Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy: Courage, determination, commitment
The life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was cut short by an assassin’s bullet on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee. But a half-century later his powerful influence lives on, a legacy of courage, determination and commitment to the highest ideals of our nation.
From early in life, King defied the cruel system of segregation into which he was born on Jan. 15, 1929, in Atlanta.
An incident that happened when he was only 15 presaged his future role as leader of the movement to end segregation, discrimination and racism. After taking part in the state finals of a civic club oratorical contest in Valdosta, the teenager was returning to Atlanta with his teacher on a popular bus line of that time. When passengers changed buses at Macon, the boy and his teacher took seats near the front of the bus — reserved for whites only under state law. The driver ordered student and teacher to the back of the bus, but the boy refused, giving in only to pleading by his teacher fearful of the consequences. To show his defiance, young King stood all the way for the 100-mile ride back to Atlanta.
Out of that searing indignity and many others, a strong compulsion grew within Martin Luther King Jr. to fight the segregation, discrimination and prejudice that held sway in the South. His father set an example, once angrily leaving a shoe store rather than move to the “colored” section. Young Martin told his father, “When I get to be a man, I’m going to fight it. There’s going to be a great revolt.”
That revolt began many years later after King earned degrees at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Crozer Theological Seminary and Boston College where he received a doctorate in systematic theology. The landmark year was 1955. King had become pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, almost within the shadow of the Alabama Capitol in Montgomery. He and his wife Coretta Scott King had their plate full with his ministerial duties and a newborn daughter, Yolanda. Then on Dec. 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, an African-American seamstress, refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a Montgomery bus. She was arrested, triggering the famous bus boycott by African-Americans led by King — resulting in his first arrest in the civil rights movement in January 1956, nearly a year before bus segregation was invalidated by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Violence answered the early success of the civil rights movement in early 1956 when bombs went off at four black churches and the homes of two ministers in Montgomery. A bomb thrown on King’s front porch failed to explode. But instead of being intimidated, King, joined by fellow minister Ralph Abernathy, stepped up the new nonviolent resistance to segregation. Violence continued to answer and King came within a hair’s breadth of death when he was stabbed during a book-signing in Harlem. After moving back to Atlanta to become co-pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church with his father, King was arrested on a warrant charging perjury, then released on $2,000 bond and later cleared by a jury, only to be sent to prison in Georgia in 1960 for violating probation on a traffic charge, then bailed out after intervention by Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kennedy.
And so it went — marches, civil disobedience, jail. King was arrested in Albany in 1962 where he led demonstrations that were stymied by the nonviolent approach of the police chief. Then came the campaign to end segregation in Birmingham, confronting Police Commissioner Bull Connor who vowed to stop the demonstrations, bringing out water hoses and police dogs to disperse teenage marchers and again King went to jail, as did thousands of youngsters. This culminated in an agreement for desegregation of lunch counters and other public facilities plus other concessions.
More violence answered with the bombing of the home of King’s brother, A.D. King, a Birmingham pastor, followed by rioting and looting by angry blacks. The pattern continued as King led a huge march in Detroit, showing the North was not immune to racism. Then came the historic March on Washington of August 28, 1963, when King delivered his eloquent and widely acclaimed “I Have a Dream” speech, looking for the day when America would “live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’”
King kept on despite arrests, jailing, threats and violence, leading campaigns not only across the South but in the North as well, resulting in the 1964 Civil Rights Act outlawing discrimination in public accommodations and the 1965 Voting Rights Act growing out of the Selma to Montgomery march, historic legislation that spelled the end of state-sanctioned segregation. As progress came in this area, King sought to improve the economic lot of African-Americans, planning a “Poor People’s Campaign” in Washington, D.C.
Underscoring his efforts in March 1968, King went to Memphis to support striking city sanitation workers, most of them AfricanAmericans. After a march turned violent, he returned to Atlanta for a few days, and then went back to Memphis where on the late afternoon of Thursday, April 4, he was shot and fatally wounded by an assassin. Missouri prison escapee James Earl Ray pleaded guilty and died in prison in 1998, his motive never determined.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. died in the fight for human dignity and equal rights. Now it is up to us, the living, to keep alive his dream that America will one day, as fully as is humanly possible “live out the true meaning of its creed ... that all men are created equal.”