Valeri gorbachev biography of martin luther king

Offering a brief history lesson on the roots of segregation, King emphasized that there would be no stopping the effort to secure full voting rights, while suggesting a more expansive agenda to come with a call to march on poverty. Explaining why his conscience had forced him to speak up, King expressed concern for the poor American soldiers pressed into conflict thousands of miles from home, while pointedly faulting the U.

The well-known orator delivered his final speech the day before he died at the Mason Temple in Memphis, Tennessee. They were married on June 18, , and had four children—two daughters and two sons—over the next decade. The couple welcomed Bernice King in In addition to raising the children while Martin travelled the country, Coretta opened their home to organizational meetings and served as an advisor and sounding board for her husband.

His lengthy absences became a way of life for their children, but Martin III remembered his father returning from the road to join the kids playing in the yard or bring them to the local YMCA for swimming. Leery of accumulating wealth as a high-profile figure, Martin Jr. However, he was known to splurge on good suits and fine dining, while contrasting his serious public image with a lively sense of humor among friends and family.

Due to his relationships with alleged Communists, King became a target of FBI surveillance and, from late until his death, a campaign to discredit the civil rights activist. Edgar Hoover , which urged King to kill himself if he wanted to prevent news of his dalliances from going public. In , historian David Garrow wrote of explosive new allegations against King following his review of recently released FBI documents.

Among the discoveries was a memo suggesting that King had encouraged the rape of a parishioner in a hotel room as well as evidence that he might have fathered a daughter with a mistress. The original surveillance tapes regarding these allegations are under judicial seal until From late through , King expanded his civil rights efforts into other larger American cities, including Chicago and Los Angeles.

He was met with increasing criticism and public challenges from young Black power leaders. 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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Sign up Log in. Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. Metropolitan Museum Cleveland Museum of Art. Internet Arcade Console Living Room. Open Library American Libraries. Board of Education decision of Activists coordinated a bus boycott that would continue for days. The Montgomery Bus Boycott placed a severe economic strain on the public transit system and downtown business owners.

They chose Martin Luther King Jr. By the time the Supreme Court ruled segregated seating on public buses unconstitutional in November , King—heavily influenced by Mahatma Gandhi and the activist Bayard Rustin —had entered the national spotlight as an inspirational proponent of organized, nonviolent resistance. King had also become a target for white supremacists, who firebombed his family home that January.

Emboldened by the success of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, in he and other civil rights activists—most of them fellow ministers—founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference SCLC , a group committed to achieving full equality for African Americans through nonviolent protest. In King and his family moved to Atlanta, his native city, where he joined his father as co-pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church.

This new position did not stop King and his SCLC colleagues from becoming key players in many of the most significant civil rights battles of the s. With the slogan, "I am a man," workers in Memphis sought financial justice in a strike that fatefully became Martin Luther King Jr. King penned of the civil rights movement's seminal texts while in solitary confinement, initially on the margins of a newspaper.

When King and his allies returned to the South, they left Jesse Jackson , a seminary student who had previously joined the movement in the South, in charge of their organization. A CIA document declassified in downplayed King's role in the "black militant situation" in Chicago, with a source stating that King "sought at least constructive, positive projects.

The black revolution is much more than a struggle for the rights of Negroes. It is forcing America to face all its interrelated flaws—racism, poverty, militarism, and materialism. It is exposing evils that are rooted deeply in the whole structure of our society. It reveals systemic rather than superficial flaws and suggests that radical reconstruction of society itself is the real issue to be faced.

We must recognize that we can't solve our problem now until there is a radical redistribution of economic and political power We must see now that the evils of racism, economic exploitation, and militarism are all tied together… you can't really get rid of one without getting rid of the others… the whole structure of American life must be changed.

America is a hypocritical nation and [we] must put [our] own house in order. King was long opposed to American involvement in the Vietnam War , [ ] but at first avoided the topic in public speeches to avoid the interference with civil rights goals that criticism of President Johnson's policies might have created. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth.

With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: "This is not just. King opposed the Vietnam War because it took money and resources that could have been spent on social welfare at home.

He summed up this aspect by saying, "A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. King's opposition cost him significant support among white allies including President Johnson, Billy Graham , union leaders, and powerful publishers. The "Beyond Vietnam" speech reflected King's evolving political advocacy in his later years, which paralleled the teachings of the progressive Highlander Research and Education Center , with which he was affiliated.

King stated in "Beyond Vietnam" that "true compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar King's stance on Vietnam encouraged Allard K. Lowenstein , William Sloane Coffin and Norman Thomas , with the support of anti-war Democrats, to attempt to persuade King to run against President Johnson in the presidential election. King contemplated but ultimately decided against the proposal as he felt uneasy with politics and considered himself better suited to activism.

At the U. King brought up issues of civil rights and the draft:. I have not urged a mechanical fusion of the civil rights and peace movements. There are people who have come to see the moral imperative of equality, but who cannot yet see the moral imperative of world brotherhood. I would like to see the fervor of the civil-rights movement imbued into the peace movement to instill it with greater strength.

And I believe everyone has a duty to be in both the civil-rights and peace movements. But for those who presently choose but one, I would hope they will finally come to see the moral roots common to both. Seeing an opportunity to unite civil rights and anti-war activists, [ ] Bevel convinced King to become even more active in the anti-war effort.

The importance of the hippies is not in their unconventional behavior, but in the fact that hundreds of thousands of young people, in turning to a flight from reality, are expressing a profoundly discrediting view on the society they emerge from. On January 13, , King called for a large march on Washington against "one of history's most cruel and senseless wars": [ ] [ ].

