Martin Luther King Jr.

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Deysy Matias-Garcia, Writer

Martin Luther King Junior (MLK) was a black person activist, a key person to the American Civil Rights Movement, and also a person whom believed that colored people should have the same equal rights like white people. As a child, Martin wasn’t treated equally like the white people around him were because he was colored. He wanted to change this, so he began joining protests about how the colored needed the same rights as the white.

Soon, he the began leading many nonviolent and peaceful protest like the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955. Because of his protest, he was arrested multiple times for “not following polices order”(in total he was arrested 29 times!). When he was in prison in 1963, he wrote a letter known as “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” In his letter he talked about how the colored needed justice and that people should stop segregating them from the whites. Martin had also delivered his famous “I Have A Dream” speech. In this speech, which had taken place in the Lincoln Memorial, he said,” I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave-owners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood.” In total, Martin had given 2,500 speeches  (including “I Have A Dream”). Martin Luther kept fighting for equal rights until he was assassinated on April 4, 1968. Thanks to Martin Luther King Junior, we all have equal rights.

Click here for more information on MLK.