Transcript Document

A leader
that I adore
Martin Luther King Jr.
KEPEMIMPINAN &
KREATIVITI
by Sofea Azlena Tung bt Adib
Vincent Tung (A150832)
Biography
Name - Martin Luther King Jr.
Real Name – Michael King Jr.
Also Known As – MLK Jr.
Occupation - Civil Rights Activist, Minister
Date of Birth - January 15, 1929
Date of Death - April 4, 1968
Educations - Boston University, Morehouse
College, Crozer Theological Seminary
Place of Birth - Atlanta, Georgia
Place of Death - Memphis, Tennessee
Martin Luther King Jr. was born on January 15, 1929, in
Atlanta, Georgia, the United States of America. King,
both a Baptist minister and civil-rights activist, had a
seismic impact on race relations in the United States as
early as in the mid-1950s. Among his efforts, King
headed the SCLC. Through his activism, he played a
pivotal role in ending the legal segregation of AfricanAmerican citizens in the South and other areas of the
nation, as well as the creation of the Civil Rights Act of
1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. King received
the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 together with many other
honours. King was assassinated in April 1968, but
continues to be remembered as one of the most lauded
African-American leaders in history, often referenced
by his 1963 speech, "I Have a Dream."
Family
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott exchanged vows on June 18, 1953. MLK
and Coretta became parents to four children: Yolanda Denise, Martin Luther III,
Dexter Scott, and Bernice Albertine.
Yolanda Denise, born on November 17, 1955, was the first-born child of Martin Luther
King and Coretta Scott King. She was also a human rights activist and an actress.
Yolanda was active in many projects that honoured her late father. In 1978 she played
the role of Rosa Parks in a TV miniseries, King, that was based on the life of her
father. She was a spokesperson for the National Stroke Awareness Association and
active gay rights advocate. Yolanda die suddenly of an assumed heart attack on May
15, 2007 at the age of 52.
The first son born into King’s family was Martin Luther King III. Concerned about
burdening the child with having to live up to the legacy of MLK Jr. He was only 10
years old when his famous father was assassinated. He headed the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference his father has founded and most recently served as director
and co-owner of the King Centre for Nonviolent Social Change with his brother,
Dexter Scott King. He spoke at the Democratic National Convention in August of 2008
and it marked two major occasions of note: the first black nomination for president,
Barack Obama, and the 45th anniversary of the "I Have a Dream" speech.
Dexter Scott King was born on January 30, 1961. Dexter started out in the same
direction as MLK Jr. when he attended Morehouse College. But the younger King
left school to become an actor and documentary film maker. For a short period
of time, he took up presidency of the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change
but left after a dispute with his mother. Dexter's life was filled with legal
problems that have pursued him to this day. He and his siblings have been in and
out of court with accusations of mismanagement and misuse of assets and funds.
The youngest of the family, Bernice Albertine King, was only five years old when
her grieving image was captured as she stood at her mother's side at Martin
Luther King's funeral. The photograph was taken by Moneta Sleet and was the
recipient of a Pulitzer Prize. Even though Bernice was too young to understand
the experience of the crusade that her famous father devoted himself to, she
has been a tireless advocate of his legacy.
As for Dr. King's widow, Coretta went forward and kept her late husband's
message alive through her social rights activism that continued throughout her
life. She embraced many controversial issues including her support of gay
marriages and her belief that her husband's killer, James Earl Ray, was not the
real killer of her husband. Coretta passed away in her sleep on January 30, 2006
at the age of 78.
Education & Spiritual Growth
In 1948, Martin Luther King Jr. earned a sociology degree from Morehouse College
and attended the liberal Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania. He
thrived in all his studies, and was valedictorian of his class in 1951, and elected
student body president. He also earned a fellowship for graduate study. But Martin
also rebelled against his father’s conservative influence by drinking beer and playing
pool while at college. He became involved with a white woman and went through a
difficult time before he could break off the affair.
During his last year in seminary, Martin Luther King Jr. came under the influence of
theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, a classmate of his father's at Morehouse College.
Niebuhr became a mentor to Martin, challenging his liberal views of theology.
Niebuhr was probably the single most important influence in Martin's intellectual and
spiritual development. After being accepted at several colleges for his doctoral
study including Yale and Edinburgh in Scotland, King enrolled in Boston University.
During the work on this doctorate, Martin Luther King Jr. met Coretta Scott, an
aspiring singer and musician, at the New England Conservatory school in Boston. They
were married in June 1953 and had four children, Yolanda, Martin Luther King III,
Dexter Scott and Bernice. In 1954, while still working on his dissertation, King
became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church of Montgomery, Alabama. He
completed his Ph.D. and was award his degree in 1955. King was only 25 years old.
