Autobiography of Martin Luther King Jr

Introduction

Martin Luther King was born in Atlanta, Georgia, on January 15, 1929. Although the name “Michael”
appeared on his birth certificate, his name was later changed to Martin Luther in honor of German
reformer Martin Luther. As King was growing up, everything in Georgia was segregated, 70 years after
the Confederacy was defeated and blacks were later separated away from white people. This meant
that black and white people were not allowed to go to the same schools, use the same public
bathrooms, eat at the same restaurants, drink at the same water fountains, or even go to the same
hospitals. Everything was separate. However, the white hospitals, schools, and other places were usually
much better than the places where black people were allowed to go. At age 6, King first went through
discrimination (being treated worse than a white person because he was black). He was sent to an all-
black school, and a white friend was sent to an all-white school. Once, when he was 14, King won a
contest with a speech about civil rights. When he was going back home on a bus, he was forced to give
up his seat and stand for the bus ride so a white person could sit down. At the time, white people were
seen as more important than black people. If a white person wanted a seat, that person could take the
seat from any African American. King later said having to give up his seat made him “the angriest I’ve
ever been in my life.” King went to segregated schools in Georgia, and finished high school at age 15. He
went on to Morehouse College in Georgia, where his father and grandfather had gone. After graduating
from college in 1948, King decided he was not exactly the type of person to join the Baptist Church. He
was not sure what kind of career he wanted. He thought about being a doctor or a lawyer. He decided
not to do either, and joined the Baptist Church. King went to a seminary in Pennsylvania to become a
pastor. While studying there, King learned about the non-violent methods used by Mahatma Gandhi
against the British Empire in India. King was convinced that these nonviolent methods would help the
civil rights movement. Finally, in 1955, King earned a Ph.D. from Boston University’s School of Theology.
Montgomery Bus Boycott King first started his civil rights activism in 1955. At that time, he led a protest
against the way black people were segregated on buses. They had to sit at the back of the bus, separate
from white people. He told his supporters, and the people who were against equal rights, that people
should only use peaceful ways to solve the problem. King was chosen as president of the Montgomery
Improvement Association (MIA), which was created during the boycott. Rosa Parks later said: “Dr. King
was chosen in part because he was relatively new to the community and so [he] did not have any
enemies.” King ended up becoming an important leader of the boycott, becoming famous around the
country, and making many enemies. King was arrested for starting a boycott. He was fined $500, plus
$500 more in court costs. His house was fire-bombed. Others involved with MIA were also threatened.
However, by December 1956, segregation had been ended on Montgomery’s buses. People could sit
anywhere they wanted on the buses. After the bus boycott, King and Ralph Abernathy started the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). The group decided that they would only use non-
violence. Its motto was “Not one hair of one head of one person should be harmed.” The SCLC chose
King as its president. March on Washington In 1963, King helped plan the March on Washington for Jobs
and Freedom. This was the largest protest for human rights in United States history. On August 28, 1963,
about 250,000 people marched from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial. Then they
listened to civil rights leaders speak. King was the last speaker. His speech, called “I Have a Dream,”
became one of history’s most famous civil rights speeches. King talked about his dream that one day,
white and black people would be equal. That same year, the United States government passed the Civil
Rights Act. This law made many kinds of discrimination against black people illegal. The March on
Washington made it clear to the United States government that they needed to take action on civil
rights, and it helped get the Civil Rights Act passed. Voting rights King and many others then started
working on the problem of racism in voting. At the time, many of the Southern states had laws which
made it very hard or impossible for African-Americans to vote. For example, they would make African
Americans pay extra taxes, pass reading tests, or pass tests about the Constitution. White people did not
have to do these things. In 1963 and 1964, civil rights groups in Selma, Alabama had been trying to sign
African-American people up to vote, but they had not been able to. At the time, 99% of the people
signed up to vote in Selma were white. However, the government workers who signed up voters were
all white. They refused to sign up African-Americans. In January 1965, these civil rights groups asked
King and the SCLC to help them. Together, they started working on voting rights. However, the next
month, an African-American man named Jimmie Lee Jackson was shot by a police officer during a
peaceful march. Jackson died. Many African-American people were very angry. The SCLC decided to
organize a march from Selma to Montgomery. By walking 54 miles (87 kilometers) to the state capital,
activists hoped to show how badly African-Americans wanted to vote. They also wanted to show that
they would not let racism or violence stop them from getting equal rights. The first march was on March
7, 1965. Police officers, and people they had chosen to help them, attacked the marchers with clubs and
tear gas. They threatened to throw the marchers off the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Seventeen marchers
had to go to the hospital, and 50 others were also injured. This day came to be called Bloody Sunday.
