We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Ph.D., was a Nobel Laureate, Baptist minister and African American civil rights leader. Born in 1929, he graduated from Morehouse College at the age of 19. He attended Crozer Theological Seminary and received his Ph.D from Boston University in 1955.

In December, 1955, civil rights activist Rosa Parks sat in the white's only section of a Montgomery, Alabama, bus and was arrested for violating the Alabama segregation laws. Black residents formed a boycott (that lasted for 381 days), and elected King head of the newly formed Montgomery Improvement Association. Twelve months later, the Supreme Court declared Alabama's segregation laws unconstitutional.

In 1957, King and other southern black ministers founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) which was organized to provide new leadership for the civil rights movement. As president, King's emphasis was the establishment of black voting rights and he made this clear when he spoke at the Lincoln Memorial during the 1957 Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom. In 1959 King toured India to increase his understanding of Gandhian non-violent strategies.

In early 1963, King and SCLC led mass demonstrations in Birmingham that produced violent police reactions. King was arrested for violating a court order against staging protests. While in the Birmingham jail he wrote the famous "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," a manifesto of the Negro revolution. It was addressed to a group of Birmingham clergy who had asked him not to stage a protest. Spurred by these demonstrations, President Kennedy submitted legislation which led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

In August of the same year he lead 250,000 people in a peaceful march in Washington, D.C., and from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, delivered his famous address, "I have a dream."

Later in 1963, he became Time magazine's Man of the Year, and in 1964 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and in 1965 the Voting Rights Act was passed.

On April 4, 1968, King was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, while supporting a garbage workers strike.

The quote in the accompanying portrait of King, was taken from, "Letters from a Birmingham Jail," written in 1963.

Medium : 1 negative : film

Creator/Published : March 26, 1964

Creator : Marion S. Trikosko, photographer

Part of the U.S. News & World Report Photograph collection housed in the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress

Price: $130.00

Availability: Usually ships on one week

Product #: FR0096