Dr. King was born in Atlanta on January 15, 1929, down on Auburn Avenue.
And Dr. King grew up in a household with his parents, Martin Luther King Sr. and his mother,
but also his grandparents, the Reveverand A. D. Williams and his wife.
Now the Reverend Williams had become the pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church on Auburn Avenue.
And that becomes the family church.
So it's the church in which Marty King grows up and is raised.
Dr. King himself is educated in the public schools of Atlanta.
He goes off to Booker T. Washington High School, here in Atlanta,
before getting to matriculate at Morehouse College,
which is where his father had gone to school.
After Morehouse College, Marty King decides to
go off to seminary, and he attends Crozer Theological Seminary up in Pennsylvania.
After Crozer, he goes to Boston University.
In Boston, he meets a very attractive young woman.
Her name is Coretta Scott.
They get married, and they debate what to do.
Coretta Scott King was not interested in returning to the South.
Martin King was, so he interviews at several churches and is extended an
offer at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery.
They have a child and then the bus boycott occurs.
"Eventually, segregation in public transportation will pass away.
And I think we should start now preparing for the inevitable."
King is recruited to be the head of the Montgomery Improvement Association.
He takes on that responsibility after much prayer and thought.
Now in Montgomery, the effort to organize for the protest
results in success, with the bus boycott's conclusion in 1956
but also the desire to keep the protest going.
So in 1957 the pastors that are involved in the Montgomery Improvement Association,
by this point Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the Reverend Ralph D. Abernathy, the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth,
these figures joined by others will organize what's called the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
The SCLC will be organized with the purpose of taking this protest regionally
and leading civil rights reform in America.
In February of 1960, Martin Luther King and his family moved to Atlanta.
King accepted the co-pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church under his father,
and the family moved into a house on Boulevard.
Now King would then go on from his position at Ebenezer Baptist Church to
lead the Civil Rights Movement.
In August of 1963, civil rights leaders gathered in Washington, DC.
A. Phillip Randolph had proposed what was called a March on Washington for Jobs.
And the point was for black people to come to Washington
and insist that they be given equal access for employment.
Thousands came and it was a peaceful demonstration,
occupying the nation's capital for a day to listen to speeches being delivered
from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall.
And among those speaking were Fred Shuttlesworth, John Lewis, who was the chairman of SNCC,
the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.
But the person who stole the limelight, of course, was the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
his "I Have a Dream" speech captured better than anyone ever had before
the goals and aspirations, not just to black people but of everybody.
"...freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not
be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today."
After the Civil Rights Act and the March on Washington, attention turned to the
voting rights and the denial by white governments to register black voters.
But the climax occurs in Selma, Alabama, where in the middle of Alabama's black belt
in the old plantation district, black people had been denied access to the ballot.
And Dr. King and SCLC will support the demonstrations there,
so coming in to work with SNCC in Dallas County, Alabama, SCLC will organize
protests around the county government that was refusing to register black voters.
This culminates in what's called the Selma Campaign of March of 1965.
And Dr. King is not there on Bloody Sunday when John Lewis and Hosea Williams lead
a march out of Browns Chapel AME Church, cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge, and are
beaten by Alabama State Troopers, all of it captured on film,
all of it broadcast around the nation and the world, all of it leading to Selma to
Montgomery march that Dr. King did lead.
And indeed President Johnson did propose
and the Congress did pass that voting rights legislation.
King comes back to Atlanta, meets with his advisors in SCLC, and he says,
"We've got to organize the poor of our country and promote human rights."
And he sets forth an agenda for what's called the Poor People's Campaign.
King came back to the notion of occupying the nation's capital, encouraging the poor people from
across America to come to Washington, DC and to remain there until the system
opened up and addressed their needs and their concerns.
This wasn't for black people. It was for white people, for Native Americans, for Asians for everybody,
and he encouraged them all to come.
So it fit when in Memphis, Tennessee,
black men, who were working as garbage men cleaning the streets, when they went
on strike to demand a living wage.
Now Memphis, Tennessee, next to the
Mississippi Delta, the big plantation area of agricultural south, was full of
poor people who were unemployed and needing work and so in Memphis
the city leaders didn't pay workers very much money because there was always
somebody out there who would do the job for less.
And those garbage men went on strike
and their motto was "I Am a Man."
And they stood up to say we deserve a living wage.
They asked King to come support them. How could he not?
Living wages for working people? It fit the objectives of the Poor People's Campaign.
And so he goes.
And it's there in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4th that an assassin
shoots him down on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel,
bringing to an end his life but not his legacy.
That Poor People's Campaign was held in Washington, DC.
The Reverend Ralph the Abernathy assumed the presidency of the SCLC,
and within weeks of Dr. King's murder, his widow, Coretta Scott King would begin
promoting the idea of a Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent and Social Change,
which might forever teach the values of that King-ian non-violence that he promoted.
So his legacy continues.
It continues in the King holiday we have every January.
It continues in the drive for human rights in the building of
civil rights memorials at all of these venues where the demonstrations took place.
So that legacy is still with us today.
A legacy of advocating for equality,
for economic justice,
for international peace,
and for human rights.