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History > 20th century > USA > Civil rights > Martin Luther King Jr. 1929-1968
MLK50: Honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Video
To honor the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr’s death, President Obama and Congressman John Lewis participated in a My Brother’s Keeper Alliance roundtable with students from Ron Brown College Preparatory High School in Washington, D.C.
President Obama, Congressman Lewis, and the students discussed Dr. King’s legacy and how his mission remains relevant in today’s world.
YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/
The Rev. James E. Groppi, center, at a demonstration in Milwaukee in 1968.
The city is one of the most segregated in America.
Photograph: Paul Shane/Associated Press
Racial Violence in Milwaukee Was Decades in the Making, Residents Say NYT August 14, 2016
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/15/us/
The funeral procession for the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Atlanta on April 9, 1968.
He was assassinated at a Memphis hotel five days earlier.
Photograph: Don Hogan Charles/The New York Times
Don Hogan Charles, Lauded Photographer of Civil Rights Era, Dies at 79 NYT DEC. 25, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/25/
Mourners at the funeral of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Atlanta in 1968.
Photograph: John Shearer
John Shearer, Who Photographed Tumultuous 1960s, Dies at 72 Mr. Shearer joined the staff of Look magazine at the age of 20, becoming one of the few black photographers at a major national publication. NYT June 27, 2019
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/27/
From left, at the 1968 funeral for Dr. King: his father, the Rev. Martin Luther King Sr.; his mother, Alberta Williams King; his wife, Coretta Scott King; his brother, the Rev. A.D. King; and the singer Harry Belafonte.
Photograph: Don Hogan Charles/The New York Times
Don Hogan Charles, Lauded Photographer of Civil Rights Era, Dies at 79 NYT DEC. 25, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/25/
The body of Martin Luther King lying in state in Memphis, Tennessee. Pictured nearest the coffin are (left to right) Revd Ralph Abernathy, Bernard Lee, Andrew Young
Photograph: Keystone/Hulton
06.04.1968 Martin Luther King is killed; Harlem reacts WJ Weatherby, the Guardian The Guardian G2 pp. 16-17 3.4.2006 > Full text
Harlem — the accepted capital of Negro America — had lost its King today. Adam Clayton Powell carries on like its king and Stokely Carmichael sometimes speaks with a regal “we”, but their following is small compared with that of “Martin”, as everyone called him.
Harlem has seen the big men come and go; only Martin seemed to have the trick of survival.
He was never treated here with quite the awe Negro Alabama or Negro Mississippi showed him.
They rarely touched the hem of his garment as he walked by, as some did in the deep south.
That’s not the hip Harlem way.
But even those who were not impressed by his religion or his politics were impressed by his staying power in the white strongholds.
Today it is as though a rock of ages has crumbled away: the world of Harlem seems even more insecure now that it knows not even Martin could survive any longer.
Seventh Avenue, the main boulevard, looks like a street in mourning on this grey day, and for a white man it is about as safe as a street in Vietnam.
Mayor John Lindsay, usually among the more acceptable of white people, found it too dangerous to show himself and finally drove around in a car.
White cab drivers wouldn’t take you up there this morningafter the bars closed. It simply wasn’t safe unless you had a Negro passport.
Not even if you were big and well dressed and therefore could be mistaken for a cop
This is a day when even one’s Harlem friends look the other way or act as though their grief is private; they have lost someone related to them but not to you.
It is pointless to recall the days of seeing Martin on so many marches since the 50s; all occasions he survived.
Memories of shared moments now do not speak as loudly as your white face.
You pass the corner of Seventh Avenue and 125th Street, where Malcolm X used to preach.
Malcolm, dead Malcolm, is the only one they speak of now with the same respect they always accorded the live Martin.
Malcolm, Martin — twin martyrs now, and our dream must be of what might have happened.
With both gone, no alliance seems possible in the movement, and Harlem, as usual, seems to be grieving for what might have been.
1960s
FBI’s Cointelpro program
The FBI used similar tactics to disrupt, discredit and neutralize leaders of the civil rights and anti-war movements of the 1960s.
The FBI’s Cointelpro program targeting civil rights leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Stokely Carmichael was specifically designed to “[p]revent the rise of a ‘messiah’ who could unify and electrify the militant black nationalist movement” rather than to prevent any violent acts they might perpetrate.
The methods included informant-driven disinformation campaigns designed to spark conflict within the movement, discourage donors and supporters, and even break up marriages.
Overt investigative activity was also used, as one stated goal of the Cointelpro program was to inspire fear among activists by convincing them that an FBI agent lurked behind every mailbox.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/26/
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/26/
Izola Ware Curry 1916-2015
Ms. Curry in 1958.
Photograph: Associated Press
Izola Ware Curry, Who Stabbed King in 1958, Dies at 98 NYT MARCH 21, 2015
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/22/us/
mentally ill woman who in 1958 stabbed the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at a Harlem book signing — an episode that a decade later would become a rhetorical touchstone in the last oration of his life —
(...)
