Martin Luther King - American Conscience Martin Luther King Jr. Dies at 39

Martin Luther King, an American Baptist minister as an activist fell caused a gunshot head wound on 4 April in Memphis. Just after 6 o’clock in the evening, he went out of his hotel room to fresh air. Suddenly there was the sound of a gun, his friends told. They ran outside and found him lying on the ground. An hour later Martin Luther King died in a Memphis hospital. He was thirty-nine years old.

He was born on 15 January 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia as a child of a minister in an Atlanta church. He became the most visible spokesperson and leader in the civil rights movement from 1954. He is best known for his role in the advancement of civil rights using the tactics of nonviolence and civil disobedience based on his Christian beliefs and inspired by nonviolent activism of Mahatma Gandhi. He led the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott and helped SCLC.

On October 14, 1964 King received the Nobel Peace Prize for combating racial inequality through nonviolent resistance. Recently he expanded his focus to include opposition towards poverty and the Vietnam war. There were several famous speeches were given. “ I have a dream” “ Beyond Vietnam” and so on. It is certain that we have lost a great person.

Posted for Naoko