This week, the United States commemorated another year of the birth of one of the most convening personalities due to his open attitude, his determined fight for the civil rights of minorities Afro-American women and their profound ability to make speeches that would reach the hearts of the masses, based on solidarity, love for others and humanism. Martin Luther King went from being an ethnic leader to becoming a universal citizen because in his words we can still find glimpses of that hope that seems lost in the midst of corruption and under-the-table arrangements, the same ones that ended his life tragically, transforming him into the mythical figure he is today, a day that North Americans celebrate as a holiday. Let's know a little more about his history:
The southern states of the United States of America were characterized by their support for slavery policies and oppression against the population of African origin that lived in that region during the civil war, which took place in the territory of that country between 1861 and 1865.
By 1929, the year of the birth of Martin Luther King Jr., in Atlanta, capital of the southern state of Georgia, little or almost nothing had changed in the mentality of the population of origin European that persisted in implementing policies of racial segregation. In this context, the rebellious attitude and peaceful disobedience of the promoter leader of the civil rights of the black American population grows and takes shape.
Luther King Jr., was the son of Baptist pastor Marthin Luther King Sr. and Alberta William King, a woman who played the organ in a church. Initially, his father had chosen the name of Michael for him, but he decided to change it to Martin Luther in 1934, due to a trip to Europe and the profuse admiration that the German Protestant reformer Martin Luther aroused in him.
At the age of fifteen, Martin Luther King Jr. entered Morehouse College, a university that was part of the racially discriminatory system of the time, without having finished his secondary education. In 1948 he graduated with a major in Sociology from Morehouse College and then continued his studies at Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania, where he obtained a bachelor's degree in Theology in 1951. Four years later, the future Nobel Peace Prize winner received his doctorate in Systematic Theology from Boston University.
However, there is an event that radically changes the life of Martin Luther, directing it from the academic classrooms towards the peaceful struggle and protest that will characterize the entire trajectory of him. In December 1955, Rosa Parks, an African-American woman, is arrested for disrespecting the laws that required a black person to give up her seat to a white man on a bus. Martin Luther organizes a bus boycott in the town of Montgomery, Alabama and is supported by the entire population who, like him, suffered from the discriminatory laws of that time. The situation becomes extreme, Luther King is arrested and his home is attacked with explosives by supporters of the North American racist right.
The result of the deed of Martin Luther after these events could not have been of a more effective nature, since the Supreme Court of the United States determined in November 1956 the illegality of the laws that gave rise to the riots. The protests that began with what became known worldwide as the “Montgomery Park Bus Boycott” brought 40,000 blacks born in the new continent to the streets.
The great achievement of Martin Luther King Jr. throughout his career is the nonviolent characteristic of his resistance that had been inspired by characters such as Henry David Thoreau, the writer, poet and philosopher author of Civil disobedience implemented by Gandhi in India. Luther King Jr. distances himself from all the violent practices that were later adopted by organizations such as The Black Panthers , influenced by the thought of Malcolm X, another Afro-American leader. It is true that the protests, marches and demonstrations of the North American black population during the fifties had some chapters of violence and physical and verbal aggression, however Martin Luther was never in favor of this type of behavior, always calling for the protesters demand their rights in a completely peaceful way.
The episodes in Albany, Georgia, in 1962, when Luther King was arrested for taking part in peaceful demonstrations; Birmingham, Alabama, 1963, where he was arrested again, an incident that unfortunately would end with the execrable attack on the 16th Street Baptist Church and the consequent death of four black girls at the hands of the racist criminal organization called the Ku Klux Klan, they did no more to reinforce the deep conviction of Luther King Jr. to take his battle for the recognition, legalization and acceptance through peaceful agreements of the citizen rights of the African-American population to the last consequences.
The famous march on Washington, in August 1963, was without a doubt the concentration with the most repercussion and the one that would finally immortalize Luther King Jr. In this massive demonstration, he utter a sublime phrase:“I have a dream” or “I have a dream” , the dream of seeing an America in which ethnic origin was not synonymous with humiliation and bloodshed. This message was heard by more than 250,000 people of all ethnicities who gathered in front of the United States Capitol and witnessed this memorable and historic moment.
On a fateful April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee, Martin Luther King Jr., the tireless and energetic advocate for African-American civil rights, was gunned down by a self-confessed American of European origin, an irony of fate that whoever protested without violence or aggression for a clearly just cause, was assassinated in such a violent way.
The legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. is imperishable, his ideas transcend the The passage of time and they will never cease to be valid, especially where there is injustice, discrimination and hatred due to racial and ethnic prejudice.