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February is Black History Month in the U.S., and this year's theme is Black Health and Wellness. NPR has compiled a list of stories, music performances, podcasts and other content that chronicles the Black American experience.

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Nashville Honors Civil Rights Icon John Lewis With Mural

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Nashville Honors Civil Rights Icon John Lewis With Mural

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Parcourez les histoires des Noirs en Europe grâce aux récits et aux contenus d'Europeana

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Interesting Facts A PORTION OF THE LETTER - MLK's mugshot number was 7089 - MLK along with 50 other protestors were arrested on Good Friday. - 2 weeks after MLK's release over 1,000 children took part in the "Children's Crusade" Eugene "Bull" Connor In Jail Connor was the

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Fact 1: The first official slave owner in America was an Angolan who adopted the European name of Anthony Johnson. He was sold to slave traders in 1621 by an enemy tribe in his native Africa, and was registered as “Antonio, a Negro” in the official records of the Colony of Virginia. He went to work for a white farmer as an indentured servant.

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Ethos, Logos, Pathos in Letter From Birmingham Jail

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Rhetorical devices in Letter From A Birmingham Jail

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Aucune remarque pour cette diapositive

1. 1. &quot;Letter from a Birmingham Jail" Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.<br />Martin W. Gambichler<br />

2. 2. Dr. King<br />(January 15, 1929-April 4, 1968)<br /> Born in Atlanta Georgia <br />Was born Michael Luther King, Jr., but later had his name changed to Martin<br />Dr. King was in a legacy of pastors, his grandfather, father and him all served the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, from 1914 to 1960 after Kings death<br />

3. 3. Legacy <br />King&apos;s is an icon to Americas Civil Rights Movement<br />He led the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott <br />King&apos;s efforts led to the 1963 March on Washington, where King delivered his &quot;I Have a Dream&quot; speech. <br />

4. 4. History-Movements<br />In 1954, Martin Luther King became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama<br />Being as strong worker for civil rights, King was, by this time, a member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.<br />In December, 1955 he accepted leadership of the first great Negro nonviolentdemonstration of contemporary times in the United States, the bus boycott <br />The boycott lasted 382 days <br />His home was bombed, put in jail and held to days of to personal abuse, but at the same time he emerged as a Negro leader <br />

5. 5. History-Movements contd.<br />King traveled over six million miles and spoke over twenty-five hundred times, appearing wherever there was injustice, protest, and action<br /> He led a massive protest in Birmingham, Alabama, inspiring his &quot;Letter from a Birmingham Jail&quot;<br /> planned the drives in Alabama for the registration of Negroes as voters<br /> directed the peaceful march on Washington, D.C., of 250,000 people to whom he delivered his address &quot;l Have a Dream&quot;, <br />he conferred with President John F. Kennedy and campaigned for President Lyndon B. Johnson<br />was arrested upwards of twenty times and assaulted at least four times <br />he was awarded five honorary degrees and was named Man of the Year by Time magazine in 1963<br />

6. 7. Document<br />On Good Friday in 1963, 53 blacks, led by Rev. King, marched into downtown Birmingham to protest the existing segregation laws. <br />All were arrested. This caused the clergymen of this Southern town to compose a letter appealing to the black population to stop their demonstrations.<br />

7. 8. Document <br />In response to the letter by the clergymen, Dr. King wrote back in a document stating the struggles for a Blackman to obtain equality<br /> He touched upon many points in his writing<br />Equal Law, lack of church support, and fear of a violent future if equality is not met.<br />

8. 9. Equal law<br />King questions how people could be arrested for nonviolent movements striving to justify equality <br />He contrast the absolute immorality of unjust laws together with what a just law is.<br />King states "I would agree with St. Augustine that, an unjust law is no law at all".<br /> King does not feel that they have broken the law, his answer to the clergymen is that a law that is not morally sound is not a law. <br />

9. 10. Church Support<br />King states that he has disappointment in the involvement of the church during these trying times<br /> He feels that the Church has not helped or took any responsibilities to the African American people, hiding behind " security of stained-glass windows".<br /> King summarizes his letter by making the point that he hopes that the Church will see it&apos;s responsibilities in future times<br />

10. 11. Fear of Violence in Future<br />Actions of the African American people are overdue <br /> Their quest was to force the white politicians to negotiate and actually heed the requests for desegregation<br />As King explains, "past promises have been broken by the politicians and merchants of Birmingham and now is the time to fulfill the right of all people to be treated equal".<br />

11. 12. Fear of Violence in Future<br />Violence is not what King wanted<br />But admits African Americans will continue to do whatever is necessary, preferably non-violently, to obtain the legal and moral right <br />If they are not allowed, this peaceful manner can become an uglier action<br /> Dr. King expressed his concern that "if something is not done with these feelings and absolute needs of the African American there will be violence and mayhem, the Negro has many pent-up"<br />

12. 13. Many considered Kings Letter from a Birmingham Jail a turning point in the battle for civil rights. <br />On October 16, 1964 Martin Luther King was given the Nobel prize. He was the youngest man in history to receive the price<br />April 4, 1968 in Memphis Tennessee while Dr. King was Standing on his motel balcony he was assonated<br />King&apos;s is an icon to Americas Civil Rights Movement and will for ever be remembered<br />

13. 14. Citations <br />Haberman, Frederick . &quot;Martin Luther King Jr. Biography.&quot; Nobelprize.org. 1972. Elsevier Publishing Company, Web. 27 Oct 2009. &lt;http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1964/king-bio.html&gt;. <br />Brunner, Borgna . &quot;Civil Rights Timeline.&quot; infoplease.com. 2007. Web. 27 Oct 2009. &lt;http://www.infoplease.com/spot/civilrightstimeline1.html&gt;.<br />&quot;Martin Luther King Wins The Nobel Prize for Peace.&quot; New York Times (10/1964): Web. 27 Oct 2009. &lt;http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/1014.html&gt;. <br />

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Aucune remarque pour cette diapositive 1. "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Martin W. Gambichler 2. Dr. King (January 15, 1929-April 4, 1968) Born in Atlanta Georgia Was born Michael Luther King, Jr., but later had his name changed to Martin Dr. King was in a legacy of pastors, his grandfather, father and him all served the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, from 1914 to 1960 after Kings death 3.

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, Lecturer of Intellectual Heritage

I love to teach anything by Dr. King as his words and actions go far beyond race. They are a blueprint for relationships and community.

1. 1. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the influences on his thought Bertolino--Mosaic 2-Power Unit 1

2. 2.  Dr. King wrote the Letter From Birmingham Jail while he was in solitary confinement after being arrested for protesting segregation laws in Birmingham, Alabama. Dr. King was responding to a public letter from 8 local Birmingham clergymen who felt that Dr. King was hasty and radical in his approach. Dr. King was arrested on Good Friday, April 12 and released on April 20th. He was denied a phone call to his wife who was recovering from childbirth-their 4th child. The Kennedy administration learned of this-the phone call was permitted and eventually bail was raised for Dr. King‟s release. Bertolino--Mosaic 2-Power Unit 2

3. 3.  In April 1963 King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) joined with Birmingham, Alabama‟s existing local movement, the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, in a massive direct action campaign to attack the city‟s segregation system by putting pressure on Birmingham‟s merchants during the Easter season, the second biggest shopping season of the year. As ACMHR founder Fred Shuttlesworth stated in the group‟s „„Birmingham Manifesto,‟‟ the campaign was „„a moral witness to give our community a chance to survive.‟‟ (ACMHR, 3 April 1963). Since Dr. King was also a minister, he was expected to preach in Atlanta as it was Easter weekend. But he chose to do the protest as the timing felt right to him. Bertolino--Mosaic 2-Power Unit 3

