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Martin Luther King Jr. and his leadership style
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr
Leadership martin luther king
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“If you can't fly then run, if you can't run then walk, if you can't walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.”-Martin Luther King Jr. African Americans were still being discriminated against 100 years after the Emancipation Proclamation. The government in the south found loopholes to make segregated laws. These African Americans were getting tired of these unequal laws and started taking stands. Activist leaders formed groups to stand up against these laws. Martin Luther King Jr. was one of these activists. Through nonviolent protests, King showed his leadership, courage, and ability to inspire others. Martin Luther King Jr. provided a great amount of leadership during the Civil Rights Movement. King started many nonviolent protests towards equality. Some of these nonviolent protests consisted of high attendance, such as the March On Washington, where more than two-hundred thousand people crowded into Washington D.C. to declare jobs and freedom. Dr. King played a big leadership role during the march by giving his “I Have a Dream Speech.” Using his leadership to inspire others to stand up for equal rights through nonviolent protests. His passive speech led to him leading other protests standing for equality. A leader needs the courage to take a stand and be …show more content…
King proved courageous for standing in front of thousands to voice his opinion. In that time frame, it took strength to be an African American voice and give his opinion to everyone across the country highlighting racism. Dr. King had the courage to stay in jail to get publicity for his cause. His nonviolent protests and marches could become violent, if there were people who wanted to physically hurt King. He brought the problems of the country out, which put a target on him for the people who continued the belief of segregation. Knowing that there could be people wanting to cause harm while standing in the middle of thousands took more than courage, but also
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was one of the greatest civil rights leaders to ever live. Through his empowering speeches, he made a huge impact on the world for the equality of all races. Throughout King’s life, he showed everyone how he believed equality should be acquired. With his peaceful protests and amazing speeches, he influenced people both during his time and after he passed. Many believe that King’s work in the Civil Rights Movement was the final push that America needed to finally respect people no matter their skin color.
Black Americans needed a Martin Luther King, but above all America needed him. The significant qualities of this special man cannot be underestimated nor taken for granted. Within a span of 13 years from 1955 to his death in 1968 he was able to expound, expose, and extricate America from many wrongs. His tactics of protest involved non-violent passive resistance to racial injustice. It was the right prescription for our country, and it was right on time. Hope in America was waning on the part of many Black Americans, but Martin Luther King, Jr. provided a candle along with a light. He also provided this nation with a road map so that all people could locate and share together in the abundance of this great democracy.
...ealing to the compassion of the humanity through the means of civil disobedience, Dr. King was able to expose racial injustices and appeal to the human conscience and national opinion so that those who had the power to initiate change would support him and those who were fighting to overcome oppression.
In the beginning of his speech Martin Luther heralds back almost one hundred years by linking the importance of the march to the Emancipation Proclamation(King 3). By doing this King puts the issue of equality into a timeline by showing that while it has been a hundred years since African Americans had been given freedom it also shows that while freedom has been granted to them there has still been very little that has happened to give the African race a better life. Not much further in his speech King say, “ This note was a promise that all men-yes, black men as well as white men-would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” (King 3) Again by taking an important article from America’s past King says that when the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution they meant for all Americans to be equal. Midway through the speech King pleads with his people to never resort to violence in the face of adversity that is handed to them by their oppressors, because King has came to realize through his own trials that the “their( referring to the white man)destiny is tied up with our destiny.”(King 3) As King’s speech progresses he tells the masses that until they have their rights be equal to those who rights are unbounded that they must not stop until they have achieved their goal. By being able to use
had become a leader, and he had found his group of supporters, or in other words, his social group. In this case, my formula only works because of the parentheses surrounding the first three parts of the equation. From my perspective, Martin Luther King Jr. became a symbol of a general group of African American Civil Rights Activists, before they found him as an actual leader. While others may figure that there is more than one specific leader that had an impact on the Civil Rights Movement, I really cannot deny that way of thinking, rather I can only say that it is of my belief that he was the most important of all in this process. Others may also present the counter argument that there may have been more than one leader and that all of them were equally important in the process of this. I cannot deny that opinion either, as it is valid. I can present my opinion and only my opinion here, which presents that Martin Luther King Jr. deserves to be the leader of all leaders. Possibly, the best example of his leadership came on a day in August, at “The March of Washington,” when he presented a speech of dynamic poetry. My favorite lines from this “I Have a Dream Speech” go, “I have a dream that one day in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.” (King Jr. 5) After this line, the audio recording presents the roar of the crowd. In my opinion, it was not just the words of this speech and this specific quote that made him a leader. I perceive that words are just words, as they need substance, this substance is created with a charismatic attitude. Martin Luther King Jr. had this, and it is possibly the biggest indicator that he was a leader of his group. It is possible that there were other
King was also African american and had many followers gave many speeches and marched and fought for whites and blacks to be treated equally. He was very brave because many people wanted to stop the movement and kill him and they wanted people to stop protesting because apparently "every day I feel like my rights are being taken away" says a KKK member from a
Martin Luther King admired Muhammad Gundi and Gundi’s idea of peaceful protest. King adopted this idea and organized much historical peaceful protest and civil disobedience in the name of equality. King led the Montgomery bus boycott of 1963 to protest the arrest of Rosa Parks, King also led the “march on Washington” when over 200,000 people gathered to hear King’s most famous speech. Kings most famous speech, I Have a Dream, was given on the steps of the Lincoln memorial on august 28th 1963. In King’s speech king conveys his idea of a perfect society of all races living together peacefully. King had much larger impact on civil rights than Malcolm X mostly because of King’s theories and principals of peaceful protest and Civil disobedience as opposed to X’s view of “whatever it takes.” Unfortunately much like Malcolm X King was also
The Civil Rights Movement is one of the most important events of the history of the United States. Although many people contributed to this movement, Martin Luther King, Jr., is widely regarded as the leader of the movement for racial equality. Growing up in the Deep South, King saw the injustices of segregation first hand. King’s studies of Mahatma Ghandi teachings influenced his views on effective ways of protesting and achieving equality. Martin Luther King’s view on nonviolence and equality and his enormous effect on the citizens of America makes him the most influential person of the twentieth century.