What surprised many observers at the time of the crime was that Ms. Curry herself was black, the daughter of sharecroppers from the rural South.
Questions persisted about what could have moved her to attack Dr. King, then a 29-year-old Alabama preacher who had assumed the national stage amid the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955-56.
The stabbing nearly cost Dr. King his life, requiring hours of delicate surgery to remove Ms. Curry’s blade, a seven-inch ivory-handled steel letter opener, which had lodged near his heart.
If he had so much as sneezed, his doctors later told him, he would not have survived.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/22/us/i
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/13/
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/22/us/
Marcus Wayne Chenault Jr. 1951-1995
(Marcus Wayne Chenault Jr.) killed the mother of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at a Sunday service in Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta in 1974
(...)
Mr. Chenault, the son of a middle-class black family in Dayton, Ohio, had just been welcomed to the church for a morning service when he rose from his seat in the front pew, drew two pistols and started firing.
Alberta King, 70, was fatally struck at the church's new organ as she was playing "The Lord's Prayer."
(...)
One woman among the 400 worshippers was wounded.
At his arraignment, Mr. Chenault told a magistrate that he had come to Atlanta "on a mission," and said he decided months earlier that black ministers were a menace to black people and must be killed.
He also told the police that his mission was to kill the Rev. Martin Luther King Sr., but he shot Mrs. King instead because she was close to him.
Their son Dr. King, the civil rights leader, was assassinated by an escaped convict, James Earl Ray, in Memphis on April 4, 1968.
http://www.nytimes.com/1995/08/22/
https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/
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Martin Luther (Michael) King, Sr. 1897-1984
In a speech expressing his views on ‘‘the true mission of the Church’’ Martin Luther King, Sr. told his fellow clergymen that they must not forget the words of God:
‘‘The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the Gospel to the poor.…
In this we find we are to do something about the brokenhearted, poor, unemployed, the captive, the blind, and the bruised’’ (King, Sr., 17 October 1940).
Martin Luther King, Jr. credited his father with influencing his decision to join the ministry, saying: ‘‘He set forth a noble example that I didn’t [mind] following’’ (Papers 1:363).
King, Sr. was born Michael King on 19 December 1897, in Stockbridge, Georgia.
The eldest son of James and Delia King, King, Sr. attended school from three to five months a year at the Stockbridge Colored School.
‘‘We had no books, no materials to write with, and no blackboard,’’ he wrote, ‘‘But I loved going’’ (King, Sr., 37).
King experienced a number of brutal incidents while growing up in the rural South, including witnessing the lynching of a black man.
On another occasion he had to subdue his drunken father who was assaulting his mother.
His mother took the children to Floyd Chapel Baptist Church to ‘‘ease the harsh tone of farm life’’ according to King (King, Sr., 26).
Michael grew to respect the few black preachers who were willing to speak out against racial injustices, despite the risk of violent white retaliation.
He gradually developed an interest in preaching, initially practicing eulogies on the family’s chickens.
By the end of 1917, he had decided to become a minister.
https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/
https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/
Alberta Williams King 1903-1974
Alberta Williams King, mother of Martin Luther King, Jr., was born in Atlanta in 1903, the only surviving child of Jennie Celeste Williams and Adam Daniel Williams, pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church.
King often spoke of the positive influence his mother had on his moral development, deeming her ‘‘the best mother in the world’’ (Papers 1:161).
In a piece he wrote as a student at Crozer Theological Seminary, he described his mother as being ‘‘behind the scene setting forth those motherly cares, the lack of which leaves a missing link in life’’ (Papers 1:360). https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/king-alberta-williams
She was shot and killed in the Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta, Georgia, by Marcus Wayne Chenault six years after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alberta_Williams_King https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King_Jr._National_Historical_Park
https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/
https://www.nytimes.com/1995/08/22/
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Alfred Daniel Williams King 1930-1969
Although Alfred Daniel King, called A.D. by family and friends, lived in the shadows of his famous brother, Martin Luther King, Jr., he was a participant in the African American freedom struggle often appearing at his brother’s side in movements in Atlanta and Birmingham.
http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/encyclopedia/
https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/
Memphis, Tennessee
is shot to death in Memphis by an escaped convict,
News of Dr. King’s death soon spread throughout the nation.
At a campaign rally, a strong supporter of civil rights and a Democrat running for president, commemorated Dr. King in an address.
“What we need in the United States is not division;
what we need in the United States is not hatred;
what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness;
but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or they be black,” he said. [
https://www.youtube.com/
(Just more than two months later, Mr. Kennedy would also be killed by an assassin’s bullet after a campaign appearance in California.)
Riots broke out in many cities after the fatal shooting of Dr. King.
The Times said that in Memphis, the “tragedy had been followed by incidents that included sporadic shooting, fires, bricks and bottles thrown at policemen, and looting that started in Negro districts and then spread over the city.” http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/04/april-4-1968-the-assassination-of-martin-luther-king/
RFK's Martin Luther King Jr. Assassination Speech April 1968
Robert F. Kennedy's Martin Luther King Jr. Assassination Speech Video April 1968
YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCrx_u3825g
https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/
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The New York Times reporter Earl Caldwell and Martin Luther King Jr. at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis shortly before the assassination on April 4, 1968.
