Cover Stories Dr.Martin Luther King, Jr.;‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere’
January 15, 2015
By Amen Oyiboke
Staff Writer
Freedom feels like a natural born right for a young woman like me. Waking up in the morning and starting my day without constraints is second nature to who I am. I don’t have to second-guess what entrance or exit to go through when walking into local businesses. Neither do I have to worry about being arrested for sitting in the first four rows of public transit.
All of these daily routines I constantly take for granted were at one point an element of life or death for those who came before me.
Countless daily emotional moments enduring racist slanders, death threats, beatings from law enforcement and stabbings were unfortunate things that civil rights pioneer Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. experienced because of his views on cultural uniformity.
Born in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1929 King never failed to ask questions about the world around him. He initially had many doubts about the Christian religion, even with his father as a reverend, and it was years after school that he became convinced that religion could satisfy the curiosities he had about the world.
In 1953, King married Coretta Scott and a year later finished his education and became a pastor at Drexel Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. In 1955, he led the first great non-violent protests of African Americans in a bus boycott in Montgomery in response to Jim Crow laws. The boycott lasted 382 days and ended when the US Supreme Court ruled segregation as unconstitutional.
“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.’” These words are considered one of the finest speeches in American history delivered by Dr. King at the March on Washington in 1963.
His message conveyed that he was simply determined to carry out God’s will. His contributions to making groundbreaking mentalities about integration grow were like no other.
“The struggle for freedom forms one long front crossing oceans and mountains. The brotherhood of man is not confined within a narrow, limited circle of select people. It is felt everywhere in the world, it is an international sentiment of surpassing strength and because this is true when men of good finally unite they will be invincible,” Dr. King said in his 1965 speech in New York on Human Rights Day.
He had clear sense that racial issues crossed over politically and political virtues crossed over to racial standpoint in all-white governments.
He inspired people to take actions against racism, to end poverty and embrace peace.
On March 7, 1965, King led protesters in Alabama from Selma to Montgomery in a voting rights march to impact change for minorities in voting. Law enforcement officers on the Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge beat over 600 protesters, but that did not stop them. The march ended in Montgomery on March 25, 1965, and 25,000 people converged at the state Capitol to hear Dr. King. The march spearheaded the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
King wasn’t just a pioneer for racial inequality; he fought for economic stability in a system that naturally set up people to have hurdles financially by displacement. The FBI aggressively monitored King and several other civil rights leaders, fearing their radicalism. Spanning from 1963 to 1965, the FBI bugged an estimated 14 hotel rooms that King stayed in to look for information concerning his personal activities.
This potentially could weigh down any individual’s consistency in moving forward with their agenda, but it didn’t stop Dr. King.
On Thursday, April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. made way to room 306 at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, possibly thinking about his sermon for the following days. Around 5 p.m. later that day, he got dressed and ready to go to dinner. He opened the door of his hotel room, stepped on the balcony and was shot down before making it down to dinner. At that moment, his powerful voice of justice was silenced, but his inspiration for people grew beyond that moment. He was a martyr to the strongest moral crusade on the racial battle that consumed the nation.
He was a brave man that paved a path for how society was supposed to be.
“We must turn a minus into a plus,” King said, “a stumbling block into a steppingstone--we must go on anyhow.” King helped unite people from different races, that potentially showed people the unity could overcome major moments of disparity. Creating the notion that love, which crosses borders of opposition, is stronger than hatred.