Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. 

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From Atlanta

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was born in Atlanta Georgia the son of Rev. Michael King. He was educated a minister and had his first job in the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery Alabama 1954.

Rosa Parks

He had hardly been in Montgomery one year when the incident with Mrs. Rosa Parks took place. She had boarded a bus and taken one of the seats in the front. These seats were reserved for Whites, all the Blacks had to go to the back.

She was thrown off the bus and taken to court. The Supreme Court ruled in 1956 that segregation in the bus was unconstitutional.

Bus boycott

Dr. Martin Luther King helped organise the Montgomery bus boycott, which lasted for more than a year. This protest against the treatment of Rosa Parks and her fellow Blacks opened the road forwards as a leader for King.

Peaceful protest

He studied the life and teachings of Mahatma Gandhi and further developed the method of nonviolent civil disobedience. After the action in Montgomery King traveled around and gave speeches and wrote books.

March on Washington

In 1963 he organized the massive March on Washington (Aug. 28) where he held his most famous speech, "I Have a Dream". Time magazine appointed him “Man of the Year” in 1964 and later the very same year he was the youngest ever to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

Demonstration in Memphis Tennessee

Dr. King led a march through Memphis Tennessee on March 28th, 1968. The demonstration was arranged to support the strike of garbage workers. They had planned a peaceful nonviolent action, but the whole thing ended in a total chaos. People were fighting and stealing. To recover from the damage done by this riot, a new date for a march was set for April 4th, 1968.

Martin Luther King killed

Dr. King came to Memphis on April 3rd, 1968 and gave a sermon at the Masonic Temple that same evening. When  Dr. King was ready to go for dinner in the evening of April 4^th , a shot was heard and Dr. King fell to the floor. A gunshot in the neck killed one of the foremost spokesmen for Black rights.

Who shot?

The shots had come from a rooming house across the parking lot. A hunting rifle wrapped in a bundle was found in front of a shop next door to the rooming house. Two weeks later the finger prints found on the rifle were identified as belonging to James Earl Ray. He was finally arrested at Heathrow Airport in London trying to board a plane bound for Brussels.

Still not clear?

In later years a lot of questions have been asked about the killing of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Some evidence has indicated the possibility that they caught the wrong man in the end.