Photograph: Barney Sellers/Memphis Commercial Appeal
The Lone Journalist on the Scene When King Was Shot and the Newsroom He Rallied NYT April 3, 2018
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/03/
Earl Caldwell (standing next to police officer) on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel as Martin Luther King Jr. lies mortally wounded.
Caldwell’s room was one floor below.
He raced up after he heard the shot.
Photograph: Joseph Louw/The LIFE Images Collection, via Getty Images
The Lone Journalist on the Scene When King Was Shot and the Newsroom He Rallied NYT April 3, 2018
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/03/
Martin Luther King Jr. 1929 - April 4,1968
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Martin Luther King Jr. [ second from right ] marching in Memphis, March 28, 1968.
[ right: Ralph Abernathy ]
Photograph: Jack Thornell/Associated Press
What the Tumultuous Year 1968 Can Teach Us About Today
Oct. 24, 2020
Dr. King at the reception after the W.E.B. Du Bois Centennial Tribute at Carnegie Hall, where he gave the keynote speech. 1968.
Photograph: Builder Levy
What Martin Luther King Jr. Meant to New York NYT Jan. 11, 2018
https://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2018/01/11/
President Lyndon B. Johnson (L) and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (R)
Date 03/18/1966
Source: Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum. Image Serial Number: A2133-10. http://photolab.lbjlib.utexas.edu/detail.asp?id=1083
Author: Yoichi R. Okamoto, White House Press Office (WHPO)
Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Martin_Luther_King%2C_Jr._and_Lyndon_Johnson.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King,_Jr
Martin Luther King Jr leads singing marchers towards Montgomery, Alabama, on 21 March 1965.
John Lewis, then the chairman of the SNCC, is on the right.
Photographer: Matt Herron
Matt Herron, chronicler of the US civil rights movement – in pictures The photographer, who covered protesters and volunteers across the south, has died at 89. His shot of a policeman assaulting a child won him a World Press Photo award. Images courtesy of Take Stock/Topfoto G Fri 21 Aug 2020 11.42 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2020/aug/21/
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Martin Luther King Jr. at a rally held in Selma, Alabama, during marches to Montgomery.
Photograph: Flip Schulke/Corbis
Forty years after the shot rang out, race fears still haunt the US The Observer Paul Harris 30.3.2008
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/mar/30/
Photo: Time Caption:
Observer 30.3.2008
PHOTOGRAPHS BY FLIP SCHULKE/CORBIS Time added 12.2.2005 http://www.time.com/time/photoessays/mlk/
3 April 1968
Memphis, Tennessee
Martin Lurther King delivers his last speech "I've Been to the Mountaintop"
https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oehry1JC9Rk
1968
Memphis Sanitation Workers Strike
How Dr. King Changed a Sanitation Worker’s Life Video Times Documentaries NYT April 4, 2018
YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/
The night before his assassination in April 1968, Martin Luther King told a group of striking sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee:
“We’ve got to give ourselves to this struggle until the end.
Nothing would be more tragic than to stop at this point in Memphis.
We’ve got to see it through” (King, “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop, 217).
King believed the struggle in Memphis exposed the need for economic equality and social justice that he hoped his Poor People’s Campaign would highlight nationally.
https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/
https://www.youtube.com/
1968
MLK's Poor People Campaign - King died before it started
In 1968, Poor Americans Came to D.C. To Protest, Some By Mule Video
Fifty years ago photographer and folklorist Roland Freeman hitched his hopes to a humble caravan of mule-driven wagons.
He hadn't gone to school for photography, but Freeman was inspired by the courage of the civil rights activists on the journey from Mississippi to Washington, D.C.
His photo project would be the beginning of a long career documenting the African American community.
Video by Ben de la Cruz, Walter Ray Watson, Nicole Werbeck, Pearl Mak and Keith Jenkins/NPR
YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/
"We're coming to Washington in a poor people's campaign," King announced at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., on March 31, 1968.
"I was in Marks, Miss., the other day, which is in Quitman County, the poorest county in the United States.
And I tell you I saw hundreds of black boys and black girls walking the streets with no shoes to wear."
https://www.npr.org/2018/05/13/
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/19/
https://www.npr.org/sections/pictureshow/2018/06/15/
https://www.youtube.com/
https://www.npr.org/2018/05/13/
4 February 1968
Atlanta, Georgia
Ebenezer Baptist Church
King's sermon, (...) was an adaptation of the 1952 homily ‘‘Drum-Major Instincts’’ by J. Wallace Hamilton, a well-known, liberal, white Methodist preacher.
King encouraged his congregation to seek greatness, but to do so through service and love.
King concluded the sermon by imagining his own funeral, downplaying his famous achievements and emphasizing his heart to do right. http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/documentsentry/doc_the_drum_major_instinct/
https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/02/
Dr. King surrounded by a crowd before his speech at the United Nations on April 15, 1967.
