African American civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his nonviolent resistance to racial prejudice in America. At 35 years of age, the Georgia-born minister was the youngest person ever to receive the award. History
Born: 15 January 1929, Atlanta, GA, USA
Died: 4 April 1968, Memphis, TN, USA
Residence at the time of the award: USA
Role:Leader of "Southern Christian Leadership Conference"
Prize share: 1/1 For Civil Rights and Social Justice
Martin Luther King dreamt that all inhabitants of the United States would be judged by their personal qualities and not by the color of their skin. In April 1968 he was murdered by a white racist. Four years earlier, he had received the Peace Prize for his nonviolent campaign against racism.
King adhered to Gandhi's philosophy of nonviolence. In 1955 he began his struggle to persuade the US Government to declare the policy of racial discrimination in the southern states unlawful. The racists responded with violence to the black people's nonviolent initiatives.
In 1963, 250,000 demonstrators marched to the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, where King gave his famous "I have a dream" speech. The following year, President Johnson got a law passed prohibiting all racial discrimination.
But King had powerful opponents. The head of the FBI, John Edgar Hoover, had him placed under surveillance as a communist, and when King opposed the administration's policy in Vietnam, he fell into disfavour with the President. It has still not been ascertained whether King's murderer acted on his own or was part of a conspiracy. Read more
President Lyndon Johnson shakes hands with the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., after handing him one of the pens used in signing the Civil Rights Act of July 2, 1964 at the White House in Washington.
In American tradition, one official account will be told of the tragic killing of a peaceful revolutionary who influenced all of society, while underneath lies an insidious and unclear alternative narrative of government deception.
Seattle, Washington – In 1999, a Memphis Circuit Court jury determined that the U.S. federal government was involved in the conspiracy to assassinate Martin Luther King, Jr. In remembrance of the great Civil Rights movement leader whose legacy of social change transcends death, consider the facts of the case that proved to a citizen jury beyond a reasonable doubt that trusted public institutions were implicit in the plot to end King’s life and apparent influence over the American people. Following weeks of testimony and a parade of witnesses, the jury returned with a unanimous verdict after only about an hour, according to The King Center. King was killed in 1968; it only took the King family 32 years to have justice served. Following the court decision, the family held a press conference and commented on the need for the truth of this court case to be widely disseminated:
"We have done what we can to reveal the truth, and we now urge you as members of the media, and we call upon elected officials, and other persons of influence to do what they can to share the revelation of this case to the widest possible audience," said Coretta Scott King, following the verdict.
The Department of Justice, in their own investigation, found no evidence of conspiracy or collusion; however, the King assassination case has many inconsistencies. In an apparent confession, a guilty plea was entered in 1969 by the official scapegoat, James Earl Ray. Ray was captured and pled guilty after King’s death. Having a suspect in hand may have hindered any deeper investigation into the events of that fateful night, April 4th, 1968. Three days after his alleged confession, Ray recanted his story. James Earl Ray died of hepatitis complications in 1998 after spending thirty years in prison, the whole while maintaining his innocence. Loyd Jowers, who owned a business near the crime scene, inserted himself into the plot in 1993, claiming to be heavily involved in the conspiracy. The family seemed to believe both Ray and Jowers, as they went on to file the 1999 civil case – The King Family vs. Loyd Jowers – naming Jowers as a co-conspirator and insinuating a high-level government conspiracy and media collusion in the death of the beloved leader, preacher, and father. Over seventy witnesses testified and the King family received the verdict they sought.
To make clear that money was not at the core of the civil suit, the family only asked for $100 as restitution. What the King family sought was vindication that the official narrative of Mr. King’s death was not the truth. Mrs. King said in the family press release, "The jury was clearly convinced by the extensive evidence that was presented during the trial that, in addition to Mr. Jowers, the conspiracy of the Mafia, local, state, and federal government agencies, were deeply involved in the assassination of my husband." The jury decision seems to determine that Ray was set up to take the fall for a crime he did not commit; the family asserts this is proof of conspiracy and justice system failure. Mrs. King called the court decision "a great victory for justice and truth." The King Center has made the full transcript of the court case available online to help researchers, truth seekers, and media to investigate the details.
"We don’t care what the justice department does. This is another misnomer. We did not do this to force their hand. I doubt seriously that they will indict themselves, for who polices the police? That is up to the American public," says Dexter King, in a public statement following the decision.