4. 4.  Jim Crow Laws in the South were legal means to oppress Blacks. Segregation was law. Blacks used different bathrooms, sat on different park benches, drank from different fountains, washed their clothes in different Laundromats, gave up seats for white people on the bus, and always sat behind whites in public transportation. From the 1880s into the 1960s, a majority of American states enforced segregation through "Jim Crow" laws (so called after a black character in minstrel shows). From Delaware to California, and from North Dakota to Texas, many states (and cities, too) could impose legal punishments on people for consorting with members of another race. The most common types of laws forbade intermarriage and ordered business owners and public institutions to keep their black and white clientele separated. Whites who did not obey these laws were also prosecuted by state officials. Bertolino--Mosaic 2-Power Unit 4

5. 5.  Pool and Billiard Rooms : It shall be unlawful for a Negro and white person to play together or in company with each other at any game of pool or billiards. Toilet Facilities, Male: Every employer of white or Negro males shall provide for such white or Negro males reasonably accessible and separate toilet facilities. Nurses: No person or corporation shall require any white female nurse to nurse in wards or rooms in hospitals, either public or private, in which negro men are placed. Buses: All passenger stations in this state operated by any motor transportation company shall have separate waiting rooms or space and separate ticket windows for the white and colored races. Laws such as these were standard, not only in the South, but in states like Delaware, Wyoming, Arizona, New Mexico and Maryland. Bertolino--Mosaic 2-Power Unit 5

6. 6.  Much of what we understand as non-violent protest emerged from Henry David Thoreau‟s essay "Resistance to Civil Government" posthumously titled "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience". Civil Disobedience is a form of resistance in which protesters deliberately violate a law. Classically, they violate the law they are protesting, such as segregation or draft laws, but sometimes they violate other laws which they find unobjectionable, such as trespassing or traffic laws, simply to draw attention to the larger issues of their objections. The purpose of civil disobedience can be to publicize an unjust law or a just cause, to appeal to the conscience of the public, to force negotiations with recalcitrant officials, to clog the machines (Thoreau's phrase) with political prisoners, to get into court where one can challenge the constitutionality of a law, to exculpate oneself or to put an end to one's personal complicity in the injustice which flows from an obedience to an unjust law. Bertolino--Mosaic 2-Power Unit 6

7. 7. Henry David Thoreau deliberately did not pay a poll tax because he considered it to be unjust and exploitative. So he was thrown in prison for this offense. Much of his anger against these governmental interferences became the basis of his essay. He saw the constitution as the problem, not the solution. Legal channels took too long-a man was born to live, not to lobby. His individualism gave him another answer; individuals were sovereign, especially in a democracy. The government only holds its power by delegation from free individuals. Any individual may elect to stand apart from the domains of the law. Thoreau also protested the Mexican War. Many Vietnam protestors in the 60s found his ideas to be relevant to their own political concerns. Many protestors against the Vietnam and Iraqi Wars refused to pay taxes-they reasoned that their money was funding unjust wars. One of Thoreau‟s most quoted lines comes from this essay: "When I meet a government which says to me, "Your money or your life", why should I be in haste to give it my money?" Gandhi himself used this logic in his forms of protesting against the English occupying force by refusing to purchase British goods. Gandhi understood, as did Dr. King, that non-violent protest works when the economic base of the oppressor comes under threat. The original idea of the current Tea Party was to protest "taxation without representation" as they were enraged by the bailout of Wall Street. However, the Tea Party has now been appropriated by the Republican extremists, even though the majority of that political party ironically supported the bailout and refused to recognize the wishes of their constituents. Bertolino--Mosaic 2-Power Unit 7

8. 8.  When he lived in South Africa, Gandhi and other Indians organized a series of passive resistant tactics to protest laws. They refused to get IDS, they burned the ones they had, they refused to work in the diamond mines-these acts unconvinced the government because working in the mines was considered to be lowly work that whites didn‟t perform and blacks (who were seen as even lower) could not fill the ranks and still complete the other socially undesirable jobs of the South African economy. These campaigns lasted 7 years. Gandhi and a score of others were beaten and jailed repeatedly for their protests. It was here that Gandhi began his theory of Satyagraha- literally meaning soul force, love force. It became the basis of his non- violent movement. The word Sat means truth in Hindi: Agraha means firmness. He named the movement Satyagraha, realizing that he needed a term to define his ideal of what he had first called in English, passive resistance. Later he discarded that term because nonviolence is anything but passive; "it calls for intense activity."(125) He found the English term to be narrowly construed as though it "were the weapon of the weak."(125) Satyagraha is also called the devotion to truth. (Quotes taken from The Gandhi Reader.) Bertolino--Mosaic 2-Power Unit 8

9. 9.  In 1920, Gandhi began a series of demonstrations and protests against the British.in India. He came up with two more terms: Hind swarj (home rule-see pgs. 11 to 13) and ahimsa: refusal to hurt any living being (see "The Creed of Non- Violence", pgs. 95 to 122). Ahimsa included vegetarianism, refusal to harm our enemies and maintaining our humanity in all kinds of situations. Consider this definition from the ATP Nonviolence Trainer's Manual: Ahimsa --- refusal to inflict injury on others. A) Ahimsa is dictated by our commitment to communication and to sharing of our pieces of the truth. Violence shuts off channels of communication. B) The concept of ahimsa appears in most major religions, which suggests that while it may not be practiced by most people, it is respected as an ideal. (Jesus: turn the other cheek.) C) Ahimsa is an expression of our concern that our own and others humanity be manifested and respected. D) We must learn to genuinely love our opponents in order to practice ahimsa. From 1922 to 1924, Gandhi was held in prison for sedition. (Gandhi spent over 2300 days in jail throughout his lifetime-approximently 5 years.) Bertolino--Mosaic 2-Power Unit 9

10. 10.  Like Gandhi, King believed that one had to find love for all people, even his enemies. He had to purge his mind of hate. He relied on his Christian faith ,and his belief in the truth of his mission to fulfill his purification. He made no secret that Gandhi‟s teachings and actions for libertation were his model for the fundamentals of demanding equal rights for Blacks in the United States. Bertolino--Mosaic 2-Power Unit 10

11. 11.  King and Non-Violence: He says that he is in Birmingham, Alabama because injustice is here. He outlines his campaign in four basic steps:1. collection of information to see if injustice exists2. negotiation with the oppressor3. self-purification4. direct actionThis is the model he uses to discuss his ideas in the letter. Bertolino--Mosaic 2-Power Unit 11

12. 12. Direct action: Sit-ins, marches-these lead to negotiations because they attract attention, even if it results in imprisonment. These actions formed the basis of civil disobedience for Dr. King. If the actions are peaceful and non-violent, they will eventually cause the oppressor to negotiate. Here he echoes Gandhi in his approach to non-violence. King also writes that he knows "through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed." (320) He chooses a non- violence method to demand. Yet he is on the same wavelength as Malcolm X who writes: "How can you thank a man for giving you what is yours? How can you thank a man for giving only part of what is yours?" Bertolino--Mosaic 2-Power Unit 12

13. 13.  Just vs. Unjust Law: The 8 clergymen who wrote him were concerned about his choice to break laws. King worked with the ideas of just and unjust law from the middle ages. He quotes St. Augustine that "an unjust law is no law at all." A just law is man-made; it concurs with moral law and the law of God. A just law uplifts the human personality; it edifies him. For his theory of unjust law King also looks to St. Thomas Aquinas who wrote extensively on natural and just law during the middle ages. Specifically, King writes that "an unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal and natural law."(321) It degrades the human personality. Jim Crow laws give the segregator "a false sense of superiority". (321) By quoting Martin Buber, King states that segregation " substitutes an "I-it"relationship for an "I-thou" relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things." (321) So to King, an unjust law is no law at all. Bertolino--Mosaic 2-Power Unit 13