Photograph: Benedict J. Fernandez/Museum of the City of New York
What Martin Luther King Jr. Meant to New York John Leland NYT Jan. 11, 2018
https://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2018/01/11/
April 4, 1967
Martin Lurther King delivers his first public antiwar speech, at New York’s Riverside Church http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/chronologyentry/1967_04_04/
On April 4, 1967, exactly one year before his assassination, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stepped up to the lectern at the Riverside Church in Manhattan.
The United States had been in active combat in Vietnam for two years and tens of thousands of people had been killed, including some 10,000 American troops.
The political establishment — from left to right — backed the war, and more than 400,000 American service members were in Vietnam, their lives on the line.
Many of King’s strongest allies urged him to remain silent about the war or at least to soft-pedal any criticism.
They knew that if he told the whole truth about the unjust and disastrous war he would be falsely labeled a Communist, suffer retaliation and severe backlash, alienate supporters and threaten the fragile progress of the civil rights movement.
King rejected all the well-meaning advice and said, “I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice.”
Quoting a statement by the Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam, he said, “A time comes when silence is betrayal” and added, “that time has come for us in relation to Vietnam.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/19/
Dr. King delivered the address, known variously as “Beyond Vietnam” and “A Time to Break Silence,” in Manhattan on April 4, 1967.
“A time comes when silence is betrayal,” he said.
“And that time has come for us in relation to Vietnam.”
He added: “If we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in Vietnam.
If we do not stop our war against the people of Vietnam immediately, the world will be left with no other alternative than to see this as some horrible, clumsy and deadly game we have decided to play.”
The speech, which articulated what was then a relatively unpopular position, touched off a firestorm.
In an editorial titled “Dr. King’s Disservice to His Cause,” Life magazine called it “a demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi.”
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People described the address as “a serious tactical error.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/22/us/
https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/beyond-vietnam https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/vietnam-war
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/19/
https://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2018/01/11/
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/05/
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/04/
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/22/
Dr. King writes notes before delivering his “Beyond Vietnam” speech at Riverside Church. 1967.
Photograph: The Estate of John C. Goodwin
What Martin Luther King Jr. Meant to New York By John Leland NYT Jan. 11, 2018
https://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2018/01/11
1966
Civil rights leaders Floyd B. McKissick, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Stokely Carmichael participate in voter registration march after originator James H. Meredith was shot
http://images.google.com/hosted/life/fdce1583fcdb2d6a.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/october/1/
1966
Ernest Avants and two fellow Ku Klux Klansman abduct and kill Ben Chester White, a black farmhand, in the hope that the heinousness of the crime would lure the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to Natchez, Miss.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/21/us/21kornblum.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/17/us/
May 9, 1966
Martin L. King on voting--outtakes
In 1966, King turned his sights toward another kind of march, a more personal movement that called on people in an individual and private way.
Standing at a podium on a damp Sunday — Mother's Day — in Kingstree, S.C., King told a crowd of local people that their struggle wasn't over.
Though Congress had passed legislation assuring everyone the right to vote without interference, he said, they were only beginning the battle.
King said that people must make sure all of their friends and family register to vote and, after getting people registered, must take on "another, even greater responsibility.
And that is to go out and vote."
http://www.npr.org/blogs/npr-history-dept/2015/04/02/
http://www.npr.org/blogs/npr-history-dept/2015/04/02/
https://mirc.sc.edu/islandora/object/usc:1157
Dr. King playing pool in Chicago in 1966.
Photograph: Bob Fitch, via Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries
Bob Fitch, Photojournalist of Civil Rights Era, Dies at 76 NYT MAY 3, 2016
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/04/
July 4, 1965
King preaches “The American Dream”
King delivers the sermon to his home congregation in Atlanta.
He tells the people at Ebenezer Baptist Church that he has a dream that one day the promise of the Declaration of Independence will be fulfilled. http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/chronologyentry/1965_07_04/
https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/
March 25, 1965
Montgomery, Alabama
On the steps of the State Capitol building, Martin Luther King delivers his "How Long, Not Long" speech to 25,000 people
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAYITODNvlM
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/nov/18/
The Ferry: A Civil Rights Story NYT 23 May 2015
The Ferry: A Civil Rights Story Video Retro Report 8 March 2015
Weeks before Selma's Bloody Sunday in 1965, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. urged residents of Gee's Bend, Ala., to vote, and fed a continuing fight over a small ferry that would last for decades.
Read the story here: http://nyti.ms/1A92k6g Visit Retro Report's website: http://www.RetroReport.org
YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIup5K3J5vc
Racial killings
February 1965
Civil rights activist Jimmy Lee Jackson (1938-1965)
On the night of 18 February 1965, an Alabama state trooper shot Jimmie Lee Jackson in the stomach as he tried to protect his mother from being beaten at Mack’s Café.
Jackson, along with several other African Americans, had taken refuge there from troopers breaking up a night march protesting the arrest of James Orange, a field secretary for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in Marion, Alabama.
Jackson died from his wounds eight days later.
