Evidencia Crónica GA2-240202501-AA2-EV01

Presented to the teacher

KAREN YESELY DIAZ

Of the course

Digital content integration

Daniel Rojas A.
July 2023
Martin Luther King
(Martin Luther King Jr.; Atlanta, 1929 - Memphis, 1968) American Baptist pastor,
defender of civil rights. The long struggle of African Americans to achieve full rights
began in 1955 to accelerate, whose leadership would soon be highlighted by the young
pastor Martin Luther King.

His nonviolent action, inspired by the example of Gandhi, mobilized a growing portion
of the African-American community, culminating in the summer of 1963 in the historic
March on Washington, which brought together 250,000 demonstrators. There, at the
foot of the Lincoln Memorial, Martin Luther King delivered the most famous and
moving of his splendid speeches, known for the formula that headed the vision of a just
world: I have a dream.

Despite the arrests and police or racist attacks, the movement for civil equality was
ripping off judicial sentences and legislative decisions against racial segregation, and
obtained the endorsement of the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to King in 1964.
Unfortunately, a disastrous destiny seems drag the apostles of nonviolence: like his
teacher Gandhi, Martin Luther King was assassinated four years later.

Most important facts

Bus boycott in Montgomery (Alabama, 1955)

In the mid-20th century, the southern United States suffered from legalized racial
segregation, although slavery had been abolished almost a century earlier. In late 1955 a
black woman, Rosa Parks, was arrested for refusing to give up a seat on a bus to a white
man.
King, 25, a newly ordained pastor of the Baptist Church, organized a bus boycott
supported massively by the city's African-American community.
After a year of conflict, the Supreme Court declared segregation on buses, restaurants,
schools and other public places illegal.
Anti-segregation protests in Birmingham (Alabama, 1963)

King and other leaders organized African-Americans to peacefully demonstrate against

business segregation and encourage business owners to offer jobs to people of all races.
Sit-ins in restaurants and libraries, black people on their knees in white-only churches,
and protest marches led to the arrest of hundreds of protesters, including King himself.
The repressive wave was widely covered by the media and finally the city authorities
relented and public places were opened to the entire population.

Selma March (Alabama, 1965)

Activists fighting for the right to register as voters had tried to march in protest from
Selma to Montgomery, the state capital, about 50 miles away. They were blocked and
violently repressed by state police in an event known as 'Bloody Sunday'.
King led a second march but stopped it just before crossing the bridge where the clashes
had occurred, disconcerting the waiting police and the activists themselves prepared for
violence. Finally, a federal judge ruled that they had the right to continue to
Montgomery and forced state authorities to open the pass. King led a third march that
reached the finish line with more than 20,000 people. A few months later, Congress
passed the Voting Rights Act.

Rights for Northern African Americans (Illinois, 1966)

King and other social leaders moved to Chicago to support the African-American
community living in conditions of poverty and discrimination. Activists demonstrated
that African-American couples applying for housing were discriminated against. They
organized protests that were repressed and attacked by authorities and civilians. Finally,
an equal opportunity program was promoted in the city.

The new fight for all the poor (1967)

As a second phase of the civil rights movement, King organized the 'campaign of the
poor', which sought to analyze and fight poverty at its source, beyond the African-
American community. The pastor had been under investigation by the FBI since 1955
for being suspected of being influenced by communism, which was never proven.

The speech where he predicted his death (Tennessee, 1968)

King traveled to Memphis to support a movement of striking African-American garbage

collectors to demand better working conditions. There he gave, without knowing it, his
last speech.

"What could happen to me from one of our evil white brothers? Like everyone else, I
would like to live a long time. Longevity is important, but that is something that does
not concern me now," he told his followers gathered in a church.
The next day he was assassinated. James Earl Ray, a white racist from Tennessee was
captured in London, UK, and sentenced to 99 years in prison for the crime.