Civil Rights Movement
Although King was already an executive member of the NAACP, his leadership role in
the fight for equality in the American South occurred seemingly by chance. He was
picked to host a meeting to support an African American woman, Rosa Parks, who had
been arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a bus, King’s church was chosen not
for the young pastor’s words or deeds, but because it was located closest to
downtown. However, King answered fate with a call to action that would launch a 13year period of activism and leadership solidifying his name in history.
Led by King, Alabama boycotted the bus system for over a year. The Montgomery
Bus Boycott in 1955 was King’s first taste of what it would be like as a controversial
public voice challenging the status quo. His life was threatened, his house was
bombed and he was incarcerated on numerous occasions.
However, inspired by the nonviolent mantra of his spiritual and political inspiration,
Mahatma Gandhi, whose teachings King first discovered while studying at the Crozer
Theological Seminary, King persisted in the face of anger and opposition, eventually
bringing about the Supreme Court ruling outlawing bus segregation. The boycott was
one of the first victories for the civil rights movement and it established a model
for nonviolent protest.
Another of King’s influences was Frederick Douglass,
called the “forefather of the civil rights movement.” An
activist and former slave, Douglass was a key figure in
the journey from emancipation to desegregation.
Having become a family man, King shifted his efforts to a
larger struggle for racial equality, helping to create the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1957 to
organize churches to further the cause.
Using his faith to anchor his words and deeds, King fast
became the spiritual and political voice of AfricanAmericans, rallying supporters to his side in a flurry of
appearances and demonstrations demanding change,
though his efforts never strayed from his pledge to
nonviolence.
Achievements


King appeared on national television for the first time
in February 1957 on the talk show “Open Mind”. He
was introduced as a “new negro”, one who is willing to
stand up and demand his rights, rather than act
submissively like a “happy, acquiescent slave”.
King was named Time’s Man of the Year for 1963. The
years that followed would be his most prolific,
travelling 6 million miles, writing five books and
garnering international acclaim that led to him
becoming the youngest person to win the Nobel Peace
Prize.
The Man & His Work
In 1963, King led protests in the heavily segregated city of
Birmingham in the state of Alabama, drawing thousands to the
southern town to challenge racial division. By the time the protest
had been halted, hundreds, including King himself, had been arrested,
but not before Police Chief Eugene “Bull” Connor had used excessive
and violent force against those gathered.
From jail, King penned his “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” defending
the protest to critics and capturing a message for change, concluding,
“injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
In 1963, 100 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, Negro
American Labor Counsel leader A. Philip Randolph, who in 1941 had
planned a march in Washington to protest the exclusion of blacks
from national defense jobs, organized a march along with leaders of
the most prominent civil rights organizations: Jim Farmer (CORE),
Martin Luther King (SCLC), John Lewis (SNCC), Roy Wilkens
(NAACP), and Whitney Young (Urban League).
Between 200,000 and 300,000 people gathered at the National Mall for the
March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, which featured speeches by civil
rights, religious and labour leaders, as well as singing performances and
prayers. King’s speech was delivered near the end of the event.
At once a political call to action and deeply spiritual sermon, the Southern
Baptist preacher began by painting a grim picture of a nation in need of
change. Providing a historical case for change, King appealed to the crowd with
a “fierce urgency of now”.
Having established the dire state of affairs for minorities in the United
States, King made an appeal to “not wallow in the valley of despair”.
What followed would become one of the most often-cited public texts in
American history, though it was not part of King’s original draft. Drawing on
previous speeches he had made, King delivered a series of short stanzas that
began with “I have a dream”.
He ended his speech proclaiming, “When we let freedom ring, when we let it
ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we
will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and
white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join
hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, ‘Free at last! free at
last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!’”
‘I have a dream‘
In the spring of 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. organized a demonstration in
downtown Birmingham, Alabama. Entire families attended. City police used
dogs and fire hoses on demonstrators. Martin Luther King was jailed along
with large numbers of his supporters, but the event drew nationwide
attention. However, King was personally criticized by black and white
clergymen alike for taking risks and endangering the children who attended
the demonstration. From the jail in Birmingham, King eloquently spelled out his
theory of non-violence: "Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis
and foster such a tension that a community, which has constantly refused to
negotiate, is forced to confront the issue“.
