The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (January 15, 1929–April 4, 1968) was the charismatic leader of the U.S. civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s. He directed the year-long Montgomery bus boycott, which attracted scrutiny by a wary, divided nation, but his leadership and the resulting Supreme Court ruling against bus segregation brought him fame. He formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to coordinate nonviolent protests and delivered over 2,500 speeches addressing racial injustice, but his life was cut short by an assassin in 1968.
Martin Luther King Jr. was born January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia, to Michael King Sr., pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church, and Alberta Williams, a Spelman College graduate and former schoolteacher. King lived with his parents, a sister, and a brother in the Victorian home of his maternal grandparents.
After attending the World Baptist Alliance in Berlin in 1934, King Sr. changed his and his son's name from Michael King to Martin Luther King, after the Protestant reformist. King Sr. was inspired by Martin Luther's courage of confronting institutionalized evil.
King studied sociology and considered law school while reading voraciously. He was fascinated by Henry David Thoreau's essay "On Civil Disobedience" and its idea of noncooperation with an unjust system. King decided that social activism was his calling and religion the best means to that end. He was ordained as a minister in February 1948, the year he graduated with a sociology degree at age 19.
In September 1948, King entered the predominately White Crozer Theological Seminary in Upland, Pennsylvania. He read works by great theologians but despaired that no philosophy was complete within itself. Then, hearing a lecture about Mahatma Gandhi, he became captivated by his concept of nonviolent resistance. King concluded that the Christian doctrine of love, operating through nonviolence, could be a powerful weapon for his people.
In 1951, King graduated at the top of his class with a Bachelor of Divinity degree. In September of that year, he enrolled in doctoral studies at Boston University's School of Theology.
While in Boston, King met Coretta Scott, a singer studying voice at the New England Conservatory of Music. The couple married on June 18, 1953.
When King arrived in Montgomery to join the Dexter Avenue church, Rosa Parks, secretary of the local NAACP chapter, had been arrested for refusing to relinquish her bus seat to a White man. Parks' December 1, 1955, arrest presented the perfect opportunity to make a case for desegregating the transit system.
E.D. Nixon, former head of the local NAACP chapter, and the Rev. Ralph Abernathy, a close friend of King, contacted King and other clergymen to plan a citywide bus boycott. The group drafted demands and stipulated that no Black person would ride the buses on December 5.
That day, nearly 20,000 Black citizens refused bus rides. Because Black people comprised 90% of the passengers, most buses were empty. When the boycott ended 381 days later, Montgomery's transit system was nearly bankrupt.
On February 1959 he laid six principles, explaining that nonviolence:
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Is not a method for cowards; it does resist
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Does not seek to defeat or humiliate the opponent, but to win his friendship and understanding
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Is directed against forces of evil rather than against persons who happen to be doing the evil
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Is a willingness to accept suffering without retaliation, to accept blows from the opponent without striking back
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Avoids not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit
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Is based on the conviction that the universe is on the side of justice
In April 1963, King and the SCLC joined Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights in a nonviolent campaign to end segregation and force Birmingham, Alabama, businesses to hire Black people. Fire hoses and vicious dogs were unleashed on the protesters by “Bull” Connor's police officers. King was thrown into jail. King spent eight days in the Birmingham jail as a result of this arrest but used the time to write "Letter From a Birmingham Jail," affirming his peaceful philosophy.
On October 14th, 1964, King won the Nobel Peace Prize for combating racial inequality through nonviolent resistance. In 1965, he helped organize the Selma to Montgomery marches. In his final years, he expanded his focus to include opposition towards poverty, capitalism, and the Vietnam War.
For his activism, he was the target of multiple assassination attempts, arrested 23 times, and surveilled and harassed by the police. In particular, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover harassed Dr. King by making him a target of COINTELPRO, a secret program where FBI agents spied on, infiltrated, and attempted to discredit "subversive" political movements.
In 1968, King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference organized the "Poor People's Campaign" to address issues of economic justice. King traveled the country to assemble "a multiracial army of the poor" that would march on Washington to engage in nonviolent civil disobedience at the Capitol until Congress created an "economic bill of rights" for poor Americans.
Before the plans for the march could come to fruition, however, King was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee while supporting striking black sanitation workers. James Earl Rey was convicted for the murder, but speculation of government involvement has persisted for decades after his death.
MLK: SPEECHES, SERMONS, ESSAYS, & INTERVIEWS
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four times now since last year, where I'm trying to sleep and then suddenly, it feels like my heart goes racing and I suddenly get a feeling that this is it, my time has come. clearly not since I'm here posting. I hate this, it honestly makes me want to cry. I hate that this keeps happening. Is this just gonna be like a like uncommon a few times a yearly occurrence from now on? I just hope it's a panic attack or something, and not something serious going on. like this fourth time it was also really worrisome compared to the last three times. and like, I really should try getting some sleep. I just like, really hate this, it's just like, really upsetting.
I have been experiencing this recently too. I read that it’s a glitch where your brain mistakes falling asleep for dying and tries to jolt you back into consciousness. There’s a name for it but I don’t recall what it is. I haven’t been experiencing these episodes as much lately but it used to be a nightly occurrence. Maybe yours will go away soon.
It's good you're not experiencing them as much as lately. Maybe it's that I just dunno. I just know maybe it wouldn't hurt for me to see a doctor soon since like they'll know? They are health professionals. But just like, this morning was just scary and concerning. I wasn't even asleep unlike the last three times. I was trying to sleep, but like, my heart just kept racing for like a few hours, kind of on and off? and at one moment when laying down I just felt dizzy. and then like later on I sat up and just suddenly felt that "im gonna die" feeling and not feeling good. I even like measured my heart rate with a pulse oximeter, and it was around like 140ish. but it all went away and I feel fine now, so like I dunno.
maybe it what you said, or it's like panic attacks or anxiety, or just stress or like some other weird thing I dunno. But at the very least it is all just very like upsetting when it happens. and like seeing a doctor would be really nice
Is anything in your life causing you more stress recently? Are you eating healthy? Even if it’s only stress related, it might be reassuring to hear that from a doctor. For me it helps to avoid salty and fatty foods to prevent my heart from keeping me up at night.
yea, a bunch of stuff in my life causing a ton of stress, but its kind of always been that way. but it wouldn't be surprising if it was just stress. and not really with eating healthy either, sometimes I don't eat some days, and if I do eat, its not always good foods. and I know that like not helping things either. and just like, erg. just feels like a bunch of things converging
Sounds like a panic attack. I got them when I tried going on a brand of anti-depressants.
If it is a panic attack it won't kill you. It hasn't killed you so far. Next time it happens try just being bored/annoyed by it. "oh here we go again. stupid body doing random stuff for no reason" Try to not be afraid and analyse what is exactly happening with your body and see if you can track down triggers. You know it is coming and that you'll get through it. You are the boss.