How Did Martin Luther King Influence The Civil Rights Movement

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Martin Luther King Jr. was one of the most important voices of the American civil rights movement, which worked for equal rights for all. He was famous for using nonviolent resistance to overcome racism and injustice. Martin Luther King, Jr. was born Michael King in 1929 in Atlanta,Georgia. He was named after his father, who was a Baptist minister. When Michael King, Sr. took over his relative's church, he changed his name to Martin Luther, after a prominent German religious leader. Thereafter, he changed his son’s name to martin as well.. His mother, Alberta Williams King, was an accomplished organist and choir leader. Michael, who was born second of his parents’ three children, had an elder sister called Willie Christine King and a younger …show more content…

King was elected and became president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), an organization designed to provide new leadership for the civil rights movement. This was a period during which he would emerge as the most important social leader for the civil rights movement. In 1963, he led a numerous amount civil rights groups in a nonviolent campaign aimed at Birmingham, Alabama. At the time was described as the “most segregated city in America”. The Tv at the time was extremly popular. This made it possible for people all over to see the treatment of blacks on the news. There had a wide range of instances where you could witness young blacks getting attacked by police dogs and water hoses.This police brutality led to a national outrage resulting in a push for the civil rights legislation. It was during this campaign that Dr. King drafted the “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” a combination of Dr. King’s thoughts, philosophies,and tactics. Later in 1963, Dr. King was one of the driving forces behind the March for Jobs and Freedom, more commonly known as the “March on Washington”. This drew over a quarter-million people to the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC.. It was at this march that Dr. King delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech, which made his status as a social change leader and helped inspire the nation to act on civil rights.He and the other leaders then met with President John F. Kennedy. They asked for many things including an end to segregation in public schools, greater protections for African-Americans, and more effective civil rights legislation amongst other things. Dr. King was later named Time magazine’s “Man of the Year”. In 1964, Martin Luther King Jr. became the youngest person to win the Nobel Peace Prize. The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to the person who has ''done the most or the best work”. It is an extremely honorable prize worth striving for. His acceptance speech in Oslo is thought by many to be among

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