On this sacred holiday, we celebrate the life and legacy of the late Brother Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. King was an African American Southerner and Baptist clergyman who changed the whole world in fundamentally revolutionary ways. As time has gone on, many people have learned more information about the life and political plus the philosophical views of Dr. King. He had an extensive family. His father was a preacher, and his grandfather was a preacher. His parents were Martin Luther King Sr. and Alberta Williams King. From his childhood, Dr. King possessed a gift of great oratory ability. Dr. King's God-given gift was expressed to the maximum effect when he eloquently utilized words and speeches to appeal to a diversity of people, from university administrators to the poorest of Americans. He worked hard to promote the doctrines of peace, love, and nonviolence in his daily life. He wanted human beings to live out the creed of justice and equality for all. Also, one of the tactics that he utilized in seeking justice was civil disobedience (which was practiced by Thoreau and Gandhi). Back in the day, most Americans didn't know about the contradictions and racism shown by Gandhi. Now, we do. His father, Martin Luther King Sr. was a great preacher of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia. His father was a courageous man who stood up against racism and wanted to be addressed as Sir not as "boy." Dr. King and his two siblings read the Bible as instructed by their father when they were children. Dr. King loved his grandmother, Jennie. Dr. King started school in September 1935. In 1936, his father, Martin Luther King Sr., led hundreds of African Americans in a civil rights march to the city of Hall in Atlanta to protest voting rights discrimination. Dr. King said that Martin Sr. was a real father to him. Dr. King memorized hymns and Bible verses by the time he was 5 years old. He loved opera and played the piano. Dr. King had a large vocabulary, because as a child, he read dictionaries. When he was 13, Dr. King was 13 and the youngest assistant manager of a newspaper delivery station for the Atlanta Journal. He was in Booker T. Washington High School with a B-plus average. Dr. King studied history, English, and sociology. His sister Christine helped him with spelling, and Dr. King helped her sister with math.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had a brother named A.D. King and a sister who was Christine King Farris. Dr. King won an oratory competition (in Georgia. After the competition, he was on the bus and felt angry. The reason is because of the racism that he experienced on that bus. He said that was the angriest that he felt in his life). Subsequently, he felt inspired to stand up to end the brutal system of Jim Crow apartheid. He played basketball, he was an intellectual, and he was great at playing pool, too. He went into college when he was 15 years old and earned his Bachelor's Degree from Morehouse College (in 1948 when he was 19 years old), his BDiv from Crozer Theological Seminary (or the Bachelor of Divinity in 1951), and his PhD from Boston University. By the late 1940's, he worked in Connecticut and saw integration for the first time in his life. At Morehouse, he played freshman football. His spiritual mentor, Benjamin Mays, who was a Baptist minister, inspired Dr. King to go into the ministry when he was 18 years old. Minister Benjamin Mays was a well-known fighter for civil rights and human freedom.
Crozier Theological Seminary is located up North in Upland, Pennsylvania, and Dr. King took many classes at the University of Pennsylvania (in Philadelphia). Dr. King learned philosophy from Penn's first African American professor, William Fontaine, and Elizabeth F. Flower. He studied the social gospel from Walter Rauschenbusch. The social gospel doctrine is the belief that believers in God must merge social causes with the Gospel in order to change society for the better. The truth is more nuanced. That means that we should fight for legitimate social causes to improve society, but the Gospel should not be minimized (as the Bible states, man shall not live by bread alone but by the words that come from God). Dr. King loved to merge concepts into one in a form of Hegelian synthesis. Dr. King criticized both capitalism and communism in his speeches and literature. He married Coretta Scott King, who was his equal and was just as committed to social justice as he was. Coretta Scott King was a great singer. The couple married on June 18, 1953, on the lawn of her parents' house, in Heiberger, Alabama. Coretta Scott and Dr. King had four children who are Yolanda King, Martin Luther King III, Dexter Scott King, and Bernice King. The Mary's Cafe sit in showed the power of nonviolent civil disobedience that Dr. King was inspired by.