Martin Luther King

Martin Luther King, Jr. (English: Martin Luther King, Jr., January 15, 1929 - April 4, 1968), American Baptist pastor, social activist, and main leader of the African-American civil rights movement. He advocated the use of non-violent civil disobedience to fight for the basic rights of African Americans, successfully promoted great changes in the civil rights cause of black Americans and other ethnic minorities, and became a symbol of American progressivism. Martin Luther King was born Michael King, but his father changed his name to commemorate Martin Luther, the leader of the European religious reform in the 16th century. As a black church leader, King became involved in the civil rights movement early in his career, leading the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott and helping to found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957. While serving as the first chairman of the SCLC, King launched an anti-apartheid protest in Albany, Georgia, in 1962 that ended in failure; however, the nonviolent protest he organized in Birmingham, Alabama, became the focus of national news, contrasting with the brutal police. In 1963, King launched the "March on Washington" and delivered the "I Have a Dream" speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial, becoming the most famous speaker in American history. Because of King's left-wing radical ideas, he became one of the targets of the FBI's "Counterintelligence Program", which suspected that King might be related to communism. The FBI had investigated signs that King was suspected of being involved in an extramarital affair and reported it to the U.S. government, and then sent an anonymous letter to King in an attempt to force him to commit suicide. On October 14, 1964, the Nobel Committee awarded Martin Luther King Jr. the Nobel Peace Prize for his long-term non-violent pursuit of the ideal of racial equality. In 1965, he co-organized the "March from Selma to Montgomery" with the SCLC, and the following year spread the civil rights movement north to Chicago. In the last years of his life, in addition to the civil rights movement, King also focused on poverty issues in the United States and the Vietnam War. He delivered the speech "Behind Vietnam: A Time to Break the Silence" to illustrate his change in stance on the Vietnam War. King once planned the nationwide occupation of Washington, D.C., as a "poor man's movement." On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King was assassinated in a motel in Memphis, Tennessee. After King's assassination, riots broke out across the United States. after,