. The police arrested her.

Martin Luther King organised a boycott of the buses. In other words, no black person – and also many whites – got on a bus in the state. The police arrested King and people burnt down his home. There were more arrests too, but in December 1956 the U.S. Supreme Court decided that black people could sit where they liked on buses in Alabama. This may seem like a small change in the rights of Afro-Americans, but it wasn’t. Black people could now sit where they wanted in restaurants, parks, libraries, cinemas, theatres and churches. They could swim in the same pools as white people and sit on the beach with them too.

King helped to make John F. Kennedy President of the United States, but later became unhappy about how slowly he was changing the law to help Afro-Americans. He organised new protests where black people broke unfair laws, although they did not fight. King understood that the newspapers and television were important in changing people’s ideas about the rights of black people. He was right. When the police in the southern states arrested hundreds and also used dogs against women and children, many more people began to ask for change in the country.

But Kennedy and the F.B.I. were getting worried about King. They thought he was a Communist and started asking difficult questions about his past, his friends and his beliefs. They also looked at his friendships with women. King was married but always looked at beautiful women.

In 1963, King organised a march when President Kennedy began talking about changing the laws on equal rights in Washington. The police said he could not march in the capital, but King did not listen. In the end, more than 250,000 people of every colour went on the march and heard King’s famous ‘I Have a Dream’ speech. Here is a part of it (changed a little to make it easier to read):

“I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of slaves and the sons of slave owners will sit down together as brothers.

“I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi will be changed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a country where their character will be more important than the colour of their skin. I have a dream that one day in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today.”

The law changed so that black children could go to the same schools and universities as white children and that blacks and whites could work together in the same jobs for the same pay. King also wanted $2 an hour for every person’s work. This was the first time that he looked at the economic rights of black workers. It was something that took more and more of King’s time and energy in the years before his killing in 1968.

Martin Luther King, Junior was shot outside his hotel room in April, 1968. His killer, James Earl Ray, always said that he was not working alone. Some people think the U.S. government helped him.

Today, Martin Luther King is one of the most famous Americans. He is the only one to have a U.S. holiday in his name.