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On Aug. 28, 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. made his now famous “I have a dream” speech. It electrified the United States. He delivered it in measured tones to the 200,000 people gathered at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., and to countless others who watched on television.
Five short years after that speech, King was assassinated in Memphis on April 4, 1968. He was in that city to lead the sanitation workers as they struggled for better pay and working conditions. He was shot down on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel.
He was born Michael Luther King Jr. on Jan. 15, 1929, to middle-class parents in Atlanta, Ga. His father changed their names to Martin when he was 5 years old. His grandfather, a charter member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, was a leader in the 1920s of a drive to defeat local bond issues until a black public high school was built.
King burst on the scene as a civil rights leader during the bus boycott in Montgomery, Ala., after seamstress Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man. He had become pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church shortly after his graduation, succeeding the Rev. Vernon Johns, who had a brilliant record of protest against racial segregation. He was just 28 years old when he made national headlines as the leader of the successful boycott.
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Source: Knoxville Sentinel/Robert Booker
