Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr. (born Michael King Jr., January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American Baptist minister and activist who was a leader in the Civil Rights Movement. He is best known for his role in the advancement of civil rights using nonviolent civil disobedience based on his Christian beliefs.

King became a civil rights activist early in his career. He led the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott and helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957, serving as its first president. With the SCLC, King led an unsuccessful 1962 struggle against segregation in Albany, Georgia (the Albany Movement), and helped organize the 1963 nonviolent protests in Birmingham, Alabama. King also helped to organize the 1963 March on Washington, where he delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. There, he established his reputation as one of the greatest orators in American history.

On October 14, 1964, King received the Nobel Peace Prize for combating racial inequality through nonviolent resistance. In 1965, he helped to organize the Selma to Montgomery marches, and the following year he and SCLC took the movement north to Chicago to work on segregated housing. In the final years of his life, King expanded his focus to include opposition towards poverty and the Vietnam War, alienating many of his liberal allies with a 1967 speech titled “Beyond Vietnam”.

In 1968, King was planning a national occupation of Washington, D.C., to be called the Poor People’s Campaign, when he was assassinated on April 4 in Memphis, Tennessee. His death was followed by riots in many U.S. cities.

King was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal. Martin Luther King Jr. Day was established as a holiday in numerous cities and states beginning in 1971, and as a U.S. federal holiday in 1986. Hundreds of streets in the U.S. have been renamed in his honor, and a county in Washington State was also renamed for him. The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., was dedicated in 2011.

For more information, please visit us at http://www.saintannhawaii.org or call 247-3092, ext 102.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 1929—1968

Martin Luther King Jr. has now been dead longer than he lived. But what an extraordinary life it was.  At 33, he was pressing the case of civil rights with President John Kennedy. At 34, he galvanized the nation with his “I Have a Dream” speech. At 35, he won the Nobel Peace Prize. At 39, he was assassinated, but he left a legacy of hope and inspiration that continues today.

Martin Luther King, Jr., was born on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia, to Alberta Williams King and Martin Luther King, Sr.

In 1954, Reverend King begins his pastoral career in Montgomery, Alabama.  His involvement in the civil rights movement is the result of Mrs. Rosa Parks’ refusal to give up her seat to a white person in 1955.  King inspires many people of all races and ethnic backgrounds to join in a peaceful, nonviolent protest against segregation.

On August 29, 1963, he makes his most famous speech, “I Have a Dream,” to more than 200,000

civil-rights marchers at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.  At that time, the audience was the largest civil rights demonstration in the history of the United States.

In observance of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday  the Early Learning Center, School and Church Offices will be closed on Monday, January 18, 2016.

Please visit our bulletins @ ST. ANN CHURCH ​AND MODEL SCHOOLS
Or visit our website at www.saintannhawaii.org
You may also call us at 247-3092; ext. 105 for more information