Martin Luther King, Jr. was born on January 15th, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia. The Civil Rights Movement was a tradition in his family, with his father and grandfather having been involved. In 1948, King graduated from Morehouse College chose the field of ministry, over medicine and law. During his studies at Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania, King was opened to the world of non-violent protest through a lecture on Mahatma Gandhi and his successful protest of British rule in India. King continued to pursue studying Gandhi and his methods of protest, and found their root to be in the writings of Henry David Thoreau. King came to believe that these methods would bring equal success for blacks in their efforts to gain equal civil rights. King was married to Coretta Scott, then moved to Montgomery, Alabama, where he became the pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. King became involved in the boycott to end segregation on public transportation in Montgomery, after Rosa Parks was arrested for not moving to the back of the bus. The success of the boycott led King, Ralph Abernathy, Fred Shuttlesworth, and Bayard Rustin to found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1957. The next year, King wrote Stride Toward Freedom, a personal account of the events surrounding the Montgomery boycott and his methods of non-violence protests. His book led a group of students in Greensboro, North Carolina, to start a sit-in at a restaurant in a local Woolworth's store in 1960. These sit-in protests swept across the South and brought an end to segregated lunch counters in a twenty-six cities.
From that point in the Movement, King began to stress the importance of the ballot and the power of voting. He believed change would be more possible through election of a presidential candidate that was supportive of the Civil Rights Movement. King and the black vote backed the campaign of John Fitzgerald Kennedy as he promised new legislation on civil rights and voting rights. Unfortunately, this presidential support came at a personal cost to King. For instance, in 1961, many young people involved in the Movement were frustrated with Dr. King, because he refused to personally take part in the Freedom Rides. These rides were challenging the Supreme Court rulings that interstate travel in the South was to be desegregated. King cited probation as his reason to avoid arrest, though some began to question his devotion to the cause; and speculated that the true reason for his decision was influenced by President Kennedy tell him to keep out of that conflict. In 1963, in an effort to desegregate downtown Birmingham, King and Fred Shuttlesworth encouraged the youth of the city to join in mass campaigns of protest, after 3300 protesting adults filled the county jails to no avail in the effort for change. On May 2nd, 1963, 700 Black children were arrested marching through the streets towards downtown Birmingham. The next day, 2500 more youth joined the marches. Knowing that jail space was running out, police chief Bull Connor called in their K-9 units and authorized city firefighters to turn hoses on the marchers. The King and the Civil Rights Movement garner national attention when the horrifying images of the marches in Birmingham, Alabama were televised across the country. National pressures forced city officials to the bargaining table and a desegregation agreement was settled on. National pressures also forced Congress and the White House to more seriously consider civil rights legislation. Three months later, in an effort to support the Civil Rights Act, proposed by President John F. Kennedy, King found himself, again in the limelight delivering his "I Have a Dream" speech to a crowd of over 250,000 from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
After the March on Washington, King began to switch his focus to aiding those suffering from poverty. He acknowledged the connections between socio-economic division and race and began arguing for change in the distribution of wealth. He wrote two books during this period of voicing the need for economic change, Why We Can't Wait in 1964 and Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos and Community in 1967. His focus on poverty led to the begin stages of planning for the Poor People's Campaign, a program centered on the idea that violence was directly connected to the poverty of the inner city. King's growing support change towards more equal wealth distribution and opportunities, and his support of unions, brought with them attention from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. On April 3rd, 1968, King traveled to Memphis, Tennessee, where he delivered his "I've Been to the Mountaintop" speech to the city's striking garbage workers; this speech became his last. The next morning, King was shot by the bullet of a sniper on the balcony outside of his room at the Lorraine Motel. Over 250,000 people attended his funeral in Atlanta, Georgia. The Civil Rights Movement and the S.C.L.C. were rattled by the death of King, but their causes continued on in his memory. It took 18 years for the nation to pay a tribute worthy of King's life, and on his birthday in 1986, a national holiday was first observed.
