Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Essay, Research Paper

Dr. Martin Luther King Junior, American clergyman and the best Nobel Peace Prize winner on the face of this planet, one of the principal leaders of the American civil rights movement and well-known supporter of nonviolent protest. Dr. Martin Luther King Junior challenges to segregation and racial discrimination in the 1950s and 1960s helped convince many white Americans to support the cause of civil rights in the United States. After his assassination in 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Junior became a symbol of protest in the struggle for racial justice. Dr. Martin Luther King Junior was born in Atlanta, Georgia. He graduated from Morehouse College, Crozer Theological Seminary, and Boston University. The son of the priest of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Dr. Martin Luther King Junior was ordained in 1947 and became minister of a Baptist church in Montgomery, Ala.

Dr. Martin Luther King’ Jr?.s public-speaking abilities?which would become renowned as his figure grew in the civil rights movement?developed slowly during his collegiate years. He won a second-place prize in a speech contest while an undergraduate at Morehouse, but received Cs in two public-speaking courses in his first year at Crozer.

By the end of his third year at Crozer, however, professors were praising Dr. Martin Luther King Junior for the powerful impression he made in public speeches and discussions.

Dr. Martin Luther King Junior was challenged in the mid-1960 of his leadership in the civil rights. He became more interested from civil rights to criticism of the Vietnam War. It also made him feel a deeper concern for poverty. Dr. Martin Luther King Junior planed a Poor People’s March in Washington which was interrupted for a trip to Memphis, Tennessee, in support of striking sanitation workers. On April 4, 1968, a non-forgetful and a very heartbreaking thing happened. Dr. Martin Luther King Junior was brutally shot and killed by an assassin’s bullet on the balcony of the motel where he was staying. A guy named James Earl Ray was then later convicted for the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King Junior.

Dr. Martin Luther King Junior?s historical importance was memorialized at the Martin Luther King, Jr., Center for Nonviolent Social Change, a research institute in Atlanta where his tomb is located. The King Center is located at the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site, which includes Dr. Martin Luther King Junior?s birthplace and the Ebenezer Church. Perhaps the most important memorial is the national holiday in King’s honor, designated by the Congress of the United States in 1983 and observed on the third Monday in January, a day that falls on or near King’s birthday of January 15.