an icon of civil rights summary
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Dr. ... King , a baptist minister and civil right activist had great impact on race relation in the United states in the beginning of 1950. By his activism and inspirational speech he played a important role in ending the legal segregation of African - American citizen in the United states and the voting right Act 1965.
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An icon of civil rights
Born in a priest family on January 15, 1929 at Atlanta in the pro-slave state of Georgia in the South, Marin Luther King, Jr. (MLK) was an American Gandhian. He was best known for his contribution towards the advancement of civil rights of the disadvantaged minorities especially blacks ending racial discrimination through recourse to non-violence as a method of protest.
As an extraordinarily talented student MLK skipped two classes at school entering the Morehouse college at the age of 15 without formally graduating from high school. In 1948 he obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree from the same college. He had his second graduation in divinity from Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania in 1951. He obtained his Ph.D. degree from Boston University in 1955 for his dissertation in the field of Theology.
Engaged himself as a Minister in a Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, at age 25, King was greatly attracted to the teachings of Jesus Christ and the Bible leading him to dedicate his life to the service of humanity fighting against all injustices.
America has been an extremely heterogeneous society inhabited by peoples of divergent characters in terms of race, ethnicity, religions, country of origins and geographical variations. Slavery was an integral part of American society and economy for historical reason until it was abolished in 1865 in the aftermath of Civil War fought between the pro-slaves and anti-slaves states of the North and South over the issue. It was paradoxical that slavery persisted in some form or other whether as a social taboo or under a different pretext, mostly in the Southern States, despite constitutional guarantee of equality and legal abolition of the system. As a result, African-Americans or black minorities were subjugated to continued maltreatment, indignity, deprivation and discrimination in all spheres of life. In denial of equal rights and opportunities, they were subjected to segregation be it in public transport, school, store, church, lunch counter, housing, neighbourhood and so on and so forth under, what was called, Jim Crow Law.
Against this backdrop, King came to engage himself in Civil Rights Movement understanding that 'freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.' However, the course of action that he followed in steering the movement was peaceful non-violence. In this respect, Mahatma Gandhi (1868-1948) had a great influence on him. Before his visit to India in 1959, Martin Luther King, Jr. came to learn about Gandhi including his ways of carrying on struggle against apartheidism in South Africa and the British Colonial rule in India through his father's classmate at Morehouse college, who was also his early day educator, theologian Howard Thurman, who had personally met with Gandhi during his missionary work in abroad. King's visit to Gandhi's birthplace in India left a profound impact on him deepening his understanding of Gandhi's philosophy including his tactic of non-violent resistance through non-cooperation and mass mobilisation. As King, in a radio address made before leaving India, maintained :
Since being in India, I am more convinced than ever before that the method of nonviolent resistance is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for justice and human dignity. In a real sense, Mahatma Gandhi embodied in his life certain universal principles that are inherent in the moral structure of the universe, and these principles are inescapable as the law of gravitation.