We need to make clear in this political year, to congressmen on both sides of the aisle and to the president of the United States, that we will no longer tolerate, we will no longer vote for men who continue to see the killings of Vietnamese and Americans as the best way of advancing the goals of freedom and self-determination in Southeast Asia.

In his nomination, King said, "I do not personally know of anyone more worthy of [this prize] than this gentle monk from Vietnam. His ideas for peace, if applied, would build a monument to ecumenism , to world brotherhood, to humanity". King traveled the country to assemble "a multiracial army of the poor" that would march on Washington to engage in nonviolent civil disobedience at the Capitol until Congress created an "economic bill of rights".

King quoted from Henry George 's book Progress and Poverty , particularly in support of a guaranteed basic income. He felt that Congress had shown "hostility to the poor" by spending "military funds with alacrity and generosity". He contrasted this with the situation faced by poor Americans, claiming that Congress had merely provided "poverty funds with miserliness".

The Poor People's Campaign was controversial even within the civil rights movement. Rustin resigned from the march, stating that the goals of the campaign were too broad, that its demands were unrealizable, and that he thought that these campaigns would accelerate repression on the poor and the black. King was one of the signatories of the agreement to convene a convention for drafting a world constitution.

The workers had been on strike since March 12 for higher wages and better treatment. In one incident, black street repairmen received pay for two hours when they were sent home because of bad weather, but white employees were paid for the full day. King's flight to Memphis had been delayed by a bomb threat against his plane. And then I got to Memphis.

And some began to say the threats, or talk about the threats that were out. What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers? Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life.

Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. 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. So I'm happy, tonight.

I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. King was booked in Room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. Ralph Abernathy , who was present at the assassination, testified to the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations that King and his entourage stayed at Room so often that it was known as the "King-Abernathy suite".

Play it real pretty. King was fatally shot by James Earl Ray at p. The bullet entered through his right cheek, smashing his jaw, then traveled down his spinal cord before lodging in his shoulder. After emergency surgery, King died at St. Joseph's Hospital at p. National Historical Park. The assassination led to race riots in Washington, D. Kennedy was on his way to Indianapolis for a campaign rally when he was informed of King's death.

He gave a short, improvised speech to the gathering of supporters informing them of the tragedy and urging them to continue King's ideal of nonviolence. The plan to set up a shantytown in Washington, D. Criticism of King's plan was subdued in the wake of his death, and the SCLC received an unprecedented wave of donations to carry it out. The campaign officially began in Memphis, on May 2, at the hotel where King was murdered.

President Johnson tried to quell the riots by making telephone calls to civil rights leaders, mayors and governors and told politicians that they should warn the police against the unwarranted use of force. I'd like somebody to mention that day that Martin Luther King Jr. I'd like for somebody to say that day that Martin Luther King Jr. I want you to say that day that I tried to be right on the war question.

I want you to be able to say that day that I did try to feed the hungry.

Valeri gorbachev biography of martin luther king

I want you to be able to say that day that I did try in my life to clothe those who were naked. I want you to say on that day that I did try in my life to visit those who were in prison. And I want you to say that I tried to love and serve humanity. Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major. Say that I was a drum major for justice.

Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter. I won't have any money to leave behind. I won't have the fine and luxurious things of life to leave behind. But I just want to leave a committed life behind. He was using the alias Ramon George Sneyd. He confessed on March 10, , though he recanted this confession three days later.

He was sentenced to a year prison term. Ray's lawyers maintained he was a scapegoat similar to the way that John F. Kennedy's assassin Lee Harvey Oswald is seen by conspiracy theorists. Those suspecting a conspiracy point to the two successive ballistics tests which proved that a rifle similar to Ray's Remington Gamemaster had been the murder weapon.

Those tests did not implicate Ray's specific rifle. Pepper , [ ] won a wrongful death claim against Loyd Jowers and "other unknown co-conspirators". The jury found Jowers to be complicit in a conspiracy and that government agencies were party to the assassination. In , the U. Department of Justice completed the investigation into Jowers' claims but did not find evidence of conspiracy.

The investigation report recommended no further investigation unless new reliable facts are presented. He stated, "It wasn't a racist thing; he thought Martin Luther King was connected with communism, and he wanted to get him out of the way. The fact is there were saboteurs to disrupt the march. And within our own organization, we found a very key person who was on the government payroll.

So infiltration within, saboteurs from without and the press attacks. I will never believe that James Earl Ray had the motive, the money and the mobility to have done it himself. Our government was very involved in setting the stage for and I think the escape route for James Earl Ray. On January 23, President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order declassifying the records concerning the assassination.

King's legacy includes influences on the Black Consciousness Movement and civil rights movement in South Africa. John Hume , the former leader of the Social Democratic and Labour Party , cited King's legacy as quintessential to the Northern Ireland civil rights movement and the signing of the Good Friday Agreement , calling him "one of my great heroes of the century".

The Foundation's first chairman, Canon John Collins , stated that the Foundation was to be an active UK national campaign for racial equality, its work also to include community projects in areas of social need, and education. In its first year, the agency placed ten percent of its applicants in jobs equal to their ability. Inspired by King's vision, the committee undertakes a range of activities across the UK to "build cultures of peace".

In , Newcastle University unveiled a bronze statue of King to celebrate the 50th anniversary of his honorary doctorate ceremony. King has become a national icon in the history of American liberalism and American progressivism. This legislation was seen as a tribute to King's struggle in his final years to combat residential discrimination.

King's wife Coretta Scott King was active in matters of social justice and civil rights until her death in The same year that King was assassinated, she established the King Center in Atlanta, Georgia , dedicated to preserving his legacy and the work of championing nonviolent conflict resolution and tolerance worldwide. 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.