Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

This month America celebrates Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was born Michael Luther King, Jr., but later had his name changed to Martin. His grandfather and father both served as pastors of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, and from 1960 until his death Martin Luther King, Jr. acted as co-pastor. He attended segregated public schools in Georgia, graduating from high school at the age of fifteen. He received the B.A. degree in 1948 from Morehouse College in Atlanta. After three years of study at Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania where he was elected president of a predominantly white senior class, he was awarded the B.D. in 1951. With a fellowship won at Crozer, he enrolled in graduate studies at Boston University, completing his residence for the doctorate in 1953 and receiving the degree in 1955. In Boston, he met and married Coretta Scott, a young woman of great intellectual and artistic attainments, and they had two sons and two daughters.

In 1954, Martin Luther King accepted the pastorate of the Dexter Avenue Church in Montgomery, Alabama. He also became a member of the executive committee of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

During the mid-1950s, King was arrested, his home was bombed, and he was subjected to personal abuse and threats because of his leadership of America's burgeoning civil rights movement.

In 1957 he was elected president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization formed to provide new leadership for the 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. Meanwhile he wrote five books as well as numerous articles. During these years, he led a massive protest in Birmingham, Alabama, that caught the attention of the entire world. Later, he directed the peaceful march on Washington, D.C., of 250,000 people to whom he delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" address.

The same man who was a confidant and friend to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson was arrested upwards of twenty times and assaulted at least four times. He was awarded five honorary degrees and was named Man of the Year by "Time" magazine in 1963. He became the symbolic leader of African Americans and also a prominent world figure.

At the age of thirty-five, Martin Luther King, Jr., became the youngest person to receive 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, he was assassinated.

The Jesse Stuart Foundation Bookstore offers two junior books about Martin Luther King, Jr. and many other books about the African American experience in Appalachia and in America.

The Jesse Stuart Foundation Bookstore is located at 1645 Winchester Avenue in downtown Ashland. Bookstore hours are 9-5 Monday through Friday.

For more information, call (606) 326-1667 or visit our website: JSFBOOKS.COM.