Tributes to Martin Luther King, Jr.

Monday, January 15th is Martin Luther King Jr. Day in the United States. This is a day to pay tribute to Dr. King for his contributions to civil rights in the USA on the anniversary of Dr. King's birthday. In my city, where Dr. King went to graduate school at Boston University in 1955, we have citywide celebrations to honor Dr. King's memory. The City of Boston will host its 23rd annual celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. with a two day speaking and musical highlight.

On January 15, A Gift of Song will feature performer, songwriter and vocalist Patti Austin with jazz recording artist Andre Ward. This is a free program, but requires reserving seating in advance. Then on January 16, 2006 the City of Boston's Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. National Speaking Program will feature civil rights legend, the Dr. Joseph Lowry at Faneuil Hall. This is also a free event.

The city also offers a Black History and Dr. Martin Luther King tour of Boston, which can be taken all year long, but is very popular around the anniversary Martin Luther King Jr Day.

To remind those of you who aren't familiar with Dr. King's background, here is a little tutorial regarding his professional life:

In 1954, Martin Luther King accepted the pastorale of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. Always a strong worker for civil rights for members of his race, King was, by this time, a member of the executive committee of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the leading organization of its kind in the nation. He was ready, then, early in December, 1955, to accept the leadership of the first great Negro nonviolent demonstration of contemporary times in the United States, the bus boycott described by Gunnar Jahn in his presentation speech in honor of the laureate. The boycott lasted 382 days. On December 21, 1956, after the Supreme Court of the United States had declared unconstitutional the laws requiring segregation on buses, Negroes and whites rode the buses as equals. During these days of boycott, King was arrested, his home was bombed, he was subjected to personal abuse, but at the same time he emerged as a Negro leader of the first rank.

In 1957 he was elected president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization formed to provide new leadership for the now burgeoning civil rights movement. The ideals for this organization he took from Christianity; its operational techniques from Gandhi. In the eleven-year period between 1957 and 1968, King traveled over six million miles and spoke over twenty-five hundred times, appearing wherever there was injustice, protest, and action; and meanwhile he wrote five books as well as numerous articles. In these years, he led a massive protest in Birmingham, Alabama, that caught the attention of the entire world, providing what he called a coalition of conscience. and inspiring his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail", a manifesto of the Negro revolution; he planned the drives in Alabama for the registration of Negroes as voters; he directed the peaceful march on Washington, D.C., of 250,000 people to whom he delivered his address, "l Have a Dream", he conferred with President John F. Kennedy and campaigned for President Lyndon B. Johnson; he was arrested upwards of twenty times and assaulted at least four times; he was awarded five honorary degrees; was named Man of the Year by Time magazine in 1963; and became not only the symbolic leader of American blacks but also a world figure.

At the age of thirty-five, Martin Luther King, Jr., was the youngest man to have received the Nobel Peace Prize. When notified of his selection, he announced that he would turn over the prize money of $54,123 to the furtherance of the civil rights movement.

On the evening of April 4, 1968, while standing on the balcony of his motel room in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was to lead a protest march in sympathy with striking garbage workers of that city, he was assassinated.
The assassination is controversial, with many conspiracy theories abounding. James Earl Ray was the convicted killer, but many believe he was innocent.

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Tributes to Martin Luther King, Jr.

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