Martin Luther King Day

By Sarah Adams

Who was he?

Last Monday was a very important day in the US. Have you ever heard of Martin Luther King Jr (MLK Jr)? He was an American pastor in the '50s and '60s who led the African-American Civil Rights Movement.

Because, although slavery ended in the US in 1865, there was horrible inequality and segregation (=segregación) until this movement.

Who was he?

● He received the Nobel Peace Prize for fighting racial inequality with non-violence (=no violencia); his protests were always organized using civil disobedience (=desobediencia civil). Gandhi was a big inspiration for MLK Jr.

And who was Rosa Parks?

In March 1955, a fifteen-year-old school girl in Montgomery, Claudette Colvin, refused to give up her bus seat to a white man according to racial segregation laws. King was on the committee from the Birmingham African-American community that looked into the case.

In December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat.The Montgomery Bus Boycott, planned by Nixon and led by King, followed. The boycott lasted for 385 days, and the situation became so tense that King's house was bombed. King was arrested during this campaign. Eventually racial segregation on all Montgomery public buses ended. King's role in the bus boycott transformed him into a national figure and the best-known spokesman of the civil rights movement.

King's “I Have a Dream” speech

"I Have a Dream" is a 17-minute public speech by Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered on August 28th, 1963, in which he called for racial equalityand an end to discrimination. The speech was a defining moment of the American Civil Rights Movement. Delivered to over 200,000 civil rights supporters.

The speech was ranked the top American speech of the 20th century by a 1999 poll of scholars of public address. According to U.S. Representative John Lewis, who also spoke that day as the President of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, "Dr. King had the power, the ability, and the capacity to transform those steps on the Lincoln Memorial into a monumental area that will forever be recognized. By speaking the way he did, he educated, he inspired, he informed not just the people there, but people throughout America and unborn generations."

adaptation from http://www.mlkonline.net/dream.html

Martin Luther King Day

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is a United States federal holiday marking the birthday of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

It is observed on the third Monday of January each year, which is around the time of King's birthday, January 15.