Martin Luther King Day

Hello,

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. day is celebrated today (18/01/2010) all across USA.

King was born Michael King Jr. but later, his father Michael King Sr., changed both names to Martin Luther in honor of the German Protestant Leader.

King was born on January 15, 1929 and assasinated on 4th April 1968. The Martin Luther King Day is celbrated on the third Monday of January every year since 1986. The prejudice against blacks can be gauged by the fact that although the proclamation was signed in 1983, the first time it was celebrated all across the 500 states in America was as late as 2000.

Technically without a High School certificate, King received his Doctor of Philosophy in 1951.

He is the most celebrated civil rights leader for blacks in America and had to pay for his activism with his life. He started his activism through the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955 and is likened to Mahatma Gandhi for his preference for non-violent resistance.

In 1964 he became the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace prize.

He had excellent oratory skills and his speech 'I have a Dream' is considered one of the most important speeches made on racial discimination in USA. Delivered on August 28, 1963, from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and it was a defining moment for the American Civil Rights Movement. There are many quotes from the speech that are recognized as an important part of American history.

The entire speech is moving and full of quotes and key phrases that are now a very important part of history.

"It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual."

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."

"Let freedom ring. And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring—when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children—black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics—will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"

"This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day."

When King died in 1968 he was just 39 years old but according to the Doctor he had a heart of a sixty year old.

But his life has not been without controversy. a 1980 inquiry revealed that portions his doctorate thesis on "A Comparison of the Conceptions of God in the Thinking of Paul Tillich and Henry Nelson Wieman" had been plagiarized.

King was a compulsive womanizer and accused of having several extra-marital affairs. In fact this was one of major weapon the FBI was planning to use against him to remove King from the leadership of the movements on civil rights.

King's biographer David Garrow detailed what he called King's "compulsive sexual athleticism." Garrow wrote about numerous extramarital affairs, including one with a woman King saw almost daily. According to Garrow, "that relationship, rather than his marriage, increasingly became the emotional centerpiece of King's life, but it did not eliminate the incidental couplings that were a commonplace of King's travels." King explained his extramarital affairs as "a form of anxiety reduction".

Today we celebrate the birth of this extraordinary personality who in a sense paved the way for Barrack Obama becoming the President of the USA.

Best regards,

Manoj