MLK Jr. Remembered
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He began his career
as a Baptist Preacher,
but went on to lead
a sweeping grassroots effort
to end racial discrimination
known as the civil right movement.
Along the way,
Martin Luther King Jr. made history
and emerged as one of the most
influential leaders of the 20th century.
Before the civil rights movement began,
segregation policies
known as Jim Crow Laws
kept African-americans in a separate
and generally inferior world from whites.
African-americans went
to separate public schools,
ate in seperate restaurants,
and even had to use
separate public restrooms.
They had to sit at the back of buses
and give up their seats
to any white people standing.
But 1954 Jim Crow
suffered a stunning defeat.
The Supreme Court declared that separate schools for blacks and whites
were inherently unequal in a case
called Brown vs. Board of education.
The following year
in Montgomery, Alabama
a tailor“s assistant named Rosa Parks
refused to give up her
bus seat for a white passenger.
Parks was arrested, but Martin
Luther King organized a full fledge boycott
of the Montgomery city bus system.
13 months later the buses integrated.
The Montgomery boycott
inspired more efforts to end segregation,
in 1963 King and other civil rights leaders organized the march on Washington.
More than 200,000 people
came to the nation“s capital
to demand equality for blacks
and urged congress
to pass pending civil rights laws.
Standing at the base of the Lincoln memorial
King spoke the words
"I have a dream today",
describing his hope for a future
in which all men would be brothers.
The civil rights movement
was changing the nation.
In 1964 Congress
passed the Civil Rights Act
which made racial
discrimination in public places; illegal.
The same year King was
awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
On April 4th, 1968 Martin Luther King
was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee,
but the movement he helped
lead lived on, inspiring other groups
such as Hispanics,
Women,
and the Disable to fight for
equal treatment under the law
and completing King`s
legacy of greater social justice
for all Americans.