-New Urban Remembers- On "King Holiday", Revisiting The Legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (January 15, 1929 - April 4, 1968)
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| A man of many nuances: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. via Instagram @derekrussellart |
"We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope."
Martin Luther King, Jr. was born Michael Luther King, Jr. on January 15th, 1929, but as did his father (Micheal King, Sr.) his name was later changed to Martin in honor of the great German Protestant reformer, Martin Luther (1483-1546) . King came from a comfortable middle-class family steeped in the tradition of Southern black ministry: his father and maternal grandfather were preachers in the Baptist church. His grandfather began the family's tenure as pastors of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, serving from 1914 to 1931; his father served from 1931 from to 1975, and from 1960 Martin Luther acted as co-pastor until his death in 1968. The family lived on Auburn Avenue, also known as “Sweet Auburn,” the bustling “black Wall Street,” of the south. Atlanta was then and remains still a collegiate city that is one of the principal seats of Black American intelligentsia in the United States, and home to some old America's largest & most prosperous black businesses and churches from before the civil rights movement until today.
Martin Luther attended segregated public schools in Georgia, graduating from high school at the age of fifteen. However, before beginning college, King spent the summer on a tobacco farm in the New England state of Connecticut; it was his first extended stay away from home and his first experience of race relations outside of his the segregated South. King was shocked by how peacefully the races mixed in the North. “Negroes and whites go [to] the same church,” he noted in a letter to his parents. “I never [thought] that a person of my race could eat anywhere.”
For his college studies King attended Morehouse College, a distinguished black academic institution in Atlanta from which both his father and grandfather were alumnae. King received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Morehouse in 1948. King continued his education with three years of theological study in Pennsylvania at Crozer Theological Seminary. There he was elected president of his predominantly white senior class, and was awarded his next degree as a Bachelor of Divinity in 1951. It was during his theological studies at Crozer that he became acquainted with Mohandas Gandhi’s philosophy of nonviolence, as well as with the thought of contemporary Protestant theologians. Through a fellowship he won at Crozer, King then enrolled in graduate studies at Boston University, completing his residence for his doctorate in 1953, and receiving his degree in 1955 for his dissertation titled, “A Comparison of the Conceptions of God in the Thinking of Paul Tillich and Henry Nelson Wieman.”
-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY: Today in the United States, January 15th marks the birthday commemoration of one of the most impactful and dynamic figures in history: it is a day that many Americans and others around the world remember one of the 20th century's most tireless advocates for peace and human rights, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Dr. Martin Luther King. Born this day on 1929 in the first year of the the Great Depression, today New Urban Youth 40+ takes a look back at the man behind the nationally memorialized American holiday that carries his name, and how his life's work and legacy as a theologian, pastor, philosopher and human rights activist paved the way for the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, affording millions of Black Americans who came after him tangible progress in assuming their inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness - and served as a powerful model to other former slave colonies in the Americas how non-violent resistance was in and of itself a feasible and effective method for social reform.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was born Michael Luther King, Jr. on January 15th, 1929, but as did his father (Micheal King, Sr.) his name was later changed to Martin in honor of the great German Protestant reformer, Martin Luther (1483-1546) . King came from a comfortable middle-class family steeped in the tradition of Southern black ministry: his father and maternal grandfather were preachers in the Baptist church. His grandfather began the family's tenure as pastors of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, serving from 1914 to 1931; his father served from 1931 from to 1975, and from 1960 Martin Luther acted as co-pastor until his death in 1968. The family lived on Auburn Avenue, also known as “Sweet Auburn,” the bustling “black Wall Street,” of the south. Atlanta was then and remains still a collegiate city that is one of the principal seats of Black American intelligentsia in the United States, and home to some old America's largest & most prosperous black businesses and churches from before the civil rights movement until today.
Martin Luther attended segregated public schools in Georgia, graduating from high school at the age of fifteen. However, before beginning college, King spent the summer on a tobacco farm in the New England state of Connecticut; it was his first extended stay away from home and his first experience of race relations outside of his the segregated South. King was shocked by how peacefully the races mixed in the North. “Negroes and whites go [to] the same church,” he noted in a letter to his parents. “I never [thought] that a person of my race could eat anywhere.”
For his college studies King attended Morehouse College, a distinguished black academic institution in Atlanta from which both his father and grandfather were alumnae. King received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Morehouse in 1948. King continued his education with three years of theological study in Pennsylvania at Crozer Theological Seminary. There he was elected president of his predominantly white senior class, and was awarded his next degree as a Bachelor of Divinity in 1951. It was during his theological studies at Crozer that he became acquainted with Mohandas Gandhi’s philosophy of nonviolence, as well as with the thought of contemporary Protestant theologians. Through a fellowship he won at Crozer, King then enrolled in graduate studies at Boston University, completing his residence for his doctorate in 1953, and receiving his degree in 1955 for his dissertation titled, “A Comparison of the Conceptions of God in the Thinking of Paul Tillich and Henry Nelson Wieman.”
King met Coretta Scott, a young Alabamian who was studying at the New England Conservatory of Music while in Boston. The two married in 1953, and had four children; two sons, and two daughters. As a young husband, father, and pastor and activist, King rose to national recognition as head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which promoted nonviolent tactics, notably the mammoth March on Washington(1963), to advocate for civil rights. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. As a Baptist minister and social activist, he continued to lead the civil rights movement in America until his death in 1968 by assassination, just two months before the assassination of fellow civil rights advocate Senator Bobby Kennedy. King's leadership was crucial to the movement’s success in ending legal segregation of the races in the South and other parts of the United States, resulting in many of the freedoms Black Americans would come to know after centuries of legal subjection, oppression, and violent acts systematically perpetuated against them in the hundred years after the end of the American Civil War in 1865.