14. 14.  Yet King still insists that civil disobedience must be done with love and humanity. Here again, he shows the influence of Gandhi when he writes: "One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty....I submit that an individual who breaks a law that...is unjust is...expressing the highest regard for law. (323) Consider Gandhi‟s views on Ahisma: turning the other cheek, maintaining one‟s humanity and genuinely loving their neighbor. King insisted that his followers did the same. Bertolino--Mosaic 2-Power Unit 14

15. 15.  King expressed disappointment in the white moderates who did not support him in his struggle. He accuses them of preferring " order than to justice"(322) When they say "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action".(322) He claims that they prefer a negative peace, a community that is orderly externally, but repressed and controlled by injustice, seething at their inequality. King defines a positive peace as a demonstration of the "presence of justice in the community"-in other words, people who conduct an orderly community out of respect for themselves and each other. They feel uplifted by the laws in their society. Bertolino--Mosaic 2-Power Unit 15

16. 16.  If one wants to understand how Dr. King worked for civil rights, the Letter From Birmingham Jail is crucial. It must be noted that there were other schools of thought: Malcolm X was the spokesman for the Nation of Islam-he was often accused of advocating violence. He never committed any violent act when he was with the Nation of Islam or afterwards, but he also noted that if someone got violent with him, he was going to react the same. His views changed after he made the pilgrimage to Mecca and experienced what many call "true Islam." We cannot know how deeply the change would have manifested as Malcolm X was assassinated within a year of returning from Mecca. Stokley Carmichael invented the term Black Power. He wanted Blacks to feel empowered by who they were, by their African heritage and by the culture they represent in America. Dr. King had no problem with his ideas, but found the term "Black Power" as suggestive for violence, so he broke off from working with Stokley Carmichael without harsh feelings. Dr. King‟s death broke Stokley‟s heart, among with thousands of activists. Stokley called the subsequent riots as an answer to white society-people were angry at the death of their leader. Robert Kennedy openly admired him. J. Edgar Hoover hated him, and made no secret of his animosity. Dr. King received death threats as a matter of course, and he expected that he would not live a long life. After his death, Coretta Scott King noted that Dr. King saw our society as "sick"; he felt called to heal the disease of racism and man‟s inhumanity against each other.(All quotes from Dr. King's Letter from Birmingham Jail have been taken from Temple University‟s Intellectual Heritage 52, fourth edition. I used this text when I taught IH. The pagination for the PDF is obviously different.) Bertolino--Mosaic 2-Power Unit 16

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Lecturer of Intellectual Heritage I love to teach anything by Dr. King as his words and actions go far beyond race. They are a blueprint for relationships and community. 1. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the influences on his thought Bertolino--Mosaic 2-Power Unit 1 2.

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Martin Luther King's Letter from Birmingham Jail

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18. Trip itinerary for the Civil Rights Ride

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18. Trip itinerary for the Civil Rights Ride

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Trip Itinerary for the Civil Rights Ride

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Doing history by interacting with the people and places of the Civil Rights Movement. http://owatonna.com/news.php?viewStory=124170

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national
association for the advancement of colored people (naacp)

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southern
christian leadership conference (sclc)

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student
nonviolent coordinating committee (sncc)

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Definitions of the important terms you need to know about in order to understand The Civil Rights Era (1865-1970), including Birmingham Campaign, Black Panthers, Black Power, Brown v.

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The " Letter from Birmingham Jail", also known as the " Letter from Birmingham City Jail" and " The Negro Is Your Brother", is an open letter written on April 16, 1963, by Martin Luther King Jr. It says that people have a moral responsibility to break unjust laws and to take direct action rather than waiting potentially forever for justice to come through the courts. Responding to being referred to as an "outsider", King writes: "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

The letter, written in response to " A Call for Unity" during the 1963 Birmingham campaign, was widely published, and became an important text for the civil rights movement in the United States. The letter has been described as "one of the most important historical documents penned by a modern political prisoner", and is considered a classic document of civil disobedience.

Birmingham, Alabama, was known for its intense segregation and attempts to combat said racism during this time period. For example, students at Miles College boycotted local downtown stores for eight weeks, which resulted in a decrease in sales by 40% and two stores desegregating their water fountains. The Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR) had met with the Senior Citizens Committee (SCC) following this protest in hopes to find a way to prevent larger forms of retaliation against segregation. The SCC, a white civic organization, had agreed during this meeting to remove all "Whites Only" signs from downtown department stores, however failed to carry this promise through. The citizens of Birmingham's efforts in desegregation caught King's attention, especially with their previous attempts resulting in failure or broken promises. Their desire to be active in fighting against racism is what made King certain that this is where he should begin his work.

King met with President John F. Kennedy on October 16, 1961, to address the concerns of discrimination in the south and the lack of action the government is taking. President Kennedy seemed to be in support of desegregation, however, was slow to take action. Not only was the President slow to act, but Birmingham officials were refusing to leave their office, preventing a younger generation of officials with more modern beliefs to be elected. These leaders in Birmingham were legally not required to leave their office until 1965, meaning that something else had to be done to generate change. King, passionate for this change, created " Project C", meaning confrontation, to do just that. "Project C" is also referred to as the Birmingham campaign.

The Birmingham campaign began on April 3, 1963, with coordinated marches and sit-ins against racism and racial segregation in Birmingham. The nonviolent campaign was coordinated by the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR) and King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). On April 10, Circuit Judge W. A. Jenkins Jr. issued a blanket injunction against "parading, demonstrating, boycotting, trespassing and picketing". Leaders of the campaign announced they would disobey the ruling. On April 12, King was arrested with SCLC activist Ralph Abernathy, ACMHR and SCLC official Fred Shuttlesworth, and other marchers, while thousands of African Americans dressed for Good Friday looked on.

King was met with unusually harsh conditions in the Birmingham jail. An ally smuggled in a newspaper from April 12, which contained " A Call for Unity", a statement by eight white Alabama clergymen against King and his methods. The letter provoked King, and he began to write a response to the newspaper itself. King writes in Why We Can't Wait: "Begun on the margins of the newspaper in which the statement appeared while I was in jail, the letter was continued on scraps of writing paper supplied by a friendly Black trusty, and concluded on a pad my attorneys were eventually permitted to leave me." Walter Reuther, president of the United Auto Workers, arranged $160,000 to bail out King and the other jailed protestors.

King's letter, dated April 16, 1963, responded to several criticisms made by the " A Call for Unity" clergymen, who agreed that social injustices existed but argued that the battle against racial segregation should be fought solely in the courts, not the streets. He also criticizes the claim that African Americans should wait patiently while these battles are fought in the courts. As a minister, King responded to the criticisms on religious grounds. As an activist challenging an entrenched social system, he argued on legal, political, and historical grounds. As an African American, he spoke of the country's oppression of Black people, including himself. As an orator, he used many persuasive techniques to reach the hearts and minds of his audience. Altogether, King's letter was a powerful defense of the motivations, tactics, and goals of the Birmingham campaign and the Civil Rights Movement more generally.

King began the letter by responding to the criticism that he and his fellow activists were "outsiders" causing trouble in the streets of Birmingham. King referred to his responsibility as the leader of the SCLC, which had numerous affiliated organizations throughout the South. "I was invited" by our Birmingham affiliate "because injustice is here" in what is probably the most racially-divided city in the country, with its brutal police, unjust courts, and many "unsolved bombings of Negro homes and churches". Referring to his belief that all communities and states were interrelated, King wrote, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly ... Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds." King also warned that if white people successfully rejected his nonviolent activists as rabble-rousing outside agitators, that could encourage millions of African Americans to "seek solace and security in Black nationalist ideologies, a development that will lead inevitably to a frightening racial nightmare."

