Martin Luther King Jr. was a civil rights leader from December 1955 to April 1968, totaling a little under 13 years of leadership.
Martin Luther King Jr. did plenty of notable things during the civil rights movement like his leadership during the Montgomery bus boycott, founding the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and delivering his inspirational “I Have a Dream” speech. His legacy also includes plenty of other notable accomplishments in the fight for racial equality and justice in the United States.
King was born in Atlanta, Georgia and his birthday is on January 15. This year Martin Luther King Jr. Day falls on his birthday; hence we don’t have school this Monday. All museums in Indianapolis — from the Children’s Museum to the Indiana State Museum — offer free admittance Monday to honor King.
The main reason for it being a national holiday is to honor the principles and ideals pursued by Martin Luther King Jr.
King became famous for his quiet yet commanding leadership style. Hs quotes are legendary.
The first quote of his is about justice and was a letter he wrote from the Birmingham, Alabama jail in April of 1963. “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
The next quote is about service to others. “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others? ‘” “Those who are not looking for happiness are the most likely to find it because those who are searching forget that the surest way to be happy is to seek happiness for others.”
The third quote is about peace and was written in Montgomery, Alabama in March of 1965. “We must come to see that the end we seek is a society at peace with itself, a society that can live with its conscience.”
“True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice.”
The last quote is about education. “The function of education, therefore, is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. But education which stops with efficiency may prove the greatest menace to society. The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reason but with no morals.”