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was the first President of the SCLC, or the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. He and others were involved in the 1955 Montgomery Bus boycott, the Albany Movement in Albany, Georgia, and other movements. Claudette Colvin, Rosa Parks, and other people refused to give up their seats on a city bus. Dr. King was a preacher at The Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. The boycott involved the whole black community of Montgomery using car rides and human beings just walking to resist segregation. The boycott lasted for 385 days, with Edgar Nixon, NAACP members, and other people fighting for change. The Browder v. Gayle case later banned racial segregation on the Montgomery public buses. After the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott, Dr. King was known nationwide as one of the leading voices of the Civil Rights Movement. Dr. King was in the SCLC's 1957 Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom. It was the first time when Dr. King addressed a national audience. He worked with Stanley Levison and Ella Baker. Dr. King support Kennedy in 1960 after he was freed by RFK when he was placed in jail. Robert Kennedy rejected allowing Hoover to illegal monitor King's telephone line in the fall of 1963. We know about Dr. King's imperfections like adultery. No human except the Messiah is perfect, so we don't condone adultery. Yet, we respect what Dr. King got right during his life. Dr. King denied the physical resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, a literal Hell, and the Virgin Birth. Obviously, I don't agree with Dr. King on those theological issues, but I shall eat the meat and spit out the bones. In other words, I agree with Dr. King on many issues and won't agree with him on other matters. President Kennedy was afraid of the allegation of communist infiltration in the movement. The truth is that there is no evidence that communists infiltrated all aspects of the Civil Rights Movement. Dr. King, in public and in private, condemned communism explicitly, and Dr. King praised democratic socialism. President John F. Kennedy and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy fought for civil rights, but they rejected civil disobedience being utilized constantly in the streets. I believe that people have every right to use the courts and demonstrations and even civil disobedience to fight for social change. No one can tell the oppressed on the methods of gaining freedom if the oppressed used legitimate means to fight evil. Dr. King had to push hard for the federal government to promote civil rights legislation. Dr. King led marches to promote the right to vote, desegregation, labor rights, and basic human rights along with being against imperialism. That is why Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. celebrated the independence of the African nation of Ghana. Dr. King supported his book Stride Toward Freedom and survived a stabbing by Izola Curry. In 1961, there was the Albany Movement in Albany, Georgia, to attack segregation. It wasn't that successful as Pritchett, a local police officer, jailed people and used tactics to prevent massive conflict. This was when SNCC (which was created by Ella Baker to promote grassroots organizing in getting solutions without a single hierarchical organization) overtly criticized the SCLC and Dr. King on another level.
The turning point in his life was in 1963 with the Birmingham, Alabama, movement. Birmingham was one of the most segregated cities in America during that time. This nonviolent movement saw crooked police use water hoses and dogs against innocent men, women, and children. This was done by Birmingham Police Department leader Eugene "Bull" Connor. Dr. King was placed in jail during the Birmingham Campaign and wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail to describe his views. As a political prisoner, Dr. King accurately mentioned the freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor. People must demand for freedom and fight for it in order to get freedom. He mentioned that everything legal is not necessary right as Hitler did many things that were legal, but they weren't morally right. Therefore, Dr. King focused on the distinction between just law and unjust law. He cited the Boston Tea Party as a justification for him to advocate for civil disobedience. The March on Washington existed by August 1963. Many of its organizers were part of the Big Six group of Roy Wilkins (of the NAACP), Whitney Young (of the National Urban League), A. Philip Randolph (of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters), John Lewis (of SNCC), and James Farmer Jr. (of CORE or the Congress of Racial Equality). Bayard Rustin was involved in the creation of the March on Washington too, fulfilling the dream of Randolph decades ago during the days of WWII. President Kennedy once opposed the march outright, but he supported it under certain token conditions. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1963 eloquent I Have a Dream speech in Washington, D.C., was not just about the Dream of justice and freedom for all people regardless of race, color, or creed. It was a condemnation of the racist and economically oppressive actions by the government against black Americans. Dr. King's efforts, along with grassroots activism by a diversity of famous and unsung human beings, contributed to the passage of some of the most progressive legislation in American history (including the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968). Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 for his work in the United States of America to fight racial injustice via nonviolent resistance. After four little girls were murdered unjustly for just worshiping God at the 16th Street Baptist Church (on Sunday, September 15, 1963. The little girls' names are Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, and Synthia Wesley), Dr. King gave the eulogy. Dr. King worked in St. Augustine, Florida in 1964 to fight for equality. Dr. King worked with Robert Hayling's movement of armed self-defense in St. Augustine, and he supported Northern activists (plus rabbis) to defend black human rights. Dr. King talked in Biddeford, Maine and in New York City in 1964. He supported the Scripto labor strike in Atlanta by November 1964.