The clergymen also disapproved of tensions created by public actions such as sit-ins and marches. King confirmed that he and his fellow demonstrators were indeed using nonviolent direct action in order to create "constructive" tension. The tension was intended to compel meaningful negotiation with the white power structure without which true civil rights could never be achieved. Citing previous failed negotiations, King wrote that the Black community was left with "no alternative". "We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed."

The clergymen also disapproved of the timing of public actions. In response, King said that recent decisions by the SCLC to delay its efforts for tactical reasons showed that it was behaving responsibly. He also referred to the broader scope of history, when "'Wait' has almost always meant 'Never.'" Declaring that African Americans had waited for the God-given and constitutional rights long enough, King quoted "one of our distinguished jurists" that " justice too long delayed is justice denied." Listing numerous ongoing injustices toward Black people, including himself, King said, "Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, 'Wait.'" Along similar lines, King also lamented the "myth concerning time" by which white moderates assumed that progress toward equal rights was inevitable and so assertive activism was unnecessary. King called it a "tragic misconception of time" to assume that its mere passage "will inevitably cure all ills". Progress takes time as well as the "tireless efforts" of dedicated people of good will.

Against the clergymen's assertion that demonstrations could be illegal, King argued that civil disobedience was not only justified in the face of unjust laws but also was necessary and even patriotic: "The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that ' an unjust law is no law at all.'" Anticipating the claim that one cannot determine such things, he again cited Christian theologian Thomas Aquinas by saying any law not rooted in "eternal law and natural law" is not just, while any law that "uplifts human personality" is just. Segregation undermines human personality, ergo, is unjust. Furthermore, he wrote: "I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law."

King cited Martin Buber and Paul Tillich with further examples from the past and present of what makes laws just or unjust: "A law is unjust if it is inflicted on a minority that, as a result of being denied the right to vote, had no part in enacting or devising the law." In terms of obedience to the law, King says citizens have "not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws" and also "to disobey unjust laws". King stated that it is not morally wrong to disobey a law that pertains to one group of people differently from another. Alabama has used "all sorts of devious methods" to deny its Black citizens their right to vote and thus preserve its unjust laws and broader system of white supremacy. Segregation laws are immoral and unjust "because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority." Even some just laws, such as permit requirements for public marches, are unjust when they are used to uphold an unjust system.

King addressed the accusation that the Civil Rights Movement was "extreme" by first disputing the label but then accepting it. Compared to other movements at the time, King found himself as a moderate. However, in his devotion to his cause, King referred to himself as an extremist. Jesus and other great reformers were extremists: "So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love?" King's discussion of extremism implicitly responded to numerous "moderate" objections to the ongoing movement, such as US President Dwight D. Eisenhower's claim that he could not meet with civil rights leaders because doing so would require him to meet with the Ku Klux Klan.

King expressed general frustration with both white moderates and certain "opposing forces in the Negro community". He wrote that white moderates, including clergymen, posed a challenge comparable to that of white supremacists: "Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection." King asserted that the white church needed to take a principled stand or risk being "dismissed as an irrelevant social club". Regarding the Black community, King wrote that we need not follow "the 'do-nothingism' of the complacent nor the hatred and despair of the Black nationalist."

In the closing, King criticized the clergy's praise of the Birmingham police for maintaining order nonviolently. The recent public displays of nonviolence by the police were in stark contrast to their typical treatment of Black people and, as public relations, helped "to preserve the evil system of segregation". It is wrong to use immoral means to achieve moral ends but also "to use moral means to preserve immoral ends". Instead of the police, King praised the nonviolent demonstrators in Birmingham "for their sublime courage, their willingness to suffer and their amazing discipline in the midst of great provocation. One day the South will recognize its real heroes."

King wrote the first part of the letter on the margins of a newspaper, which was the only paper available to him. He then wrote more on bits and pieces of paper given to him by a trusty, which were given to his lawyers to take back to movement headquarters. Pastor Wyatt Tee Walker and his secretary Willie Pearl Mackey then began compiling and editing the literary jigsaw puzzle. He was eventually able to finish the letter on a pad of paper his lawyers were allowed to leave with him.

An editor at The New York Times Magazine, Harvey Shapiro, asked King to write his letter for publication in the magazine, but the Times chose not to publish it. Extensive excerpts from the letter were published, without King's consent, on May 19, 1963, in the New York Post Sunday Magazine. The complete letter was first published as "Letter from Birmingham City Jail" by the American Friends Service Committee in May 1963 and subsequently in the June 1963 issue of Liberation, the June 12, 1963, edition of The Christian Century, and the June 24, 1963, edition of The New Leader. The letter gained more popularity as summer went on, and was reprinted in the July 1963 edition of The Progressive under the headline "Tears of Love" and the August 1963 edition of The Atlantic Monthly under the headline "The Negro Is Your Brother". King included a version of the full text in his 1964 book Why We Can't Wait.

The letter was anthologized and reprinted around 50 times in 325 editions of 58 readers. These readers were published for college-level composition courses between 1964 and 1968.

U.S. Senator Doug Jones (D-Alabama) led an annual bipartisan reading of the letter in the U.S. Senate during his tenure in the United States Senate in 2019 and 2020, and passed the obligation to lead the reading to Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) upon Jones' election defeat.

1. ^ Greene, Helen Taylor; Gabbidon, Shaun L. (April 14, 2009). "Political Prisoners". Encyclopedia of Race and Crime. SAGE Publications. pp. 636-639. ISBN 978-1-4522-6609-1.

2. ^ Tiefenbrun, Susan (1992). "Semiotics and Martin Luther King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail"". Cardozo Studies in Law and Literature. Taylor & Francis. 4 (2): 255-287. doi:10.2307/743322. JSTOR 743322.

3. ^ King, Martin Luther; Jr (1991), "Letter from Birmingham City Jail", CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE in focus, Abingdon, UK: Taylor & Francis, doi:10.4324/9780203003657_chapter_4, ISBN 978-0-203-32224-6

4. ^ Shlaes, Amity (March 20, 2020). "The Great Society: A New History with Amity Shlaes". Hoover Institution. Interviewed by Peter Robinson.

5. ^ Walker, Wyatt (April 20, 1989), Interview with Wyatt Walker, about Fred Shuttlesworth, interviewed by Andrew Manis, Caanan Baptist Church, New York City: Transcription held at Birmingham Public Library, Birmingham, Alabama, p. 24.

6. ^ University, © Stanford; Stanford; California 94305 (May 17, 2017). ""Letter from Birmingham Jail"". The Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute.

7. ^ "Letter from Birmingham City Jail". American Friends Service Committee. April 16, 2021.

8. ^ King, Martin Luther Jr. (1963). "Letter from Birmingham Jail". Liberation: An Independent Monthly. Vol. 8, no. 4. pp. 10-16, 23. ISSN 0024-189X.

9. Reprinted in "Reporting Civil Rights, Part One", (pp. 777-794), ^ American Journalism 1941-1963. The Library of America

10. ^ "TUESDAY, APRIL 9: Senator Doug Jones to Lead Bipartisan Commemorative Reading of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s 1963 Letter from Birmingham Jail", Doug Jones, U.S. Senate, April 8, 2019, archived from the original on January 11, 2020

11. ^ "VIDEO: Senator Doug Jones Leads Second Annual Bipartisan Reading of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Letter from Birmingham Jail on the Senate Floor", Doug Jones, U.S. Senate, June 16, 2020, archived from the original on October 5, 2020

Bibliography

Bass, S. Jonathan (2001). Blessed Are the Peacemakers: Martin Luther King, Jr., Eight White Religious Leaders, and the "Letter from Birmingham Jail". Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press. ISBN 978-0-8071-2655-4.