Pictures and film of the marchers being beaten were shown around the world, in newspapers and on
television. Seeing these things made more people support the civil rights activists. People came from all
over the United States to march with the activists. One of them, James Reeb, was attacked by white
people for supporting civil rights. He died on March 11, 1965. Finally, President Lyndon B. Johnson
decided to send soldiers from the United States Army and the Alabama National Guard to protect the
marchers. From March 21 to March 25, the marchers walked along the “Jefferson Davis Highway” from
Selma to Montgomery. Led by King and other leaders, 25,000 people who entered Montgomery on
March 25. He gave a speech called “How Long? Not Long” at the Alabama State Capitol. He told the
marchers that it would not be long before they had equal rights, “because the arc of the moral universe
is long, but it bends toward justice.” On August 6, 1965, the United States passed the Voting Rights Act.
This law made it illegal to stop somebody from voting because of their race. Assassination King had
made enemies by working for civil rights and becoming such a powerful leader. The Ku Klux Klan did
what they could to hurt King’s reputation, especially in the South. The Federal Bureau of Investigation
(FBI) watched King closely. They wiretapped his phones, his home, and the phones and homes of his
friends. On April 4, 1968, King was in Memphis, Tennessee. He planned to lead a protest march to
support garbage workers who were on strike. At 6:01 pm, King was shot while he was standing on the
balcony of his motel room. The bullet entered through his right cheek and travelled down his neck. It cut
open the biggest veins and arteries in King’s neck before stopping in his shoulder. King was rushed to St.
Joseph’s Hospital. His heart had stopped. Doctors there cut open his chest and tried to make his heart
start pumping again. However, they were unable to save King’s life. He died at 7:05 p.m. King’s death led
to riots in many cities. In March 1969, James Earl Ray was found guilty of killing King. He was sentenced
to 99 years in prison. Ray died in 1998. Legal Angle USA In 1896, the Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v.
Ferguson that racially segregated public facilities were legal, so long as the facilities for Black people and
whites were equal. The ruling constitutionally sanctioned laws barring African Americans from sharing
the same buses, schools and other public facilities as whites, known as “Jim Crow” laws—and
established the “separate but equal” doctrine that would stand for the next six decades. But then the
famous case of vs Board of Education, led to a change. In this case a plaintiff named Oliver Brown filed a
class-action suit against the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, in 1951, after his daughter, Linda
Brown, was denied entrance to Topeka’s all-white elementary school. In his lawsuit, Brown claimed that
schools for Black children were not equal to the white schools, and that segregation violated the so-
called “equal protection clause” of the 14th Amendment, which holds that no state can “deny to any
person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” The case went before the U.S. District
Court in Kansas, which agreed that public school segregation had a “detrimental effect upon the colored
children” and contributed to “a sense of inferiority,” but still upheld the “separate but equal” doctrine.
When Brown’s case and four other cases related to school segregation first came before the Supreme
Court in 1952, the Court combined them into a single case under the name Brown v. Board of Education
of Topeka. At first, the justices were divided on how to rule on school segregation, but on May 17, 1954,
the court held that “in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place,” as
segregated schools are “inherently unequal.” As a result, the Court ruled that the plaintiffs were being
“deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the 14th Amendment.” Though the
Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board didn’t achieve school desegregation on its own, the ruling
fuelled the budding civil rights movement in the United States. This was only the beginning of reform in
the legal system, since soon after, The Montgomery bus boycott took place, followed by the rise of the
King. The Civil Rights movement led by him, paved way for the implementation of The Civil Rights Act of
1964, which ended segregation in public places and banned employment discrimination on the basis of
race, color, religion, sex or national origin. Later, The King’s Washington March became a major factor in
the passage of implementation of the Voting Rights Act, 1965.The Voting Rights Act of 1965, signed into
law by President Lyndon B. Johnson, aimed to overcome legal barriers at the state and local levels that
prevented African Americans from exercising their right to vote as guaranteed under the 15th
Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. It is often considered one of the most far-reaching pieces of civil
rights legislation in U.S. India Just like racism in western countries even in India there are many social
evils. These include discrimination on the basis of caste, religion ethnicity, language etc. But the
constitution of India secures us from such forms of discrimination or impartiality. For understanding this
better we need to go through the fundamental rights provided in the constitution. The Articles 14 to 18
include the right to equality. Under these articles we are protected from any and all forms of
discrimination on Grounds of religion, race, caste, sexual orientation, gender identity and place of birth.
Furthermore the articles 25 to 28 include the right to freedom of religion. These articles provide that we
are free to practice, propagate and profess any religion which we want. Also the religious educational
institutions are prohibited from giving any religious instructions to the students and such Institutions are
also free from certain taxes which the government levies. It is also to be noted that, just like in the USA,
the 13th amendment ratified in 1865, abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, we Indians are also
protected from such forms of exploitations under the article 23 to 24. These articles prohibit all forms of
forced labour, child labour and trafficking of human beings. Despite of having so many protective gears
in the form of fundamental rights, there are still instances of discrimination and impartiality in our
country. This clearly means that just existence of laws is not enough. We as citizens also need to actively
disregard any forms of prejudice and stereotypes which can bar us from seeing a person different to us
as any less of a human being.