The enemy of freedom and a hypocrite, J. Edgar Hoover, used the FBI to illegally harass Dr. King and other activists via COINTELPRO. Dr. King already knew this, and this used courage to stand up for human rights. In 1965, his work in Selma, Alabama, was victorious in causing federal voting rights legislation to exist via the Voting Rights Act. Dr. King worked with the SCLC, SNCC, and other groups like the DCVL to promote the Selma voting rights movement in December 1964. Malcolm X came to Selma to support freedom, too. Bloody Sunday took place on March 7, 1965, when police officers assaulted peaceful protesters using clubs and tear gas. Footage of police brutality was shown worldwide, and this inspired the world to stand up for voting rights. After the Voting Rights Act was signed in August 1965, something else happened in America. It was the Watts rebellion in Los Angeles, California. It happened because of the racism, poverty, educational issues, housing restrictions, and other problems that existed in the area. People had a breaking point, and Dr. King came over there to promote peace. Yet, Dr. King was booed. This was rare and taboo for black people to publicly boo Dr. King back in 1965. Later, Dr. King wrote and said that black people in the Midwest and the West Coast has legal rights legislatively but no true economic rights for them to embrace. There was still de facto segregation, and people over in those parts of the country had a legitimate outrage at the slow progress of the freedom movement's results. So, Dr. King wanted a radical program to address the needs of black people in the Midwest and West Coast (not just in the South). Back then, a lot of us from Virginia and the South didn't understand the pain of people in other parts of the nation. In 1966, Dr. King supported Chicago's open housing movement. He moved into North Lawndale to express empathy and support for the poor. Albert Raby of Chicago supported the Chicago Freedom Movement. Dr. King said that the vicious racism in Chicago was worse than the Deep South. Dr. King was hit in the head with a rock by a white racist in the Chicago area. Dr. King played pool with the youth and wanted Chicago gangs to embrace nonviolence. Dr. King allowed his protege Jesse Jackson to form Operation Breadbasket to boycott companies that allowed discrimination against black Americans. 1966 was the year when Kwame Ture promoted the view of Black Power. Black Power is the philosophical view that believed that black people should own and control the economics and politics in their own community to advance self-determination and ultimate black freedom in our daily lives. Many people viewed Black Power in different ways. Many white liberals and moderate black people (even some members of the NAACP, like Roy Wilkins back then) viewed Black Power as racist and "black supremacy." Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had a more nuanced view of Black Power. He agreed with Black Power's advocacy of self-determination and a declaration of independence for black people. He opposed separatism. In 1966, the Black Panther Party for Self Defense was created by Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton in Oakland, California. The Black Panther Party was a socialist organization that wanted an end to police brutality, racism, imperialism, and economic capitalistic exploitation. They used guns for self defense and cited the law when confronted by the police.
