Martin Luther King

Fighting for freedomFighting for his dream

Brief introduction• Martin Luther King, JR., who won the

Noble Peace Prize in 1964,was an important political leader in the USA. He fought for political rights for black people in the USA. By doing this he set an example to the rest of the world. The message he gave was that black people should not be separated but should be treated as well as other people, and with complete respect.

Something about King• King was born in 1929 in Atlanta,

Georgia, in the southeast of the US, the son of a minister in the church. As a boy, he enjoyed basketball, tennis and especially football. He spent a lot of time talking and reading and delivered a paper round to earn some money. He liked to make friends and disliked fighting in any form. At the age of 15 he won an entrance prize to a college in one of the northern states. There lack people had equal rights and were free to live, study and work as they wished. In 1948 he left college to be a minister in the church.

Historical Background• At this time in the southern states,

blacks were not treated as equal citizens. Although slavery had been ended in the US in 1865, the southern states had passed their own laws to continue the separation of blacks and whites. Mixed race marriages were forbidden by law. There were separate sections for blacks in shops, restaurants, hospitals, buses and trains. Black children were educated in separate schools. The money spent on educating a black child was just one fourth of that spent on each white child. Black people had no right to vote in the southern states. If they wished to, they had to pass a reading test.

Activity I• King continued his studies from 1948-1951

in Philadelphia, on the east coast of the USA. All his life he believed that it was right and necessary to demand changes in society if people did not have their civil rights, He believed that they could achieve their goal by peaceful revolution, not by fighting and killing. In his lifetime, he forced the government to liberate the blacks in the USA and give them equal rights.

Activity II• In 1964 King received the Nobel Prize for

Peace. He gave the whole of the $54,600 prize to freedom movement. In 1964 a new Civil Rights Act was passed. Any organization that received money from the US government had to treat blacks equally. In 1965 a new Voting Rights Bill became law.

• From then on, all black people had the right to vote.

Story with a depressing ending

• King had made many enemies because of his work in the black liberation movement. Once, a bomb exploded and destroyed his house. On April 4th, 1968, he was murdered. However, his struggle had already changed the whole of society in the USA. Within a few tears of his death, black people across the country held important jobs in government. Many blacks work as managers, lawyers, teachers, bankers, broadcasters and newspaper editors.