Speaking at his funeral, King called Jackson, “a martyred hero of a holy crusade for freedom and human dignity” (King, 3 March 1965). http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/encyclopedia/enc_jackson_jimmie_lee_19381965/
https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/indictment-in-landmark-civil-rights-slay/
http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/face/Article.jsp?id=h-2011
1965
Washington, DC
Nazi Picketing White House Arrival Of Martin Luther King
December 10, 1964
on the occasion of the award of the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo
https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/
Martin Luther King Jr. leaving the office of J. Edgar Hoover, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, in December 1964.
The F.B.I. conducted extensive surveillance of Dr. King’s private life.
Photograph: Bettmann, via Getty Images
His Martin Luther King Biography Was a Classic. His Latest King Piece Is Causing a Furor. David Garrow found F.B.I. documents alleging King stood by during a rape.
But some scholars question whether to trust records created as part of a smear campaign. NYT June 4, 2019
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/04/
Martin Luther King in London December 1964
In the pulpit … Martin Luther King at St Paul’s Cathedral, London, 6 December 1964.
Photograph: Terry Disney/Getty Images
Martin Luther King in London, 1964: reflections on a landmark visit G Tuesday 2 December 2014 18.52 GMT Last modified on Wednesday 3 December 2014 00.05 GMT
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/dec/02/
on 6 December, as he travelled from the US to Oslo to collect the 1964 Nobel peace prize for his leadership of the civil rights movement, King broke his trip to preach a scholarly sermon in front of a 3,000-strong congregation at St Paul’s Cathedral.
His evensong address, The Three Dimensions of a Complete Life, is not one of the speeches best known by the wider public, but it underpinned his theological career.
It was the sermon he first preached as his trial address at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery in 1954.
He subsequently gave versions of that sermon every year until his assassination in 1968.
St Paul’s, grand and imposing, seemed an unlikely stopping point for a man of establishment-shaking politics, but it was the perfect London platform for King’s sermon.
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/dec/02/
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/dec/02/
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Municipal Auditorium, Savannah, Ga. January 1964.
Photograph: Fred Baldwin
At 90, Photographer Fred Baldwin Still Has ‘So Much Work Left to Do’ Having documented Sami herders and the civil rights movement, and having just published a memoir, the photographer says his life’s work is far from complete. NYT May 29, 2019
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/29/
18 January 1964
President Lyndon B. Johnson (1908-1973) meets with Civil Rights leaders
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968)
Whitney Young (1921-1971)
March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom Martin Luther King > "I have a dream" - August 28, 1963
Birmingham, Alabama "Letter from Birmingham Jail" August 1963
Ms. Abernathy, right, with Ms. King and a fellow civil rights activist, Fred L. Shuttlesworth, in 1963 as they left the Birmingham jail after visiting Dr. King there.
Photograph: Associated Press
Juanita Abernathy, a Force in the Civil Rights Movement, Dies at 88 The wife of the Rev. Dr. Ralph Abernathy, she was an activist in her own right in the struggle to end segregation and to secure the vote. NYT Sept. 13, 2019
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/13/
https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/ https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/letter-birmingham-jail https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/13/
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/08/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/30/
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/13/us/
Martin Luther King Speech at the Great March on Detroit 23 June 1963
Martin Luther King, Jr. speaks to a crowd in Detroit on June 23, 1963.
Photograph: AP
Deconstructing Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Dream by Allison Keyes
June 23, 2013 9:00 AM
http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2013/06/23/
Two months before the March on Washington, King stood before a throng of 25,000 people at Cobo Hall in Detroit to expound upon making “the American Dream a reality”.
King repeatedly exclaimed, “I have a dream this afternoon”.
He articulated the words of the prophets Amos and Isaiah, declaring that “justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream,” for “every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low”.
As he had done numerous times in the previous two years, King concluded his message imagining the day “when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing with the Negroes in the spiritual of old: Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”.
http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/documentsentry/
Parts of King's Detroit speech may sound familiar to those who have heard the address he gave at the March on Washington.
But the Detroit speech was tailored especially for a city with a long history of Civil Rights activism.
(...)
King gave his Detroit speech just two weeks after NAACP field secretary Medgar Evers was assassinated.
His speech also came on the heels of protests in Birmingham, Ala., where police chief Bull Connor ordered police to use fire hoses and dogs to break up demonstrations.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2013/06/23/
https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/
http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2013/06/23/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Q3fosthiFU
May 2–5, 1963
Birmingham, Alabama
Children’s Crusade
The 1963 campaign to desegregate Birmingham, Alabama, generated national publicity and federal action because of the violent response by local authorities and the decision by Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to recruit children for demonstrations.
The “Children’s Crusade” added a new dynamic to the struggle in Birmingham and was a major factor in the success of the campaign.
Aware that support for protests in Birmingham was waning during April 1963, King and the SCLC looked for ways to jumpstart the campaign.
When the arrest and jailing of King did little to attract more protestors, SCLC staff member James Bevel proposed recruiting local students, arguing that while many adults may be reluctant to participate in demonstrations for fear of losing their jobs, their children had less to lose.
