Martin Luther King, Jr.
The Civil Rights Movement
Civil Rights
Rights that
apply to every
citizen of a
country
Segregation
MLK’s Early Life
Born in 1929
Graduated from
a segregated
high school at
age fifteen
MLK’s Early Life
Voted senior
president of a
predominately white
senior class at the
seminary
Married Coretta Scott
and had two sons and
two daughters
MLK as Minister
Became pastor of the
Dexter Avenue
Baptist Church in
Montgomery,
Alabama in 1954 and
a member of the
executive committee
of the NAACP
The Bus Boycott
Lead the
Montgomery Bus
Boycott—the first
great nonviolent
Negro protest,
which lasted 382
days
The Bus Boycott
During the boycott,
King was arrested, his
home was bombed,
and he was subjected
to personal abuse
Finally, the Supreme
Court ruled that
segregation on busses
was unconstitutional
Southern Christian Leadership
Conference (SCLC)
 King and other SCLC leaders
encouraged use of nonviolent
action
 These actions included marches,
demonstrations, and boycotts
 The violent responses to these
peaceful actions forced the
government to confront the
issues of injustice and racism in
the South
I Have a Dream
 King & other black
leaders organized the
1963 March on
Washington
 200,000 civil rights
supporters gathered in
DC to hear his speech
 The march & speech
helped lead to the Civil
Rights Act of 1964
Nobel Peace Prize
Received the Nobel
Peace Prize in 1964
Gave the $54,123 of
prize money to
organizations that
furthered the civil
rights movement
Selma Marches
 In 1965 SCLC joined a votingrights protest march from
Selma, Alabama, to
Montgomery in support of black
voting rights in the state
 Police beat and tear-gassed the
marchers just outside of Selma.
 The day came to be known as
Bloody Sunday
 The march created support for
the Voting Rights Act of 1965
Selma Marches
After the Voting Rights Act of 1965
passed, many white Americans who had
supported MLK believed that the job was
done
The focus began to shift from civil rights to
the anti-war (Vietnam) movement
Economic Issues
Throughout 1966 and 1967 King
increasingly turned the focus of his civil
rights activism toward economic issues
This emphasis on economic rights took
King to Memphis, Tennessee in support of
striking black garbage workers in 1968
Death
He was assassinated in
Memphis by a sniper on
April 4, 1968
News of King’s
assassination prompted
riots in more than 100 US
cities
In 1969 James Earl Ray,
an escaped white convict,
plead guilty to the murder
of King and was sentenced
to 99 years in prison
Martin Luther King Day
 Ronald Reagan signed
the Martin Luther King
Day into law in 1983, and
it was first observed in
1986. 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.