Rev. Dr. martin luther king, jr.

Martin Luther King was born in Atlanta, Georgia in 1929, the son of a Baptist minister. Exposed to the daily racism of life in the segregated South, King dedicated his life to the non-violent struggle for civil rights for black Americans.

A church minister, he founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in the 1950s in order to help support and lead the civil rights movement using the considerable power and authority of black churches in the South.

In the 1960s, King’s political perspective broadened to include opposition to the Vietnam War, leading him to declare that the United States was the greatest purveyor of violence in the world. He also initiated a crusade against poverty and social inequality in the USA, the Poor People’s Campaign, which he was focused on at the time of his death in 1968.

Throughout this time, King, as well as the civil rights and anti-war movements more generally, were spied upon and harassed by various government agencies, especially the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The FBI was headed by J Edgar Hoover, who called King “the most dangerous and effective negro leader in America” and stated that it was the goal of the Bureau to “liquidate” him.

The man convicted of King’s murder was James Earl Ray, a habitual criminal and jailbird. However, in the years and decades that followed, many people - including Dr King’s own family - became certain that Ray was not the assassin and that the death of the great civil rights leader had been the work of a conspiracy involving high-ranking people within the US Government.

Rev. Dr. martin luther king, jr.

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