Jan 15th 2020

Martin Luther King, Jr., (January 15, 1929-April 4, 1968) was born Michael Luther King, Jr., but later had his name changed to Martin. His grandfather began the family’s long tenure as pastors of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, his father served from then and from 1960 until his death Martin Luther acted as co-pastor. He attended segregated public schools in Georgia, graduating from high school at the age of fifteen and he received the B. A. degree in 1948 from Morehouse College. Then three years of theological study at Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania, awarded the B.D. in 1951, completed his residence for the doctorate in 1953 and receiving the degree in 1955. 

He met and married Coretta Scott in Boston, a young woman of uncommon intellectual and artistic attainments. Two sons and two daughters were born into the family.

In 1954, Martin Luther King became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. Always a strong worker for civil rights for members of his race, King was, by this time, a member of the executive committee of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. He was ready, then, early in December, 1955, he accepted the leadership of the first great Negro nonviolent in the United States. The bus boycott lasted 382 days. On December 21, 1956, the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional the laws requiring segregation on buses, Negroes and whites rode the buses as equals. During the days of boycott, King was arrested, his home was bombed, he was subjected to personal abuse, but he emerged as a Negro leader of the first rank.

In 1957 he was elected president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization formed to provide new leadership for the now burgeoning civil rights movement. The ideals for this organization he took from Christianity; its operational techniques from Gandhi. In the eleven-year period between 1957 and 1968, King traveled over six million miles and spoke over twenty-five hundred times, appearing wherever there was injustice, protest, and action; and meanwhile he wrote five books and numerous articles. 

He led a massive protest in Birmingham, Alabama, that caught the attention of the entire world, providing what he called a coalition of conscience. and inspiring his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” a manifesto of the Negro revolution; he planned the drives in Alabama for the registration of Negroes as voters; he directed the peaceful march on Washington, D.C., of 250,000 people to whom he delivered his address, “l Have a Dream”, he conferred with President John F. Kennedy and campaigned for President Lyndon B. Johnson; he was arrested upwards of twenty times and assaulted at least four times; he was awarded five honorary degrees; was named Man of the Year by Time magazine in 1963; and became not only the symbolic leader of American blacks but also a world figure.

At the age of thirty-five, Martin Luther King, Jr., was the youngest man to have received the Nobel Peace Prize. When notified of his selection, he announced that he would turn over the prize money of $54,123 to the furtherance of the civil rights movement.

On the evening of April 4, 1968, while standing on the balcony of his motel room in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was to lead a protest march in sympathy with striking garbage workers of that city, he was assassinated.

Another day of coughing.

Did get to the grocery store, 

Only to learn I am more exhausted

Than I thought!

20 minutes felt like hours

And I came right home

To pjs, tea and the recliner again.

I have now coughed enough

Everything is sore and feels bruised.

We did manage to have an online meeting

And we posted about the donations!

Off to bed now

As I have a Dr appointment 

Tomorrow morning at 10am

In North London....

Good night from John Street