Featured Image: Soul Force: Official Journal of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference vol. 3 no. 3
Early Life and Studies
“Hate is too great a burden to bear… We will meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will, and we will still love you.”
– Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, The Trumpet of Conscience
Martin Luther King, Jr was born on January 15, 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia. He was born to Michael King, Sr and Alberta Williams King.
Both Michael King and Alberta Wlliams King were active in the church and religious circles during their youth. They assumed leadership positions at Ebenezer Baptist Church when Alberta’s father passed away in 1903. Prior to this, Alberta Williams studied to become a teacher during her years in college, where she met her future husband. Married women were not allowed to enter classrooms, and so Alberta William’s time as a teacher was brief.As Michael King succeeded his father-in-law as the pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church, he commemorated the transition by assuming the name “Martin Luther”, after the 16th century protestant reformation leader. King then renamed his eldest son, Michael King, Jr, as Martin Luther King, Jr. – the name the civil rights leader carried through the remainder of his lifetime.
Martin Luther King, Jr would complete his high school studies at a fairly early age, entering Morehouse College at 15. He graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in sociology then completed Seminary school in Pennsylvania and achieved his Doctorate in Theology from Boston University in 1955. King also earned a B.D. degree from Crosser Theological Seminary in 1951.
King also met his future wife, Coretta Scott, in Boston. Scott was studying at the New England Conservatory of Music. They were married on June 18, 1953. They would have four children, Yolanda King, Martin Luther King III, Dexter King, and Bernice King.
Assassination on April 4, 1968
King visited Tennessee on April 3, 1968 to accompany a group of sanitation workers during their strike in Memphis. On his way to dinner the following day, April 4, King was shot while leaving the Lorraine Motel. The Civil Rights leader was surrounded by colleagues from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference immediately after the attack, as they tended to him and attempted to determine the origin of the gun shots. The shooter was later determined to be James Earl Ray. King was taken to St Joseph’s Hospital where he died that evening.
Foundation of Activism and Civil Rights Movement
Progression into Social and Political Activism
Martin Luther King, Jr’s professional life was marked by a determined march toward justice. He joined with leaders of the Black Caucus to advocate for the rights and liberties of Black and African American citizens. Over the span of his career, King would become known for his advocacy on behalf of the disenfranchised and for his vocal support of individuals struggling for shared equality.
His involvement with the Montgomery Improvement Association initiated much of King’s formalized civil rights work. After assuming the role of pastor at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, King became aware of the cause of Rosa Parks and her refusal to relinquish her bus seat to a white passenger at the demand of the bus driver. King and Parks would both spend time in jail as a result of their protest efforts and the organizing of the Montgomery Bus Boycotts.
As a chosen and respected leader of the Civil Rights Movement, King often met with political leaders, including President Johnson. After the bus boycotts, the formation of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference created a network of activists and organizers who worked to bring attention to important issues concerning the Black community and oppressed groups. King cited the SCLC and organizing efforts as instrumental in pushing the United States Congress to take action on important reports concerning social and civic issues, resulting in the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Additionally, occasions such as the inaugural March on Washington and the March at Selma demonstrated King’s consistent belief in the virtues of civil disobedience and collective resistance.
Ideology of King’s Approach to the Peaceful Protest
His approach in all these areas were a deliberate attempt to protect the work and long-term success of black activists. Inspired by the teachings and work of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr turned the virtues of non-violence into a actionable strategy. Non-violence became the cornerstone of Dr. King’s leadership. He considered peace to be both the means and the ends by which the United States of America could finally make real its ideals of equality and justice for all people. King discusses his realization of social justice through non-violence in the book “Stride Toward Freedom”.
Peaceful protest proved to be successful for Dr. King and his colleagues. The success of Selma, the march on Washington, the passing of important legislative materials, and other events inspired the next generation of the activists to take their training in non-violence into their communities. This resulted in the popularity of sit-ins and other forms of peaceful protests among students and citizens who were advocating for basic equalities in their daily lives.
“Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.”
– Dr Martin Luther King Jr, The Trumpet of Conscience
In the book Trumpet of Conscience, King reflects on the impact of his Christianity and of winning the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize on his attitude of service; both influenced him to fully value a kind of justice unshackled from political constraints and interpersonal competition, one that prioritized servicing the interests of the people. Accordingly, King refused to compromise his strategy at any level.
Each lecture in Trumpet of Conscience weighs the impact of the Vietnam War and its amplification of social ills. King dissects the violence of war to imagine an approach to revolution that enables its executors to achieve critical progress without sacrificing innocent lives or allowing for systemic injustice.
As King proposed new approaches to create domestic and international change within the United States, he also defended his strategy of non-violence as a form of persuasion. Non-violence serves as a blank canvas on which the actions, proactive and reactive, of protesters, activists and law enforcement officers serve as inherent evidence of justice or injustice within civil systems. For Dr. King, non-violence protected the civil rights movement’s participants from opponents and critics who would scapegoat them as architects of their own suffering. Non-violence also sought to instill structure into future resistance efforts, as reflected in King’s analysis of various types of self-advocacy employed by everyday citizens and in his criticism of the global effects of the Western capitalism projects of the 1950s and 1960s.
“Gargantuan industry and government, woven into an intricate computerized mechanism, leave the person outside. The sense of participation is lost, the feeling than ordinary individuals influence important decisions vanishes, and man becomes separated and diminished… the content of democracy is emptied.”
– Dr Martin Luther King Jr, The Trumpet of conscience
King believed the people of the world should acknowledge empath toward one another over shared challenges for the acquisition and protection of basic rights. He believed this empathy would create a global good-will. Essential to this vision was the ability for people to fully embody their cultures and traditions while pursuing a peaceful coexistence. Within the United States of America, his belief in a “freedom church of the poor” signified systemic liberation and inherent respect for every class of people and a transformation of oppressive systems into sustainable mechanisms toward self-actualization.
Prior to his death, Dr. King adopted a resolute stance to combat poverty within the United States of America and to guarantee the opportunity for all Americans to work and earn an income. In the weeks prior to his assassination, he and other civil rights leaders advocated for the Poor People’s Campaign as a long-term solution against poverty.
“We cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws and abide by the unjust system, because noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good, and so throw us in jail and we will still love you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children, and, as difficult as it is, we will still love you.”
– Dr Martin Luther King Jr, the Trumpet of Conscience
King Center’s Annual Celebration
The King Center, led by Dr. Bernice King, has announced its theme for MLK Day 2025. The celebrations will focus on Mission Possible: Protecting Freedom, Justice, and Democracy in the Spirit of Nonviolence365.
More information and tickets are available at thekingcenter.org/king-holiday-2025/