By the end of the Birmingham campaign, Martin Luther King Jr. and his
supporters were making plans for a massive demonstration on the nation's
capital composed of multiple organizations, all asking for peaceful change. On
August 28, 1963, the historic March on Washington drew more than 200,000
people in the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial. It was here that King made his
famous "I Have a Dream" speech, emphasizing his belief that someday all men
could be brothers.
The rising tide of civil rights agitation produced a strong effect on
public opinion. Many people in cities not experiencing racial tension
began to question the nation's Jim Crow laws and the near century
second class treatment of African-American citizens. This resulted
in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 authorizing the federal
government to enforce de-segregation of public accommodations and
outlawing discrimination in publicly owned facilities. This also led to
Martin Luther King receiving the Nobel Peace Prize for 1964.
From late 1965 through 1967, Martin Luther King Jr. expanded his
Civil Rights Movement into other larger American cities, including
Chicago and Los Angeles. But he met with increasing criticism and
public challenges from young black-power leaders. King's patient, nonviolent approach and appeal to white middle-class citizens alienated
many black militants who considered his methods too weak and too
late. In the eyes of the sharp-tongued, blue jean young urban black,
King's manner was irresponsibly passive and deemed non-effective.
To address this criticism King began making a link between
discrimination and poverty. He expanded his civil rights efforts to
the Vietnam War. He felt that America's involvement in Vietnam was
politically untenable and the government's conduct of the war
discriminatory to the poor. He sought to broaden his base by forming
a multi-race coalition to address economic and unemployment
problems of all disadvantaged people.
What makes him a good leader
Martin Luther King Jr.'s life had a seismic impact on race
relations in the United States. Years after his death, he is
the most widely known African-American leader of his era.
His life and work have been honoured with a national holiday,
schools and public buildings named after him, and a memorial
on Independence Mall in Washington, D.C. But his life remains
controversial as well. In the 1970s, FBI files, released under
the Freedom of Information Act, revealed that he was under
government surveillance, and suggested his involvement in
adulterous relationships and communist influences. Over the
years, extensive archival studies have led to a more balanced
and comprehensive assessment of his life, portraying him as a
complex figure: flawed, fallible and limited in his control over
the mass movements with which he was associated, yet a
visionary leader who was deeply committed to achieving social
justice through nonviolent means.
To many million of American Negroes, the Rev. Dr.
Martin Luther King Jr. was the prophet of their crusade
for racial equality. He was their voice of anguish, their
eloquence in humiliation, their battle cry for human
dignity. He forged for them the weapons of nonviolence
that withstood and blunted the ferocity of segregation.
And to many millions of American whites, he was one of a
group of Negroes who preserved the bridge of
communication between races when racial warfare
threatened the United States in the nineteen-sixties, as
Negroes sought the full emancipation pledged to them a
century before by Abraham Lincoln.
To the world, Dr. King had the stature that accrued to a
winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, a man with access to
the White House and the Vatican; a veritable hero in the
African states that were just emerging from colonialism.
Why I adore him
Martin Luther King was a great leader, and indeed one till to date.
Millions of black Americans once fancied his leadership during his
lifetime, and millions more throughout the world still adore him, like
me, to this day. To me, he wasn’t just a leader, he was a fighter. He
knew that fighting for his people would not only bring fame but also
danger and threats to him and his family. However, being a great man
he was, he kept his family safe enough. It touched my heart when I
thought of his kindness and his dreams for his people to be treated
fairly and respectfully just like his role model, Mahatma Gandhi. He
would go through thick and thin for them even though he knew the
consequences and risks he had to bare solely by himself. Sometimes, I
ask myself, “Sofea, do you have the guts to do what the King had
done?” and the answer is always “No.”, because I don’t have that will
power nor the strength to do so. I honestly salute the King on his
bravery. The legacy he left behind is a whole great deal of leadership
and self-sacrifice. His speech has tickled me so much that it
continuously provides me the inspiration and courage to stand up to
speak up for inequality, especially racial and social inequality. I hope
that one day I’ll be more like the King and be a just leader to pursue
freedom and civil rights for the less fortunate and minority groups.
Reference
Martin Luther King Jr. (2014). The Biography.com website.
Retrieved 12:18, Dec 13, 2014, from
http://www.biography.com/people/martin-luther-king-jr9365086.
Schumach. M. (1968). On this Day. Retrieved 12:19, Dec 13,
2014, from
http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/
0115.html
Torren. A. (2014). Leadership Lesson from Dr. Martin Luther
King. Retrieved 12:19, Dec 13, 2014, from
http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/230958
THE
END
Sofea Azlena Tung bt Adib
Vincent Tung
A150832
Faculty of Social Science and
Human Resources
Emglish Language Studies