Martin Luther King was born January 15,1929 in Atlanta Georgia. His Father was a minister. His parents and friends started calling him ML. He lived in Atlanta all of his childhood life. His mother and father taught him the most important thing of his and his brother and sisters lives respect.
 When ML grew up he started to notice that blacks and whites were treated differently. He and his white friends could not drink out of the same water fountain use the same restrooms or even go to the same school.
 While he was growing up his best friend was a white boy and he was not allowed to play at the white boys house anymore because most blacks and white did not get along very well. When he started school he had to go to the all blacks school while his white friends went to an all white school.
 When he went to college he decided to follow in his fathers footsteps and become a minister. He attended Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania. While at college he was inspired by Henry David Thoreau's book  called "Civil Disobedience."
 In 1953 he married Corretta Scott and in the following year he received his PhD and got a job as a pastor at the Dexter Baptist Church in Montgomery Alabama. He would soon be addressed as Dr.King. Also that same year the US Supreme Court bans segregation in schools.
  In 1955 the buss boycott was launched in Montgomery Alabama, after an African American women named Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat. King finished his PhD in Systematic Theology.
  On January 26, King was arrested for driving 30mph in a 25mph speed zone. On January30th his house was bombed. Soon after his arrest King was elected president of a newly formed Montgomery Improvement Association.
  That same year King overcame the bombing of his house. And he also overcame the harassment that people were giving him for driving so fast. And the also overcame his arrest. He believes that he should not have been arrested.
 In 1956 after more than a year of boycotting the busses and legal fight, Montgomery busses finally desegrated. All the blacks were happy because the could ride in the same buses as the white people.
 In 1957 Garfield High school became the first Seattle high School with more than 50% of the students are nonwhite student on the student body.
 At previously all white Central High School in Little Rock Arkansas, 1000 paratroopers are called by President Eisenhower to restore order and escort 9 black students.
 In 1958 King published his first book called "A Stride Toward Freedom," which talks about recollection of bus boycott. Before Publishing this book he traveled 780,000 miles and made 208 speeches. While promoting his book he was stab by an African American Women.

 

   
 In 1960 he leaves to go pastor at his fathers church. A sit in protest movement will begin in February at a Woolworth's lunch center in Greensboro North Carolina and spreads across the nation.               

    

  In 1961 freedom rides from Washington D.C. when groups of black and white people ride buses through the South to challenge segregation. King makes his first visit to Seattle. He visits numerous places including two morning assemblies at Garfield High School.
  In 1962 King meets JFK to urge support for civil rights. Blacks become the majority at Garfield High School where 51% of the students are blacks which is the first for Seattle. When the school district average is 53%
   In 1963 King leads a protest in Birmingham for desegregated department store facilities.  The marchers were arrested after demonstrating in a defiance of a court order. King writes "Letter from Birmingham Jail." Then after they were arrested police turns fire hoses and dogs on the marchers.
 On December 10,1964 King publishes another book called "Why we can't wait. And he visits the mayor of West Berlin and Pope the 6th. King also wins a noble piece prize.
 In February 1965 King continues to protest discrimination and is arrested and jailed. On Feb.9 he meets with Lyndon B. Johnson to talk about voting rights for African Americans. On August 6th President Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The act which King sought, authorized federal examiners to register qualified voters and suspended devices such as literacy test that prevent African Americans from voting.
 In 1968 Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis Tennessee while on a balcony. He was shot by James Earl Ray. He died one day after he was shot on April 4, 1968. Ten Thousand people marched to Seattle center for a rally in his memory. Remained an influential figure 28years after his death.

 
  

 Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of captivity.

 But one hundred years later, we must face the tragic fact that the Negro is still not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize an appalling condition.

 In a sense we have come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

 It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check which has come back marked "insufficient funds." But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check -- a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to open the doors of opportunity to all of God's children. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.

 It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment and to underestimate the determination of the Negro. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

 But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.

 We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny and their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.

 And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

 I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.

  Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.    Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.

 I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

 I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal."

 I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood.

 I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

 I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

 I have a dream today.

 I have a dream that one day the state of Alabama, whose governor's lips are presently dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, will be transformed into a situation where little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers.

 I have a dream today.

 I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

 This is our hope. This is the faith with which I return to the South. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

 This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with a new meaning, "My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring."

 And if America is to be a great nation this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!

 Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!

 Let freedom ring from the curvaceous peaks of California!

 But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!

 Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee!

 Let freedom ring from every hill and every molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

 When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that 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 in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"  

 

 

                   
 Roni Channel

 8th Grade American History

 Rossville Jr. High

 Post-World War II American Project

 May 2002

Bibliography