Nearly fifty years after King’s death, it seems unlikely that those responsible will ever be held fully accountable or the truth told. In American tradition, one official account will be told of the tragic killing of a peaceful revolutionary who influenced all of society, while underneath lies an insidious and unclear alternative narrative of government deception. In honor of Martin Luther King, Jr., let us remember and retell the King family’s version of King’s assassination – the version in which his message of positive and peaceful social change threatened the power elite; so they had him murdered. Read more
Beginning with a reference to the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed millions of slaves in 1863,[3] King observes that: "one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free".[4] Toward the end of the speech, King departed from his prepared text for a partly improvised peroration on the theme "I have a dream", prompted by Mahalia Jackson's cry: "Tell them about the dream, Martin!"[5] In this part of the speech, which most excited the listeners and has now become its most famous, King described his dreams of freedom and equality arising from a land of slavery and hatred.[6] Jon Meacham writes that, "With a single phrase, Martin Luther King Jr. joined Jefferson and Lincoln in the ranks of men who've shaped modern America".[7] The speech was ranked the top American speech of the 20th century in a 1999 poll of scholars of public address.[8] Read more
The Field Negro blog By Wayne Bennett A Philadelphia Lawyer Monday, January 16, 2017
It's MLK Day here in America, but I would like to remind you Negroes (I see you Steve Harvey) who believe that we are now "post-racial", that three states (Alabama, Arkansas, and Mississippi) celebrated Robert E. Lee Day, today. And in some towns across America, folks are upset because they have to give up their Lee parade for that King fellow.
Anywhoo, the following incident took place in October of 2015, but the police department involved is just releasing the video because of a previous lawsuit that was filed by the victim.
"Pinned to the ground by officers who kneed and struck him, Lawrence Crosby screamed whatever he could think of to convince them that he was a law-abiding PhD student, not a violent car thief.
"This is my vehicle, sir," he said, his voice captured by the dashboard-camera video. "I have evidence. ... I purchased this vehicle Jan. 23, 2015, from Libertyville Chevrolet."
It wasn’t enough. The officers placed him in handcuffs in the driveway of a church, two blocks from the police station in Evanston, Ill.
Police released the dash-cam video earlier this week, detailing the half-hour encounter that sparked a civil lawsuit from Crosby and a discussion about race and policing in this city of 75,000, just north of Chicago.
The video includes footage from the dash cam of one of the officers involved in the altercation. But it’s also synced with video of a personal dash cam Crosby kept running in his car.
On that night in October 2015, Crosby was headed to Northwestern University, where he was studying for his doctoral degree in civil engineering.
But something was wrong with the molding on his car, so he pulled out a metal bar to try to fix the strip on the roof, he says on the video.
A woman passing by saw him — a black man, wearing a hoodie, with some kind of bar pressed up against a car.
Martin Luther King Jr. Day (officially Birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr.)[1] is an American federal holiday marking the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. It is observed on the third Monday of January each year, which is around King's birthday, January 15. The holiday is similar to holidays set under the Uniform Monday Holiday Act.
King was the chief spokesman for nonviolent activism in the Civil Rights Movement, which successfully protested racial discrimination in federal and state law. The campaign for a federal holiday in King's honor began soon after his assassination in 1968. President Ronald Reagan signed the holiday into law in 1983, and it was first observed three years later. At first, some states resisted observing the holiday as such, giving it alternative names or combining it with other holidays. It was officially observed in all 50 states for the first time in 2000. Read more
WASHINGTON — "The dream is not dead," said Dr. Alveda King, a minister and niece of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., as she walked into the Shiloh Baptist Church here Wednesday morning. "People are proving the dream is not dead. The biggest thing is love."
Fifty years to the day after her uncle roused the nation with his "I Have a Dream" speech, Dr. King’s descendants gathered for a morning interfaith service to begin a day that will culminate with a speech by the nation’s first black president in the very spot — the steps of the Lincoln Memorial — where Dr. King delivered his call to civil justice.
As the service got under way, thousands of people were flocking to the National Mall and the Lincoln Memorial in preparation for an afternoon ceremony, including President Obama’s speech. Security was extremely tight, with most streets around the National Mall closed to cars. The security and a light rain seemed to be keeping down the size of the early crowds.
But at Shiloh Baptist, a historic church founded 150 years ago by former slaves — and where Dr. King spoke in 1960 — the mood was festive as dignitaries streamed into the soaring chapel. The service was a reminder that at his core, Dr. King was a religious man whose civil rights work was rooted in his faith and a desire for what he called "the beloved community" — a world without poverty or racism or war.
"The true essence, the true nature, the true character of Martin Luther King Jr. is that he was a pastor, he was a prophet, he was a faith leader," his daughter, the Rev. Bernice A. King, the chief executive of the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta, told those gathered here.
"We are here today," she said, "to call upon our faith, to call upon our spirituality, to call upon our higher selves recognizing that nothing in the world will ever change if it’s not for people of faith coming together."
Wednesday’s events are part of a weeklong commemoration of the Aug. 28, 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Justice that began Saturday with a similar civil rights march on the National Mall. Wednesday’s event is intended, organizers said, as more of a call to unity. Mr. Obama will be joined former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, and the ceremony will include a bell-ringing ceremony at 3 p.m., along with concurrent bell-ringing ceremonies in cities and communities across the nation. Read more here
