Celebrating and Honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Today we honor, remember and celebrate the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 

Martin Luther King Jr. was born January 15, 1929, in Atlanta. Among his many efforts, King headed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Through his nonviolent activism and inspirational speeches, he played a pivotal role in ending legal segregation of Black Americans as well as the creation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. King won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, among several other honors. Assassinated by James Earl Ray, King died on April 4, 1968, at age 39.

First exposed to the concept of nonviolent resistance while reading Henry David Thoreau’s On Civil Disobedience at Morehouse, King later discovered a powerful exemplar of the method’s possibilities through his research into the life of Mahatma Gandhi. Fellow civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, who had also studied Gandhi’s teachings, became one of King’s associates in the 1950s and counseled him to dedicate himself to the principles of nonviolence. 

King’s six principles of nonviolence:

1. Nonviolence is a way of life for courageous people.
2. Nonviolence seeks to win friendship and understanding.
3. Nonviolence seeks to defeat injustice, not people.
4. Nonviolence holds that suffering for a just cause can educate and transform.
5. Nonviolence chooses love instead of hate.
6. Nonviolence believes that the universe is on the side of justice.

Source: Biography

10 Facts About Martin Luther King Jr.

1. Martin Luther King Jr. skipped two grades in high school, 9th and 11th, and entered college (Morehouse College) at the age of 15 in 1944. By 19, he received a bachelor’s degree in sociology.
2. His honeymoon was spent at a funeral parlor. This was not because someone died, simply because a friend owned the parlor and offered to let him use it for his honeymoon.
3. His house was once bombed. This was during the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which lasted 385 days.
4. Martin Luther King Jr.’s autopsy revealed that stress had taken a major toll on his body. Despite being only 39 when he passed away, one of his doctors noted that he had “the heart of a 60 year old”.
5. Today over 700 streets in the Unites States are named after Martin Luther King Jr. There is one such street in almost every major city.
6. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech was not his first at the Lincoln Memorial.
7. King narrowly escaped an assassination attempt a decade before his death.
8. Members of King’s family did not believe James Earl Ray acted alone.
9. King’s mother was also slain by a bullet in 1974.
10. George Washington and Abraham Lincoln are the only other Americans to have had their birthdays observed as a national holiday (now combined as Presidents Day).