Martin Luther King was born on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia, the second of three children to Michael King and Alberta King (née Williams). At age 6, he enrolled at Younge Street Elementary School, a school for black children, while his close friend went to a separate school for white children only. As insults and poor treatment from whites began to fester, Martin Luther began to feel antipathy toward whites, but his parents told him that it was his Christian duty to love everyone. In these formative years he attended church events with his mother and sang hymns while she played piano. He eventually became a member of the junior choir in his church.
Martin Luther King Jr. learned to play the piano at a young age and is reported to have enjoyed opera. At the age of 13, he became assistant manager at one of the Atlanta Journal newspaper deliverystations–the youngest to hold such a position. He skipped grade 9, leaping from grade 8 into grade 10 at Booker T. Washington High School. He joined the school debating team and it was soon apparent that he possessed a special affinity for public-speaking. In his junior year, he won first prize in the Negro Elks Club oratorical contest. In that same year, at the age of 15, he passed the entrance examination to Morehouse College and graduated with a B.A. in sociology at age 19. At age 25, he became Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., having completed a Ph.D. in theology.
On August 28, 1963, a quarter of a million protestors joined Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.in a march on Washington D.C., demanding equal civil and economic rights for African American Americans. The highlight of that event was to be a speech delivered by Dr. King that would signal the beginning of segregation in the United States.
The night before the march, King had worked frenetically with his speech writer Clarence B. Jones, who had provided him with a summary of ideas that the two men had previously discussed. A few hours later, the man who would become the face of the civil rights movement in America, was delivering his talk from the rapidly prepared draft that had emerged the previous night. Beginning with a reference to the Emancipation Proclamation that Abraham Lincoln had signed 100 years earlier, Dr. King addressed the entire nation:
Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.
After lamenting the inequalities that still remained a century after the emancipation, he emphasized the importance of non-violent civil disobedience, setting a conciliatory, but firm, tone in his call for an end to dis-crimination. Then, the voice of gospel singer Mahalia Jackson rose from the crowd, “Tell them about the dream, Martin.” Dr. King paused as if shifting into high gear and then, seized with a passion that seemed to well up fromdeep within, he put his written draft aside and embarked upon his “I have a dream” refrain that changed history.
I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
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 the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of 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 colorof their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.
Then, building on the energy of the tumultuous cheers, he concluded with a joyful vision of a future America:
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!”
King’s highly-charged delivery, punctuated with historical allusions, bib- lical references, and vivid metaphor, galvanized the Civil Rights Movement and sharpened its focus. On July 2, 1964, less than a year after the speech, Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act that ended segregation and banned discrimination on the basis of race. King’s speech is regarded as one of the greatest in history, not only for its persuasive impact but also for its effect on racial equality in America.
It was no accident that he rose to prominence. His intelligence was manifest in his creation and delivery of passionate speeches containing highly persuasive metaphors and compelling argumentation–a rare combination of rational thinking combined with interpersonal insight. He had honed his skill by studying dictionaries to increase his vocabulary and expand his ability to find the right word to express an idea with eloquence. Clarence P. Jones, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, said that his contribution to King’s speech came only in the first 7 paragraphs. The rest of the written draft came from King, but the “I have a dream portion,” that followed Mahalia Jackson’s call, was purely spontaneous. Commenting on the change that came over King as he launched intothat portion of the speech, Jones observed:
I have never seen him speak the way I saw him on that day…It was as if some cosmic transcendental force came down and occupied his body. It was the same body, the same voice, but the voice had something I had neverheard before.
Dr. King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 for “for leading nonviolent resistance to racial prejudice in the U.S.” While there may still exist small pockets of racism in America, when we see the many successful black entrepreneurs, scholars and athletes in America, we begin to appreciate the magnitude of Dr. King’s contribution to social equality.
Tragically, on April 4, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, but his legacy lives on and today he is celebrated every January on a holiday known as “Martin Luther King Jr. Day.”