Bloom, Lynn Z. (1999). "The Essay Canon" (PDF). College English. 61 (4): 401-430. doi:10.2307/378920. ISSN 0010-0994. JSTOR 378920. Archived from the original (PDF) on December 22, 2015.

Fulkerson, Richard P. (1979). "The Public Letter as a Rhetorical Form: Structure, Logic, and Style in King's 'Letter from Birmingham Jail'". Quarterly Journal of Speech. 65 (2): 121-136. doi:10.1080/00335637909383465.

Gilbreath, Edward (2013). Birmingham Revolution: Martin Luther King Jr.'s Epic Challenge to the Church. Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press. ISBN 978-0-8308-3769-4.

King, Martin Luther, Jr. (1964). Why We Can't Wait. New York: Signet Classic (published 2000). ISBN 978-0-451-52753-0.

McCarthy, Anna (2010). The Citizen Machine: Governing by Television in 1950s America. New York: The New Press. ISBN 978-1-59558-498-4.

Oppenheimer, David Benjamin (1993). "Martin Luther King, Walker v. City of Birmingham, and the Letter from Birmingham Jail" (PDF). U.C. Davis Law Review. 26 (4): 791-833. ISSN 0197-4564.

Rieder, Jonathan (2013). Gospel of Freedom: Martin Luther King, Jr.'s 'Letter From Birmingham Jail'. New York: Bloomsbury Press. ISBN 978-1-62040-058-6.

Snow, Malinda (1985). "Martin Luther King's 'Letter from Birmingham Jail' as Pauline Epistle". Quarterly Journal of Speech. 71 (3): 318-334. doi:10.1080/00335638509383739. ISSN 1479-5779.

Bass, S. Jonathan (2014). "Letter from Birmingham Jail". Encyclopedia of Alabama. Alabama Humanities Foundation.

Carpenter, C. C. J.; Durick, Joseph Aloysius; Grafman, Milton L.; Hardin, Paul; Harmon, Nolan Bailey; Murray, George M.; Ramage, Edward V.; Stallings, Earl (1963). Public Statement by Eight Alabama Clergymen (PDF) - via Quia.

King, Martin Luther Jr. (1963). Letter from Birmingham Jail (PDF). Stanford, CA: The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute.

"Letter from Birmingham Jail". Bhamwiki. 2017.

"Martin Luther King, Jr. and Nonviolent Resistance". EDSITEment!. National Endowment for the Humanities.

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The " Letter from Birmingham Jail", also known as the " Letter from Birmingham City Jail" and " The Negro Is Your Brother", is an open letter written on April 16, 1963, by Martin Luther King Jr.

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Visit to Dazu Rock Carvings Site The Dazu Rock Carvings Site features 75 sites of protected rock carvings which include more than 50,000 statues and 100,000 inscriptions found on several hills in the area.

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Teaching Tools | Resources for Teachers from Scholastic

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M artin L uther K ing , J r .

I Have a Dream

delivered 28 August 1963, at the Lincoln Memorial, Washington D.C.

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[AUTHENTICITY CERTIFIED: Text version below transcribed directly from audio. (2)]

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our 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.

But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.

In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence , they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the "unalienable Rights" of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds."

But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.

We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. And those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. And there will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

But there is something that I must say to my people, who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice: In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.

The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.

We cannot walk alone.

And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead.

We cannot turn back.

There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. **We cannot be satisfied as long as the negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their self-hood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating: "For Whites Only."** We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until "justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream."1

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. And some of you have come from areas where your quest -- quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.

Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.

And 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 color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day, d o wn in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" -- one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; "and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together." 2

This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with.

With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

And this will be the day -- this will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning:

My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim's pride, From every mountainside, let freedom ring!

And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.

And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.

Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.

Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.

Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.

But not only that:

Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.

From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, and when we allow freedom 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! 3

= Source audio edited to exclude the content in double ** red asterisks in the above transcript.

¹ Amos 5:24 (rendered precisely in The American Standard Version of the Holy Bible)

2 Isaiah 40:4-5 (King James Version of the Holy Bible). Quotation marks are excluded from part of this moment in the text because King's rendering of Isaiah 40:4 does not precisely follow the KJV version from which he quotes (e.g., "hill" and "mountain" are reversed in the KJV). King's rendering of Isaiah 40:5, however, is precisely quoted from the KJV.

3 At: negrospirituals.com/songs/free_at_last_from.htm

Also in this database: Martin Luther King, Jr: A Time to Break Silence

Audio Source: Linked directly to:archive.org/details/MLKDream

Image #1: Wikimedia.org

Image #2 Source:.jfklibrary.org

Image #3: Colorized Screenshot

See also: The King Center

Page Updated: 1/16/23

U.S. Copyright Status: Text = Restricted, seek permission. Copyright inquiries and permission requests may be directed to: Intellectual Properties Management (IPM), the exclusive licensor of the Estate of Martin Luther King, Jr., Inc. at licensing@i-p-m.com or 404 526-8968. Image #1 = Public domain ()per data here ). Image #2 = Public domain. Image #3 = Fair Use.

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Martin Luther King, Jr: I Have a Dream Speech

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M artin L uther K ing , J r . I Have a Dream delivered 28 August 1963, at the Lincoln Memorial, Washington D.C. Video Purchase Off-Site Audio mp3 of Address Your browser does not support the audio element. [AUTHENTICITY CERTIFIED: Text version below transcribed directly from audio.

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This is a quiz for students of English as a second language. You can take this quiz and then check your answers right away. Part of 'Self-Study Quizzes for ESL Students'.

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Last year, protesters against racial injustice toppled numerous statues around the country. Now, one of the first works of art to emerge in their place depicts an unsung hero of the Lewis and Clark expedition.

A huge bust of York, a Black man who was enslaved by William Clark and who was the first African-American to cross the continent and reach the Pacific Ocean, is sitting atop a pedestal amid a lushly forested park in Portland, Oregon. It was placed there in the dead of night last weekend by persons unknown.

People have flocked to the bust, which seems to be at least four feet tall, in Mount Tabor Park. The artist's depiction of York shows him seemingly deep in thought or even sad, his eyes cast downward. York hadn't been painted contemporaneously so how his face really looked is unknown.

Officials in the city, which has been an epicenter of Black Lives Matter protests since the killing of George Floyd, love what the head of the parks department called "guerrilla art."

"This past summer, there's been concern about some of the public art that many states have displayed, and so folks really see this installation as a bit of a reckoning," Portland Parks and Recreation Director Adena Long said in an interview. "The story of York is really compelling and very sad."

Passersby stare up at the bust or touch the tall stone pedestal. The anonymous artist affixed a plaque describing how York was an integral part of the 1804-1806 expedition to find an all-water route to the Pacific, but then was denied his freedom by Clark after it was over.

Since the killing of Floyd in Minneapolis last May, hundreds of symbols of racism and other dark chapters of U.S. history have been removed. Among them were at least 167 Confederate symbols, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Pedestals that used to support statues that were torn down by Black Lives Matter protesters or removed by officials now are empty. One, in Virginia, held a monument to Jefferson Davis; others held memorials to Confederate soldiers in Florida, North Carolina, and Alabama; another bore a statue of Robert E. Lee, in Alabama.

Simply renaming places has been easier. At least 14 schools - mostly in the south - were renamed last year. For example, Robert E. Lee High School, in Springfield, Virginia, became John R. Lewis High School, named for the late civil rights leader and congressman from Georgia.