After 1965, Dr. King became more revolutionary by supporting the Poor People's Campaign to combat poverty, fighting against the unjust Vietnam War, and defended Memphis sanitation workers who were denied of basic, fundamental economic rights like a living wage and the right to form a union. Dr. King opposed the Vietnam War for many legitimate reasons. When he saw children burned alive by napalm, then that was enough for King. Dr. King opposed the Vietnam War as early as 1964 and in 1965, but the Johnson administration pressured Dr. King to be quiet on the issue. By the end of 1966 and early 1967, he was silent no more. Dr. King saw the Vietnam War as a colonial war against another oppressed people, to him it was a waste of resources that could be used to rebuild American urban and rural locations, and he called the American government the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today via his April 1967 Riverside Church' Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence speech. LBJ was furious and even Whitney Young nearly fought Dr. King physically over the Vietnam War issue. Whitney Young would later oppose the War when Nixon was President. Dr. King's opposition to the Vietnam War cost him support from the establishment and other people like Billy Graham, LBJ, union leaders, black moderate leaders, and powerful publishers. Yet, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was steadfast in his moral convictions in desiring the unjust Vietnam War to end. Ironically, Kwame Ture and other black revolutionaries praised Dr. King's anti-Vietnam War views. Dr. King made the point to say that you can't claim for us to be nonviolent in America while condoning unjust violence against Vietnamese children. Many American forces and many North Vietnamese forces committed overt war crimes during the Vietnam War. Some liberals like Allard K. Lowenstein, William Sloane Coffin, and Norman Thomas wanted Dr. King to run for President in 1968, but Dr. King refused. At his core, Dr. King was a social activist, a preacher, and an orator, not a politician. Dr. King spoke in anti-war rallies worldwide and was inspired by Vietnamese Buddhist Thich Nhat Hanh to oppose the Vietnam War. In 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. traveled the world in London, in New York City, in Norfolk, Virginia, in California, etc. By the time of the Six Day War between Israel and Egypt, Dr. King gave a complex response. Dr. King said that Israel has the right to exist, but Israel can't be too harsh against Arabic people. Dr. King wanted a Marshall Plan program to rebuild Arabic nations in the Middle East. Dr. King became more progressive and praised democratic socialism.
His final book of Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, Dr. King addressed poverty and other social issues inspired by Henry George's research. In that book, Dr. King wrote about political issues, the Black Power movement, and other subjects that are relevant in our generation. Dr. King wanted a guaranteed basic income. The Poor People's Campaign ultimately wasn't successful per se, but it gave people further motivation to fight poverty to this very day. By 1968, Dr. King was focused on the Memphis sanitation strike. After black men were crushed by a garbage truck machine for trying to escape the rain, that was enough. Immediately, black men protested for economic justice in Memphis with signs that read "I AM A MAN." Dr. King spoke in Memphis to give inspiration to the people. One rally ended in violence because of agent provocateurs. Dr. King wanted to fight the injunction in court. He also met A.D. King, Dorothy Cotton, and Kentucky state legislature Georgia Powell, who was a black woman who fought for civil rights and housing rights in Kentucky, like in Frankfurt. He passed away on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee. We know a lot of Dr. King's life, and we are inspired by what he got right to fight for moral improvement, economic justice, racial equality, anti-imperialism, and human liberation in general. He supported Native Americans too.
I was born 15 years after Dr. King's assassination. After 58 years since the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., we have seen monumental changes in American society and in the world in general. We witness A.I., the Internet, 3D printing, advanced social media apps, and new inventions that have inspired our eyes. Yet, we have a long way to go after some progress, being almost 6 decades after 1968. For example, human life expectancy is higher now than in 1968, but health care costs are much higher now (with some in the GOP refusing to extend health care subsidies to assist some of the most vulnerable in society). We have seen tons of displays of Black Excellence in 2026, but a tyrant in the White House wants to whitewash black museums' historical displays, used massive ICE agents terrorizing the residents of Minneapolis (plus other cities), end free visiting to the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Washington, D.C., and desiring to illegally annex Greenland. We have more information about the world than at any other time in human history. On the other hand, some people may have information, but they refuse to come into the knowledge of the truth. We still have educational issues, massive economic inequality, militarism, and imperialism in our globe. We exist in massive economic inequality with record profits for the super wealthy and the oligarchy. In 2026, we witness protests in Iran, Venezuela being in political uncertainty, debates on many political topics, and protests against authoritarianism in America plus worldwide. Yet one important point about Dr. King's legacy is that we must not only complain. We must also be part of the solution. It can be protesting, working in charities, going out to help your neighbor without fanfare, educating children, and standing up for legitimate social causes (like environmentalism, fighting gun violence, defending voting rights, rejecting authoritarianism, fighting racial oppression, and loving equality for all people). The battle is not over, but the Dream is real. Victory will be ours in the end.
Rest in Power Brother Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
By Timothy
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