M.L.KING.JR

MARTIN LUTHER KING JR
Martin was born in 1929 he was an African American minister who was the main leader of the civil rights movement in the United States during the 1950"s and 1960"s
He had a magnificent speaking ability which enabled him to effectively express the demands of the African Americans for social justice. He won the 1964 Nobel Prize for leading nonviolent civil rights demonstrations. King's civil rights activities began in 1955 with a protest of the segregated bus system in the American city of Montgomery. Rosa Parks was arrested there for disobeying a city law that required black to give up their seats on buses when white people wanted to sit on them or to sit in the same row. King served as president of the organization. In 1956, the United States Supreme Court ordered the city Montgomery to provide equal integrated seating on public buses. The boycott's success won king national fame and identified him as the symbol of Southern black's new efforts to fight racial injustice and the idea that they were inferior. In 1960 black college students began to sit at tables and enter the same bathrooms. In 1963 king led a huge demonstration to protest racial discrimination in Alabama. Police used dogs and fire hoses to drive back the peaceful protestors including children. President Kennedy presented congress with a civil rights bill. Then King organized a huge march in the capital Washington to protest unemployment and black poverty when he said his famous speech "I HAVE A DREAM" In 1964 Congress passed the civil rights bill that prohibited racial discrimination in public places. Then king traveled to Memphis to support the black garbage worker's strike. He shot and killed on Apirl 4 1908 by a white escaped convict James Earl Ray. On king's tombstone are the words.
Free At Last." "