"John R. Lewis, by his lifetime of service, strength, conviction and dedication to improving the lives of others, is memorialized as an enduring symbol through his namesake high school," the school district says.

Deciding what to replace downed statues with, commissioning the artists and having the work done takes time.

Whoever made the gigantic head of York circumvented all that by producing the bust - officials believe it might have been done with a 3D printer - getting it into the park without being detected and then placing it on top of the pedestal, which itself is around 10 feet (3 meters) high).

It's likely the artist had collaborators to install it. On Friday night, as is customary, park rangers shut gates on the roads and locked them at 10 p.m. closing time. On Saturday morning, a maintenance worker saw the York bust, perched on a pedestal where a statue of a conservative figure who opposed women's right to vote had stood until someone knocked it over last year.

"None of those gates had been damaged. None of those locks had been damaged. And so we do feel that this was brought in on foot," said Tim Collier, community relations manager for the city parks department.

They had to transport the bust, which seems to be composed of plastic or composite of synthetic material, at least 1,000 feet (300 meters) uphill from the nearest road access.

The mysterious appearance of the bust has prompted many to look up York's story.

In the epic expedition, York had gone on scouting missions, had hunted buffalo and deer to feed the group and helped tend to the sick.

Historian Stephen Ambrose, in his book "Undaunted Courage" about the expedition, described York as "strong, agile, a natural athlete." Native Americans were fascinated by the first Black person they had ever seen.

"They did not look upon him as a slave or as a mere man, but as an extraordinary person more interesting and elevated than any of his companions," the National Park Service says in a brief biography.

After the expedition was over, everyone but York was rewarded with money and land. York, whose wife was also a slave and lived in another town, demanded freedom as a reward for his services on the expedition, Ambrose wrote. But Clark refused and even gave him "a Severe trouncing" for being insolent.

Clark later claimed to a friend that he'd freed York. Historians haven't been able to verify that.

Collier said that in the legends of the expedition, York's role has been overlooked, and that the bust "is really furthering that conversation here in our very, very white city."

Long hopes the artist comes forward to possibly have a conversation about making York a permanent art installation.

___

Follow Andrew Selsky on Twitter at https://twitter.com/andrewselsky

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Bust of Black hero of Lewis & Clark trip goes up in Portland

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Last year, protesters against racial injustice toppled numerous statues around the country. Now, one of the first works of art to emerge in their place depicts an unsung hero of the Lewis and Clark expedition.

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Children will examine the life of Harriet Tubman and identify the character traits that made her a hero.

Social Studies Focus:

history, American heroes

key details, use vocabulary

Page 4 Skill:

key details

Vocabulary:

enslaved, illegal, clever, disguises, inspired

RI.2.1, RI.2.4, L.2.6, RI.2.10, SL.2.3

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Children will examine the life of Harriet Tubman and identify the character traits that made her a hero. Social Studies Focus: history, American heroes key details, use vocabulary Page 4 Skill: key details Vocabulary: enslaved, illegal, clever, disguises, inspired RI.2.1, RI.2.4, L.2.6, RI.2.10, SL.2.3

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Martin Luther King was born on 15 January 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia (US). Originally named Michael, he was later renamed Martin, like his father, a Baptist minister. His mother, Alberta Williams King, was a schoolteacher.

He entered Morehouse College in 1944 and forged a lifelong friendship with his teacher, Benjamin Mays. Together with his father's influence, it was partly his respect for Mays which led him to the Church. He was ordained in his last semester.

He graduated from Morehouse in 1948 and undertook postgraduate study first at Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania and then, in 1951, at Boston University's School of Theology. Once there he completed his dissertation which, it was later revealed, had been partially plagiarised, and won his doctorate in 1955. It was in Boston that he met his wife Coretta Scott, who he married in 1953.

In 1954, he became pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, where Rosa Parks was famously arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white man on a bus.
National awareness
After Parks' arrest, King came to national prominence in the US. He was a leading figure in organising the boycott by African Americans of buses in Montgomery.

"It was thrust upon him in many respects," says John A. Kirk, Chair of History at the University of Arkansas. "In 1955-56 he came to prominence. He didn't seek out leadership. They needed a leader...King was a neutral choice. He was young and new to town and wasn't a threat."

Tutelage from Bayard Rustin, a prominent civil rights campaigner, helped King to commit to a principle of non-violent action heavily influenced by Mahatma Gandhi's success in opposing the British in India.

In 1957, King established the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) with fellow activists C.K. Steele, Fred Shuttleworth and T.J. Jemison.

As SCLC president, King was tasked with the coordination of civil rights activity across the region. However, he was not immediately successful.

"People were wondering if he was qualified to be the national leader in the late 1950s," says Prof Kirk. "There was disillusionment with King to turn his words into a tangible programme."
Birmingham campaign
That changed in 1963.

"King reasserted his pre-eminence within the African American freedom struggle through his leadership of the Birmingham campaign," says Clayborne Carson, Professor of History at Stanford University and Director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute.

"The Birmingham demonstrations were the most massive civil rights protests that had yet occurred."

In Birmingham, Alabama, desegregation was being violently resisted by the white population. The city was dubbed 'Bombingham', due to the frequency of attacks on black homes and activists.

Imprisoned and held in solitary confinement after defying an injunction against the protests, Martin Luther King wrote his 'Letter from Birmingham Jail'. In response to criticism from local white clergymen, he set out his reasons for action in Birmingham and elsewhere.

"For years now," he wrote, "I have heard the word 'Wait!' This 'Wait' has almost always meant 'Never'."

After his release, in May, the Children's Crusade was launched. Thousands of school children and students staged marches in Birmingham. Television images of police using batons, dogs and high-pressure fire hoses against the young protesters sparked global outrage and won public support for King's cause.
'I have a dream'
Success in Birmingham provided further impetus to the movement. This culminated in the massive March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on 28 August 1963. More than 200,000 people were in attendance at the Lincoln Memorial when King delivered his famous 'I have a dream' speech, predicting a day when the promise of freedom and equality for all would become a reality in America.

However, less than a month after King delivered his speech a blast killed four young girls in a Birmingham church. There was much work to be done if his dream was to be realised.

In 1964, King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. That same year, a significant step forward was made with the passage of the Civil Rights Act. The Voting Rights Act followed in 1965, removing many of the barriers which had ensured African Americans could be disenfranchised in some states.
Move to Chicago
He turned his attention to the plight of the urban poor in the north. With his family, he moved to an apartment in Chicago's black ghetto in 1966. Though not legally endorsed, segregation was an economic reality and the Chicago Campaign sought to combat this. However, King found that tactics which had worked in the South were less effective in the North.

There was also growing support from within the movement for more militant methods of opposition. King found his message of non-violent action increasingly marginalised and his popularity waning.

His opposition to America's involvement in the Vietnam War further inhibited his influence on national policy.
Death
The Poor People's Campaign was established in December 1967. SCLC lobbied the government to improve their efforts in combating poverty. On 3 April 1968, he arrived in Memphis, Tennessee to prepare for a march in support of striking sanitation workers.

The following day, he was shot dead on his hotel balcony. The President, Lyndon B. Johnson, called for a national day of mourning.

At his funeral, King's old friend Benjamin Mays delivered the eulogy: "Martin Luther King Jr. believed in a united America. He believed that the walls of separation brought on by legal and de facto segregation, and discrimination based on race and colour, could be eradicated. As he said in his Washington Monument address: 'I have a dream'."

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Martin Luther King was born on 15 January 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia (US). Originally named Michael, he was later renamed Martin, like his father, a Baptist minister. His mother, Alberta Williams King, was a schoolteacher. He entered Morehouse College in 1944 and forged a lifelong friendship with his teacher, Benjamin Mays.