This letter addressed the criticism he received while peacefully protesting. It was also a response to the injustices he witnessed and experienced while visiting the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s Birmingham branch. He explains how he and the SCLC organized their plans of nonviolent action for change in not only the segregated schools in Alabama, but for the discriminated people of America. Dr. King declares, “Justice too long delayed is justice denied” (344). He states that African American people have waited more than 340 years for constitutional and God-given rights (King 344). His pleas for recognition of the mass injustices and his assemblies of nonviolent actions caused a wave of changes to occur across the country. His teachings and actions paved the way for African Americans and other minorities to be given the opportunity to exceed expectations and not to be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. One such person became our 44th President.
Martin Luther King Jr. was a key figure in the fight for the equality of African Americans. King had a great impact on the Civil Rights Movement, and had a nonviolent method of achieving what he did. Dr. King is a well-known Civil Rights Activist who gave his life for his cause. In his Letter from Birmingham Jail, he addresses his fellow clergyman on the topic of segregation and the protests against it. King is well known for his nonviolent protests, and even the participants of the event have to ask themselves during a period of self-purification, “‘Are you able to accept blows without retaliating? ', and ‘Are you able to endure the ordeal of jail? ' “(King). King believed that nonviolent protest were better to use because "Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue," (King). King believes that nonviolent tension is
Martin Luther King, Jr. was a very prominent part of the movement to end Jim Crow laws. In 1963 he and the SCLC organized a boycott and marched to challenge these laws in Birmingham, Alabama. He and many others were arrested for this and while in jail he wrote to a response to the white ministers that were critiquing him. King was not afraid to stand up to the white people. He explained two kinds of laws, just laws; laws that needed to be followed, and unjust laws: laws that needed to be disobeyed. He is speaking about the Jim Crow laws, they were the unjust laws meant to be broken, these were the laws that needed to go away and go away for good and African Americans were not going to stop until the unjust Jim Crow laws were gone for good and they were not afraid of a fight. But within the African American community there were two opposing forces; the church force who had a non-violent approach and were very complacent, and the militants who were advocates of violence, believed white people were blue- eyed devils and that African Americans were better off not integrating and should create their own nation. King placed himself in the middle of these two forces. King was smart in placing himself in the middle of the two forces because he created a spectrum of options for himself and others who want to join him. King may have been oppressed by the whites, but he was not afraid to fight back and tell them how he felt, and by placing himself in between the church and
The famous speech, “ I Have a Dream”, was held in 1963 by a powerful leader of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s. He was born January 15,1929 the son of an Atlanta Pastor. Martin Luther King Jr. always insisted on nonviolent resistance and always tried to persuade others with his nonviolent beliefs. In 1963, King spoke from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and almost 200,000 people attended his speech. All his listeners were Civil Rights supporters who rallied behind him and the people who watched his appearance on television. King traveled the country making speeches and inspiring people to become involved in the Civil Rights Movement. He organized non violent student sit-ins and fought for the rights of the black population.
Martin Luther King Jr is one of the wisest and bravest black man the world has ever seen. He has set the path way for the black community and other miniorities. In his Nobel Prize Speech the “Quest for Peace and Justice”, King had three major points that he addressed in the “Quest of Peace and Justice”. One of the points he made was about racial injustice and how we need to eliminate it. King stated that, “when civilization shifts its basic outlooks then we will have a freedom explosion”. Overtime things must change, nothing never stays the same. King’s way of making parallels with this is making the claim is saying, “Oppressed people can’t oppressed forever, and the yearning will eventually manifest itself”. He insisted that blacks have,
Martin Luther King Jr. was the most influential leader of the American Civil Rights Movement as he fought for the freedom of African Americans. King’s most influential speech is his “I Have a Dream” given on August 28, 1963.1 King himself was a man whom thousands of people admired. Martin Luther King Jr. uses an expressive tone in his speeches by using verbal powerful imagery toward his audience, reminding them of the challenges facing them and defeating racism. Martin Luther King Jr. inspired others to take action, lead by example, as shown in his speeches and promoted non-violence as a method for change.
Dr. Martin Luther King’s march from Selma Montgomery, according to Heifetz’s principles of adaptive leadership, was an extremely courageous and difficult decision in order to preserve the humanity of African Americans as being first class citizens. Martin Luther King had been fighting much oppression his entire life advocating for civil rights throughout the mid-20th century, and faced his ultimate test with his marches and police oppression. His efforts in trying to spread police brutality awareness and getting the African American population to vote were Martin’s message when getting banned from marching to the state building in Montgomery from Governor Wallace. During these protests and marches, many African Americans would lose their