Martin Luther King, Jr. was born JANUARY 15, 1929.
A
Baptist minister like his father and grandfather, he pastored Dexter
Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery and Ebenezer Baptist Church in
Atlanta.
He formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
Martin Luther King, Jr., was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1964, and Congress set aside his birthday as a National Holiday.
On April 16, 1963,
Martin Luther King wrote:
"As the Apostle Paul carried the gospel of Jesus Christ...so am I compelled to carry the gospel..."
Rev. King continued:
"One
day the South will know that when these disinherited children of God
sat down at lunch counters they were standing up for what is best in the
American dream and for the most sacred values in our Judeo-Christian
heritage."
Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.,
as well as Archbishop Desmond Tutu, were influenced by the German
church leader Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who resisted Hitler's National
Socialist Workers' Party.
Bonhoeffer was himself influenced by
the Black preacher, Adam Clayton Powell Sr., pastor of Harlem's
Abyssinian Baptist Church, once the largest Protestant church in
America.
Martin Luther King, Jr., was also influenced by Henry David Thoreau, who wrote in his book,
In Civil Disobedience (1849):
"That government is best which governs least"
Martin Luther King, Jr., attended Booker T. Washington High School in Atlanta, 1942-44.
Booker T. Washington founded Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, and wrote in Up From Slavery (1901):
"I
resolved that I would permit no man, no matter what his color might be,
to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him. With God's help, I
believe that I have completely rid myself of any ill feeling toward the
Southern white man for any wrong that he may have inflicted upon my
race...
I pity from the bottom of my heart any individual who is so unfortunate as to get into the habit of holding race prejudice."
Booker T. Washington stated:
"In
the sight of God there is no color line, and we want to cultivate a
spirit that will make us forget that there is such a line anyway."
"I
have always had the greatest respect for the work of the Salvation Army
especially because I have noted that it draws no color line in
religion."
Get the booklet, Booker T. Washington-American Hero
Booker T. Washington wrote in Up >From Slavery (1901):
"There
is a class of race problem solvers who make a business of keeping the
troubles, the wrongs and the hardships of the Negro race before the
public...Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his
grievances because they do not want to lose their jobs...They don't want
the patient to get well...
Great men cultivate love...only little men cherish a spirit of hatred."
George Washington Carver, who taught at Tuskegee, wrote to Robert Johnson, March 24, 1925:
"Thank God I love humanity; complexion doesn't interest me one single bit."
George W. Carver wrote to YMCA official Jack Boyd in Denver, March 1, 1927:
"Keep
your hand in that of the Master, walk daily by His side, so that you
may lead others into the realms of true happiness, where a religion of
hate, (which poisons both body and soul) will be unknown, having in its
place the 'Golden Rule' way, which is the 'Jesus Way' of life, will
reign supreme."
Get the book, George Washington Carver-His Life and Faith in His Own Words
Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., was influenced by the non-violent methods of India's Mahatma Gandhi.
Gandhi
wrote in his autobiography of an incident on a ship with 800 passengers
traveling from India to the Natal Province of South Africa. When some
passengers learned that Gandhi was aboard, they grew furious.
As
Gandhi disembarked, they punched, kicked, and threw stones at him, but
he refused to retaliate and kept walking. He was finally rescued when
the wife of the town's police superintendent opened her parasol and
stood between Gandhi and the mob. Gandhi wrote:
"I hope God will
give me the courage and the sense to forgive them and to refrain from
bringing them to law. I have no anger against them. I am only sorry for
their ignorance and their narrowness. I know that they sincerely believe
that what they are doing today is right and proper. I have no reason
therefore to be angry with them."
On
March 6, 1984, President Ronald Reagan remarked at the annual
convention of the National Association of Evangelicals, meeting at the
Hyatt Regency Hotel in Columbus, Ohio:
"During the civil rights
struggles of the fifties and early sixties, millions worked for equality
in the name of their Creator. Civil rights leaders like
Dr. Martin Luther King
based all their efforts on the claim that black or white, each of us is
a child of God. And they stirred our nation to the very depths of its
soul."
On
January 20, 1997, Rev. Billy Graham delivered the invocation just prior
to the second inauguration of President Bill Clinton, stating:
"Oh, Lord, help us to be reconciled first to you and secondly to each other. May
Dr. Martin Luther King's
dream finally come true for all of us. Help us to learn our courtesy to
our fellow countrymen, that comes from the one who taught us that
'whatever you want me to do to you, do also to them.'
In proclaiming 1990 the International Year of Bible Reading, President George H.W. Bush stated:
"The historic speeches of Abraham Lincoln and
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., provide compelling evidence of the role Scripture played in shaping the struggle against slavery and discrimination."
On February 16, 2002, Dr. James Dobson addressed 3,500 attendees at the National Religious Broadcaster's convention:
"Those of you who do feel that the church has no responsibility in the cultural area...Suppose it were...1963, and
Martin Luther King
is sitting in a Birmingham jail and he is released. And he goes to a
church, yes, a church. And from that church, he comes out into the
streets of Birmingham and marches for civil rights. Do you oppose that?
Is that a violation of the separation of church and state?"
In his address at Montgomery, Alabama, December 31, 1955,
Martin Luther King, Jr., declared:
"If
you will protest courageously, and yet with dignity and Christian love,
when the history books are written in future generations, the
historians will have to pause and say, 'There lived a great people-a
black people-who injected new meaning and dignity into the veins of
civilization.'"
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., said August 28, 1963:
"Now is the time to open the doors of opportunity to all of God's children...
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."
American Minute-Notable Events of American Significance Remembered on the Date They Occurred
On April 16, 1963,
Rev. King wrote:
"I
must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish
brothers... I stand in the middle of two opposing forces in the Negro
community.
One is a force of complacency...
The other force is one of bitterness and hatred, and it comes perilously close to advocating violence.
It
is expressed in the various black nationalist groups that are springing
up across the nation, the largest and best-known being Elijah
Muhammad's Muslim movement...
Nourished by frustration over racial discrimination, this movement is made up of people who have lost faith in America...
I
have tried to stand between these two forces, saying that we need
emulate neither the 'do-nothingism' of the complacent nor the hatred of
the black nationalist.
For there is the more excellent way of love and non-violent protest.
I
am grateful to God that, through the influence of the Negro church, the
way of non-violence became an integral part of our struggle."
Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., proclaimed August 28, 1963:
"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 slaveowners will be able to sit
down together at the table of brotherhood...
"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...where little black boys and
black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white
girls and walk together as sisters and brothers."
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