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We know that Black history is American history and needs to be embedded into your classroom experiences year-round. At the same time, Black History Month provides the necessary opportunity to dig deeper with students. Every February, we can support students as they learn more, discover cultural impacts, and follow social movements from the past to the present day. These Black History Month lessons and activities cannot be isolated or one-off classroom experiences. Think of how you can connect these topics to what you're already doing and make it authentic. And most important, do not just focus on oppression: Focus on the joy too!

Since 1928, the Association for the Study of African American Life and History has provided a theme for Black History Month. In 2023, the theme is Black Resistance. As you review some of our favorite Black History Month activities for the classroom, keep that very important theme in mind.

(Just a heads up ! WeAreTeachers may collect a share of sales from the links on this page. We only recommend items our team loves!)

1. Re-create civil rights freedom movement posters

The Civil Rights Movement Veterans site offers powerful examples of freedom movement posters, as does the Civil Rights Digital Library. Review them with your students, and then have them get into groups and create their own to share.

2. Explore Black history through primary sources from the National Archives

Choose from thousands of resources, including this 1970s photo series of Chicago.

3. Learn about famous Black artists

Future Jacob Lawrences and Elizabeth Catletts will appreciate learning more about artists and expanding their talents! Plus, check out these other Black artists.

4. Watch a Black History Month video

Watching videos can be some of the most meaningful Black History Month classroom activities. Check out this list of Black history videos for students in every grade level.

5. Learn about the Black Lives Matter movement

The Black Lives Matter site explains the group's history while books like Dear Martin and The Hate U Give explore the movement from a fictional perspective.

6. Create a newsletter or magazine with content from Black authors

Have your students generate their own newsletter or literacy magazine to distribute to parents. Include poems and short stories by Black authors, as well as student-generated writings and images that center on Black History Month.

7. Read a Black History Month poem

To enhance our conversations this month, we've put together this list of powerful Black History Month poems for kids of all ages.

8. Turn your classroom (or school!) into a living museum

Have your students choose a notable Black pioneer they'd like to know more about, such as voting rights and women's rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer, dancer Alvin Ailey, or Betty Reid Soskin, the oldest full-time national parks ranger. Then, host a living museum right in your classroom.

9. Learn about Madam C.J. Walker and other Black entrepreneurs

Do you know about Madam C.J. Walker, the first self-made female millionaire in America? Click here to learn more about her!

10. Decorate your classroom door for Black History Month

These teachers decorated their classroom doors in amazing ways to showcase Black History Month.

11. Honor some of the military's most courageous veterans

From the 54th Massachusetts to the Buffalo Soldiers to the Tuskegee Airmen, Black men and women have long served in the United States military, even when their own rights weren't secure.

12. Read books with Black characters in honor of the young hero Marley Dias

Dias is a young activist who started the #1000blackgirlbooks campaign as a sixth grader. She has compiled an excellent guide to books with Black girl characters. Check out WeAreTeacher's list of books with Black protagonists as well.

13. Read Black History Month books

If you're looking for more reading activities, these picture books help celebrate Black History Month and educate your students on how these people helped shape history.

14. Learn about the art of stepping

Stepping is a form of dancing in which the body itself is used to create unique rhythms and sounds. The website Step Afrika! has videos and information about the history of stepping.

15. Take a virtual trip to the illustrious Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

The digital collections of the Schomburg Center, located in Harlem in New York City, feature some amazing online exhibits, interviews, and podcasts.

16. Virtually visit the incredible Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture

You can browse the collection online by topic, date, or place.

17. Host a poetry reading featuring works by Black poets

Have students choose a poem by a Black poet to learn and recite for the class. Choose a student to serve as the emcee, write up a program, and set the tone with dimmed lights and jazz music played between performances. The Poetry Foundation has excellent resources that can help get you started.

18. Discuss the Supreme Court trial that gave rights to Black Americans

Your future legal eagles will enjoy learning about the key Supreme Court cases that helped Blacks secure rights, the events and efforts that sparked the cases, and the aftermath of those court decisions. Be sure to recognize Thurgood Marshall, the first Black Supreme Court justice and the lead lawyer in the Brown case, along the way. Also, follow up with students on how they feel these decisions impact our world today.

19. Listen to a podcast that celebrates Black history

RadioPublic has an excellent roundup of podcasts about Black history to listen to and discuss with your students.

20. Check out online exhibits on Black history

Educating yourself and your students with these shows is one more way to understand Black history and the current moment.

21. Dive into Georgia Stories: Black History Collection on PBS

As a state, Georgia played a huge role in the 2020 presidential election, and its Black history dates back to the earliest days of slavery in the colony.

22. Discuss implicit bias, systemic racism, and social injustice

Start a much-needed discussion around implicit bias and systemic racism with these resources that can empower students to fight for justice in our society.

23. Read the Freedom in Congo Square picture book to celebrate the dominance of spirit over suffering

The award-winning picture boo, Freedom in Congo Square, is a nonfiction children's book that describes the tyranny of slavery to help young readers understand how jubilant Sundays would be for slaves.

24. Watch Kevin Hart's Guide to Black History

Kevin Hart highlights the fascinating contributions of Black history's unsung heroes in this entertaining-and educational-comedy special.

25. Recognize Black visionaries

This great poster featuring activists, artists, authors, and revolutionaries will highlight Black change-makers in your classroom. Use companion activities to deepen understanding by researching several of the visionaries and asking students to write a story or create their own poster about what they've learned.

26. Create a Black History Month playlist

Many genres of music we listen to today were shaped by Black artists and their groundbreaking influences. Celebrate Black History Month with a playlist of pivotal artists, from Louis Armstrong and Jimi Hendrix to Beyoncé and Lauryn Hill. Spotify has ready-made lists to inspire you!

27. Review the time line of Black History Month

Why is Black History Month in February? How long ago was it founded, and who started it? Find the answers to these questions and learn more with this time line.

28. Explore the music of Black history

This lesson traces the long histor y of how Black artists have used music as a vehicle for communicating beliefs, aspirations, observations, joy, despair, resistance, and more across U.S. history.

29. Sample Black-founded snack brands

Honor Black History Month with delicious snacks from Black-founded brands delivered to your classroom-5% of proceeds are donated to the Equal Justice Initiative and one meal is donated to Feeding America for every box delivered.

30. Understand the role of Black women in NASA's history

How much do your students know about Black contributions to space exploration? Rent the film Hidden Figures and watch with your students to remember, honor, and share the incredible accomplishments of three Black women working on NASA's space flight program. Before watching the movie, research the liberties the film took in telling the story and discuss with your students the function of the choices. Did the filmmakers make the right choice?

31. Support local Black-owned businesses

Research your city's Black-owned businesses and see if you can purchase a sample of their products, invite some of the entrepreneurs to speak to your class, or book a field trip!

32. Stream Bookmarks: Celebrating Black Voices on Netflix

" Bookmarks: Celebrating Black Voices is a live-action collection of twelve five-minute episodes featuring prominent Black celebrities and artists reading children's books from Black authors that highlight the Black experience."

33. Check out this planner from Rethinking Schools

If you are looking to find more ways to include Black history year-round, check out this planner.

34. Celebrate the "Black Lives Matter at School" movement

"Black Lives Matter at School" is a national coalition organized for racial justice in education. It encourages all educators, students, parents, unions, and community organizations to join an annual week of action during the first week of February each year.​ For a variety of Black History Month activities, visit their website to learn more about their campaign.

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34 Black History Month Activities for February and Beyond

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Celebrate art, poetry, music, inventions, and contributions of African Americans with these Black History Month activities.