King initially had reservations, but after deliberation he agreed, hoping for the action to “subpoena the conscience of the nation to the judgment seat of morality.”
SCLC and the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR) members immediately canvassed colleges and high schools for volunteers and began training them on the tactics of nonviolent direct action. http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/encyclopedia/enc_childrens_crusade/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children's_Crusade_(1963)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Moore_%28photographer%29
April 26, 1963
Birmingham, Alabama
Martin Luther King is found guilty, speaks at mass meeting
King is found guilty of criminal contempt.
He later speaks at the evening mass meeting, urging the crowd to continue the boycott and the campaign to integrate worship services. http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/chronologyentry/1963_04_26/
http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/
April 12, 1963
Birmingham, Alabama
On Good Friday, 12 April, King was arrested in Birmingham after violating the anti-protest injunction and was kept in solitary confinement.
During this time King penned the “Letter from Birmingham Jail” on the margins of the Birmingham News, in reaction to a statement published in that newspaper by eight Birmingham clergymen condemning the protests.
King’s request to call his wife, Coretta Scott King, who was at home in Atlanta recovering from the birth of their fourth child, was denied.
After she communicated her concern to the Kennedy administration, Birmingham officials permitted King to call home.
Bail money was made available, and he was released on 20 April 1963. https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/birmingham-campaign
https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/birmingham-campaign
April 12, 1963
Birmingham, Alabama
King and Abernathy are arrested in Birmingham
King and Ralph Abernathy are arrested for violating a state circuit court injunction against protests, after having led a march the same day.
King is placed in solitary confinement in the Birmingham jail where he will soon write "Letter From Birmingham Jail." http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/chronologyentry/1963_04_12/
https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/
In April 1963 King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) joined with Birmingham, Alabama’s existing local movement, the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR), in a massive direct action campaign to attack the city’s segregation system by putting pressure on Birmingham’s merchants during the Easter season, the second biggest shopping season of the year.
As ACMHR founder Fred Shuttlesworth stated in the group’s ‘‘Birmingham Manifesto,’’ the campaign was ‘‘a moral witness to give our community a chance to survive’’ (ACMHR, 3 April 1963). http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/encyclopedia/enc_birmingham_campaign/
https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/
Dr. King talks with police after an assault at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Birmingham, 1962.
James Karales, courtesy of the Estate of James Karales
Race, Civil Rights and Photography NYT Jan. 18, 2016 http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/01/18/race-civil-rights-and-photography/
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his daughter Yolanda. Atlanta, 1962.
Dr. King and other civil rights leaders relied on the power of photographs to persuade and to motivate change during the Civil Rights Movement.
Photograph: James Karales, courtesy of the estate of James Karales
Race, Civil Rights and Photography The New York Times Jan. 18, 2016
https://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/01/18/
27 November 1962
I Have a Dream speech - first version
King’s 55-minute speech at a high school gymnasium in Rocky Mount on 27 November 1962
Months before the Rev Martin Luther King Jr delivered his famous I Have a Dream speech to hundreds of thousands of people gathered in Washington in 1963, he fine-tuned his civil rights message before a much smaller audience in North Carolina.
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/aug/11/
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/aug/11/
Martin Luther King Jr.’s first mprisonment October 1960
Martin Luther King Jr. under arrest, Oct. 19, 1960.
Photograph: Associated Press
How Martin Luther King Jr.’s Imprisonment Changed American Politics Forever NYT Jan. 12, 2021
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/12/
The story begins in mid-October 1960 with Martin Luther King Jr.’s incarceration (his first) in a Georgia jail cell and ends three weeks later with John F. Kennedy’s narrow victory over Richard M. Nixon in the most competitive presidential election of the 20th centurY.
Kennedy’s razor-thin triumph depended on several factors ranging from his youthful charm to Mayor Richard J. Daley’s ability to pad the Democratic vote in Chicago.
But, as the Kendricks ably demonstrate, one crucial factor in Kennedy’s electoral success was the late surge of Black voters into the Democratic column.
In all likelihood, this surge represented the difference between victory and defeat in at least five swing states, including Illinois, Michigan and New Jersey, ensuring Kennedy’s comfortable margin (303 to 219) in the Electoral College.
This last-minute shift was precipitated by two impulsive phone calls: one from John Kennedy to Coretta Scott King, expressing his concern for her jailed husband’s safety; the second from the candidate’s younger brother Robert to Oscar Mitchell, the Georgia judge overseeing King’s incarceration.
Arrested on two minor charges — participating in a student-led sit-in at Rich’s department store in Atlanta and driving with an Alabama license after changing his residency to Georgia — King was thought to be in grave danger after a manacled, late-night transfer from an Atlanta jail to a remote rural facility in Klan-infested DeKalb County, and soon thereafter to the state’s notorious maximum-security prison in Reidsville.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/12/
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/12/
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. holds his two-year-old son Martin Luther King III [ born October 23, 1957 ] as he stands near a burnt cross in front of his home in Atlanta.
