Martin Luther King — pastor, activist, and politician — was the leader of the civil rights movement for African Americans. He was born on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, the capital of Georgia, in the southern United States, to Martin King Senior, of Nigerian and Irish origins, and Alberta Williams. His father was a reverend of the local Baptist Church, while his mother played in the choir. At birth, the child was named Martin King, like his father. The name Luther was added when he was five years old, after his parents returned from a trip to Berlin. In the German capital, then governed by Nazism, his father learned about the figure of the thinker Martin Luther, who deeply impressed him. And so, in his honour, he legally added the name Luther to little Mike.
At the age of thirteen, Martin Luther King began collaborating with the Atlanta Journal and, thanks to his writing skills, quickly rose through the ranks of the newsroom until he became the youngest deputy editor in the newspaper’s history. He was already dealing with social issues and the discrimination faced by the Black community, but it was when he himself suffered an injustice that he decided to dedicate his life to political activism. During a long bus trip, he was forced to give up his seat to a white boy and stand for the entire three-hour journey.
In 1944, he entered Atlanta Baptist College, which was open to Black students, and began to reflect on his vocation. At first fascinated by medicine, he then considered studying law to defend people’s civil rights. But after spending some months helping his father in his church, he embraced his father’s suggestion and decided to become a pastor himself. After completing his studies and marrying Coretta Scott, Martin accepted a job offer from the Baptist Church of Montgomery, in Alabama — a place that would later become the centre of his political activity.
It was precisely in Montgomery that the first uprisings of the Black community began — tired of suffering injustices, abuses, and violence. On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to stand up and give her seat to a white passenger. Her act set off a wave of protests, boycotts, and violent reactions that led to the creation of associations such as the Montgomery Improvement Association, of which Martin became president.
The protests of the Black community, the violent reactions of society, and the ensuing trials gave the young Martin Luther King the determination to continue bringing his demands to everyone’s attention. A few months later, together with a group of friends, he founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) — the Congress of Christian Leaders of the Southern States. Through this association, King sought to coordinate the activities of the various local protest movements, thus creating a unified organization. The experiment was successful, and the many protest groups scattered across the counties found a single spokesperson — both for public statements and private reflection. Martin became a point of reference for countless people, and his fame — thanks also to his own powerful speeches and his extraordinary oratory skills — soon went beyond the borders of the southern states. After becoming president of the association, Martin Luther King appeared for the first time on the cover of Time magazine. In the following months, his fame led him to travel extensively, reaching even Washington, where, in a historic speech, he declared: “Give Us the Ballot”, that is, give us the right to vote. The Black community of the United States became increasingly impassioned, to the point that President Eisenhower decided to meet Martin Luther King in person.
In the following years — after being arrested for trying to enter a courtroom where he was supposed to testify, after being stabbed and undergoing delicate surgery — King met John F. Kennedy, then running for the Democratic Party nomination. The future president assured King that he supported civil rights and intended to back his campaigns for Black voting rights. In the months that followed, however, the number of assaults and acts of violence against Black activists multiplied. The associations organized protests and demonstrations in many major cities, including Birmingham, where Martin Luther King participated in a series of sit-ins in venues and shops reserved for white customers. The police intervened with extreme brutality, using dogs and water cannons, beating and arresting hundreds of people. The images caused outrage throughout the country, prompting President Kennedy to present to Congress a bill to establish equal rights for Black and white Americans. To push the proposal — opposed by the governors of the southern states — Martin Luther King organized a March on Washington, together with other civil rights leaders: Roy Wilkins, Whitney Young, A. Philip Randolph, John Lewis, and James L. Farmer Jr. Before a crowd of 250,000 people, Martin Luther King delivered his famous speech beginning with the immortal words: “I have a dream…”, and received a handshake from President Kennedy.
During the March on Washington, King first heard of Malcolm X, who criticised the demonstration, calling it a “farce on Washington.” The two met a few months later but exchanged only a few words. While King continued his peaceful demonstrations, Malcolm X pursued an activism rooted in aggressiveness and violence. And precisely for his work in favour of civil rights and non-violence, on October 14, 1964, in Oslo, King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
The following year, Martin Luther King, together with southern associations, attempted to organize a march from Selma to Montgomery, the capital of Alabama. The first attempt ended very badly. Organized groups of white people, aided by the police, intervened violently, beating dozens of marchers. The day became known as “Bloody Sunday” in Selma. The next attempts failed because of court orders prohibiting any form of gathering or assembly. The permit arrived a few weeks later. The march officially began in Selma on March 21, 1965, and ended in Montgomery on March 25. They started out as 4,000 people, but upon arrival in Alabama’s capital they were over 20,000 — before whom King delivered another historic speech. Faced with such mobilization, President Johnson announced that he had introduced the Voting Rights Act, the law extending voting rights to Black citizens, which was signed on August 6, 1965.
During the next two years, King took part in countless demonstrations across the country, calling for an end to segregation. But increasingly often, violent organizations that promoted the idea of “Black Power” appeared alongside his pacifist movement. A few months later, the Black Panther Party was founded, calling for confrontation with the white community and urging the use of the same violence that whites had long used against Blacks. The climate of tension increased, leading to large-scale clashes in several cities — as happened in the Los Angeles ghetto. In the early months of 1968, tension within the movements was extremely high, and during meetings, Martin Luther King’s views were often supported only by a minority. The majority were drawn to programmes that advocated massive use of weapons.
The March demonstrations between Atlanta and Memphis in March went very badly. In Memphis, in particular, the press spoke of a defeat for King’s movement — yet he did not give up. A few weeks later, on April 3, Martin Luther returned to Memphis to give a speech to striking sanitation workers. The next day, April 4, 1968, while standing on the balcony of his motel room on the second floor, he was shot in the head by a sniper. Despite immediate aid and transport to the hospital, doctors pronounced Martin Luther King dead.
The news of his murder shocked the United States, and in over a hundred cities there were riots and destruction as people, devastated and angry, took to the streets. President Johnson declared April 7 a national day of mourning, while his funeral took place in Atlanta on April 9. Martin Luther King, together with his wife Coretta, is still buried in the National Historical Park dedicated to him.