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Elizabeth Freeman - The woman who sued for her freedom and won

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Genially about Elizabeth Freeman - The woman who sued for her freedom and won

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Martin Luther King, Jr. was a social activist and Baptist minister who played a key role in the American civil rights movement from the mid-1950s until his assassination in 1968. King sought equality and human rights for African Americans, the economically disadvantaged and all victims of injustice through peaceful protest. He was the driving force behind watershed events such as the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the 1963 March on Washington, which helped bring about such landmark legislation as the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 and is remembered each year on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, a U.S. federal holiday since 1986.

When Was Martin Luther King Born?

Martin Luther King, Jr. was born on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia, the second child of Martin Luther King Sr., a pastor, and Alberta Williams King, a former schoolteacher.

Along with his older sister Christine and younger brother Alfred Daniel Williams, he grew up in the city's Sweet Auburn neighborhood, then home to some of the most prominent and prosperous African Americans in the country.

Did you know? The final section of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s eloquent and iconic "I Have a Dream" speech is believed to have been largely improvised.

A gifted student, King attended segregated public schools and at the age of 15 was admitted to Morehouse College, the alma mater of both his father and maternal grandfather, where he studied medicine and law.

Although he had not intended to follow in his father's footsteps by joining the ministry, he changed his mind under the mentorship of Morehouse's president, Dr. Benjamin Mays, an influential theologian and outspoken advocate for racial equality. After graduating in 1948, King entered Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania, where he earned a Bachelor of Divinity degree, won a prestigious fellowship and was elected president of his predominantly white senior class.

King then enrolled in a graduate program at Boston University, completing his coursework in 1953 and earning a doctorate in systematic theology two years later. While in Boston he met Coretta Scott, a young singer from Alabama who was studying at the New England Conservatory of Music. The couple wed in 1953 and settled in Montgomery, Alabama, where King became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church.

The Kings had four children: Yolanda Denise King, Martin Luther King III, Dexter Scott King and Bernice Albertine King.

Montgomery Bus Boycott

The King family had been living in Montgomery for less than a year when the highly segregated city became the epicenter of the burgeoning struggle for civil rights in America, galvanized by the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954.

On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, secretary of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ( NAACP), refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a Montgomery bus and was arrested. Activists coordinated a bus boycott that would continue for 381 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. as the protest's leader and official spokesman.

By the time the Supreme Court ruled segregated seating on public buses unconstitutional in November 1956, 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.

On September 20, 1958, Izola Ware Curry walked into a Harlem department store where King was signing books and asked, "Are you Martin Luther King?" When he replied "yes," she stabbed him in the chest with a knife. King survived, and the attempted assassination only reinforced his dedication to nonviolence: "The experience of these last few days has deepened my faith in the relevance of the spirit of nonviolence, if necessary social change is peacefully to take place."
READ MORE: Why MLK's Right-Hand Man, Bayard Rustin, Was Nearly Written Out of History
Southern Christian Leadership Conference

Emboldened by the success of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, in 1957 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.

The SCLC motto was "Not one hair of one head of one person should be harmed." King would remain at the helm of this influential organization until his death.

In his role as SCLC president, Martin Luther King, Jr. traveled across the country and around the world, giving lectures on nonviolent protest and civil rights as well as meeting with religious figures, activists and political leaders.

During a month-long trip to India in 1959, he had the opportunity to meet family members and followers of Gandhi, the man he described in his autobiography as "the guiding light of our technique of nonviolent social change." King also authored several books and articles during this time.

Letter from Birmingham Jail

In 1960 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 1960s.

Their philosophy of nonviolence was put to a particularly severe test during the Birmingham campaign of 1963, in which activists used a boycott, sit-ins and marches to protest segregation, unfair hiring practices and other injustices in one of America's most racially divided cities.

Arrested for his involvement on April 12, King penned the civil rights manifesto known as the " Letter from Birmingham Jail," an eloquent defense of civil disobedience addressed to a group of white clergymen who had criticized his tactics.

March on Washington

Later that year, Martin Luther King, Jr. worked with a number of civil rights and religious groups to organize the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, a peaceful political rally designed to shed light on the injustices Black Americans continued to face across the country.

Held on August 28 and attended by some 200,000 to 300,000 participants, the event is widely regarded as a watershed moment in the history of the American civil rights movement and a factor in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
READ MORE: For Martin Luther King Jr., Nonviolent Protest Never Meant 'Wait and See'
"I Have a Dream"

The March on Washington culminated in King's most famous address, known as the "I Have a Dream" speech, a spirited call for peace and equality that many consider a masterpiece of rhetoric.

Standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial -a monument to the president who a century earlier had brought down the institution of slavery in the United States-he shared his vision of a future in which "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.'"

The speech and march cemented King's reputation at home and abroad; later that year he was named "Man of the Year" by TIME magazine and in 1964 became, at the time, the youngest person ever awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
READ MORE: 7 Things You May Not Know About MLK's 'I Have a Dream' Speech
In the spring of 1965, King's elevated profile drew international attention to the violence that erupted between white segregationists and peaceful demonstrators in Selma, Alabama, where the SCLC and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) had organized a voter registration campaign.

Captured on television, the brutal scene outraged many Americans and inspired supporters from across the country to gather in Alabama and take part in the Selma to Montgomery march led by King and supported by President Lyndon B. Johnson, who sent in federal troops to keep the peace.

That August, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act, which guaranteed the right to vote-first awarded by the 15th Amendment-to all African Americans.

Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.

The events in Selma deepened a growing rift between Martin Luther King, Jr. and young radicals who repudiated his nonviolent methods and commitment to working within the established political framework.

As more militant Black leaders such as Stokely Carmichael rose to prominence, King broadened the scope of his activism to address issues such as the Vietnam War and poverty among Americans of all races. In 1967, King and the SCLC embarked on an ambitious program known as the Poor People's Campaign, which was to include a massive march on the capital.

On the evening of April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King was assassinated. He was fatally shot while standing on the balcony of a motel in Memphis, where King had traveled to support a sanitation workers' strike. In the wake of his death, a wave of riots swept major cities across the country, while President Johnson declared a national day of mourning.

James Earl Ray, an escaped convict and known racist, pleaded guilty to the murder and was sentenced to 99 years in prison. He later recanted his confession and gained some unlikely advocates, including members of the King family, before his death in 1998.
READ MORE: Why Martin Luther King's Family Believes James Earl Ray Was Not His Killer
MLK Day

After years of campaigning by activists, members of Congress and Coretta Scott King, among others, in 1983 President Ronald Reagan signed a bill creating a U.S. federal holiday in honor of King.

Observed on the third Monday of January, Martin Luther King Day was first celebrated in 1986.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Quotes

While his "I Have a Dream" speech is the most well-known piece of his writing, Martin Luther King, Jr. was the author of multiple books, include "Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story," "Why We Can't Wait," "Strength to Love," "Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?" and the posthumously published "Trumpet of Conscience" with a foreword by Coretta Scott King. Here are some of the most famous Martin Luther King, Jr. quotes:

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."

"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy."

"Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed."

"The time is always right to do what is right."

"True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice."

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."

"Free at last, Free at last, Thank God almighty we are free at last."

"Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase."

"In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."

"I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant."

"I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear."

"Be a bush if you can't be a tree. If you can't be a highway, just be a trail. 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."

"Life's most persistent and urgent question is, 'What are you doing for others?'"

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Martin Luther King, Jr. was a social activist and Baptist minister who played a key role in the American civil rights movement from the mid-1950s until his assassination in 1968. King sought equality and human rights for African Americans, the economically disadvantaged and all victims of injustice through peaceful protest.

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Famous Black Americans Printable (3rd Grade)

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Get to know some African-American trailblazers from the worlds of politics, medicine, sports, and the arts.