Photograph: Getty Images, via New-York Historical Society
Norman Rockwell’s Vision of F.D.R.’s Four Freedoms NYT March 8, 2018
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/08/
1959
India trip
From the early days of the Montgomery bus boycott, Martin Luther King, Jr. referred to India’s as ‘‘the guiding light of our technique of nonviolent social change’’ (Papers 5:231).
Following the success of the boycott in 1956, King contemplated traveling to India to deepen his understanding of Gandhian principles.
That same year, India’s prime minister, made a short visit to the United States.
Although unable to arrange a meeting with King, Nehru made inquiries through his diplomatic representatives concerning the possibility of King visiting India in the future.
King secured funds for his trip to India from the Christopher Reynolds Foundation, the Montgomery Improvement Association, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and Dexter Avenue Baptist Church.
While King made travel plans from Montgomery, the co-sponsors of King’s trip, American Friends Service Committee and the Gandhi Smarak Nidhi (Gandhi National Memorial Fund), headed by Secretary G. Ramachandran, began arranging for King to meet with Indian officials and Gandhian activists during his stay.
On 3 February 1959, King, his wife, Coretta Scott King, and Lawrence Reddick (1910-1995), began a five week tour of India. http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/encyclopedia/enc_kings_trip_to_india/
https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/
https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/
https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/ http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/chronologyentry/1959_02_03/
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99480326
Harlem Martin Luther King is stabbed by Izola Ware Curry (1916-2015) 20 September 1958
Dr. King said he bore no ill will toward Izola Ware Curry, center, his attacker.
Photograph: Pat Candido/New York Daily News, via Getty Images
Before ‘I Have a Dream,’ Martin Luther King Almost Died. This Man Saved Him. The untold story of the patrolman who took charge when the civil rights leader was stabbed in Harlem. NYT Nov. 13, 2020, 5:00 a.m. ET
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/13/
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. after being attacked in 1958 with a letter opener lodged near his heart.
Photograph: Vernoll Coleman/New York Daily News, via Getty Images
Before ‘I Have a Dream,’ Martin Luther King Almost Died. This Man Saved Him. The untold story of the patrolman who took charge when the civil rights leader was stabbed in Harlem. NYT Nov. 13, 2020, 5:00 a.m. ET
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/13/
The letter opener still protruding from his chest, Dr. King was wheeled into Harlem Hospital in September 1958.
Photograph: Phil Greitzer/New York Daily News Archive, via Getty Images
Before ‘I Have a Dream,’ Martin Luther King Almost Died. This Man Saved Him. The untold story of the patrolman who took charge when the civil rights leader was stabbed in Harlem. NYT Nov. 13, 2020, 5:00 a.m. ET
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/13/
A doctor with the recuperating Dr. King, who recounted years later, “The blade was on the edge of my aorta,” adding, “Once that’s punctured, you’re drowned in your own blood, that’s the end of you.”
Photograph: Pat Candido/New York Daily News Archive, via Getty Images
Before ‘I Have a Dream,’ Martin Luther King Almost Died. This Man Saved Him. The untold story of the patrolman who took charge when the civil rights leader was stabbed in Harlem. NYT Nov. 13, 2020, 5:00 a.m. ET
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/13/
Dr. King and his wife, Coretta Scott King, leaving Harlem Hospital in October 1958.
Dr. King’s career and stature soared in the decade that followed that near-fatal afternoon at Blumstein’s department store.
Photograph: Phil Greitzer/New York Daily News Archive, via Getty Images
Before ‘I Have a Dream,’ Martin Luther King Almost Died. This Man Saved Him. The untold story of the patrolman who took charge when the civil rights leader was stabbed in Harlem. NYT Nov. 13, 2020, 5:00 a.m. ET
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/13/
During a book signing at Blumstein’s Department Store in Harlem, New York, King is stabbed by Izola Ware Curry.
He is rushed to Harlem Hospital where a team of doctors successfully remove a seven-inch letter opener from his chest.
https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/
(...)
At the time of the stabbing, Dr. King was promoting his book “Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story,” which recounted the successful boycott he helped lead to desegregate buses in Montgomery, Ala.
His assailant was a mentally disturbed black woman who blamed Dr. King for her woes.
Dr. King forgave her and asked that she not be prosecuted.
He later learned that she had been committed to a hospital for the criminally insane.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/05/nyregion/
https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-resources/
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/13/
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/05/
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/22/
September 1958
Montgomery Alabama
Anglonautes' note: these three Life photographs by Grey Villet were taken in 1958 (September ?).
They may show Martin Luther King Jr. in Mongtomery, Alabama, where his friend Ralph Abernathy (1926-1990) was appearing for a trial.
Martin Luther King Trial Montgomery Alabama Integration
Undated - no caption [ September 1958 ]
Photographer: Grey Villet
Life Images http://images.google.com/hosted/life/a180faaf02e8542d.html
Martin Luther King Trial Montgomery Alabama Integration
Undated - no caption [ September 1958 ]
Photographer: Grey Villet
Life Images http://images.google.com/hosted/life/b60b79c4fef51607.html
Martin Luther King Trial Montgomery Alabama Integration
Undated - no caption [ September 1958 ]
Photographer: Grey Villet
Life Images http://images.google.com/hosted/life/ecf1d61c3dae2dca.html
https://everyday-i-show.livejournal.com/136142.html
http://www.npr.org/blogs/pictureshow/2010/03/
Portrait of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Location: US Date taken: 1957
Photographer: Walter Bennett
Life Images
Time Covers - The 50S Time cover: 02-18-1957 of Martin Luther King. Date taken: February 18, 1957 Vol. LXIX No. 7 http://www.time.com/time/magazine/0,9263,7601570218,00.html
Life Images http://images.google.com/hosted/life/a0f2ec7dfecb311c.htm
Montgomery Story Comic Book 1 December 1957
http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/documentsentry/the_montgomery_story_comic_book/
This comic book was published in 1957
http://kingencyclopedia.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/
May 17, 1957
Washington, DC
Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom
“Give Us the Ballot,” Address at the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/aaohtml/exhibit/aopart9.html https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/prayer-pilgrimage-freedom
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/13/arts/ruby-dee-actress-dies-at-91.html
March 4, 1957 - March 12,
1957 Ghana trip
In March 1957, Martin Luther King, Jr., and his wife Coretta Scott King traveled to West Africa to attend Ghana’s independence ceremony.
King’s voyage was symbolic of a growing global alliance of oppressed peoples and was strategically well timed;
his attendance represented an attempt to broaden the scope of the civil rights struggle in the United States on the heels of the successful Montgomery bus boycott.
King identified with Ghana’s struggle;
furthermore, he recognized a strong parallel between resistance against European colonialism in Africa and the struggle against racism in the United States. http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/encyclopedia/enc_ghana_trip_1957/
https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/
https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/
January 30, 1956
Martin Luther King's house is bombed
https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/
January 27, 1956
Martin Luther King receives a threatening phone call
https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/
1954
Martin Luther King becomes pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1964/king/biographical/
May 1944
“The Negro and the Constitution” On 13 April 1944, in his junior year at Atlanta's Booker T. Washington High School, King, Jr., won an oratorical contest sponsored by the black Elks.
With the runner-up at Washington High, Hiram Kendall, he won the right to represent the school at the statewide contest held at First Baptist Church in Dublin, Georgia.
Kendall was a runner-up at the state contest.
The theme of both contests was "The Negro and the Constitution."
According to later accounts, during the bus trip to the contest, King and his teacher, Sarah Grace Bradley, were told by the driver to surrender their seats to newly boarding white passengers.
King resisted at first, but his teacher finally persuaded him to leave his seat.
They stood for several hours during the bus ride to Atlanta.
King's oration was published in May 1944 at the end of his junior, and final, year at Washington High in the school annual, The Cornellian.
More polished than other pieces that King wrote as a teenager, the essay probably benefited from adult editing and from King's awareness of similar orations.
Citing the experiences of the black opera singer Marian Anderson as an example, the oration outlines the contradictions between the nation's biblical faith and constitutional values and the continuing problem of racial discrimination.
But the conclusion is marked by a hopeful rhetorical flourish:
"My heart throbs anew in the hope that inspired by the example of Lincoln, imbued with the spirit of Christ, [America] will cast down the last barrier to perfect freedom," said the young King.
"And I with my brother of blackest hue possessing at last my rightful heritage and holding my head erect, may stand beside the Saxon--a Negro-- and yet a man!" http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/documentsentry/doc_440500_000/ - broken URL
https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/
Related > Anglonautes > History > USA
March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom "I have a dream" August 28,1963
21st, 20th century > Kennedy dynasty
20th century > USA > Civil rights
17th, 18th, 19th, 20th century
British Empire, UK > India > 20th century
Related > Anglonautes > Vocapedia
race relations, racial divide, racism,
abuse, sexual abuse, violence, extremism,
Anglonautes > Arts > Photography > Photographers > 20th century > USA
James "Spider" Martin 1939-2003
Related
New York Times > Disunion: The Civil War
Disunion revisits and reconsiders America’s most perilous period — using contemporary accounts, diaries, images and historical assessments to follow the Civil War as it unfolded.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/
New York Times > Civil war timeline
This timeline tracks the posts by contributors to the Disunion series. Contemporary accounts, diaries, images and historical assessments follow the Civil War as it unfolded.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/
Slavery and the Making of America > Timeline https://www.thirteen.org/wnet/slavery/timeline/index.html
Library of Congress The African American Odyssey: A Quest for Full Citizenship http://international.loc.gov/ammem/aaohtml/exhibit/aointro.html
Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute Major King Events Chronology: 1929-1968
https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-resources/
The Speeches of Martin Luther King Jr. Remembering Key Addresses, Sermons by the Civil Rights Leader https://www.npr.org/news/specials/march40th/speeches.html
Speeches of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. https://www.nps.gov/malu/learn/education/otherresources.htm
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