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Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day on everyone. Thanks for joining us for West Seattle Daily, Episode #019, brought to you by Sea-Town Real Estate. I'm your host, Christian Harris.
While you're enjoying your day off on this holiday, let's also take a look at Martin Luther King Jr.'s life for some lessons & inspiration. MLK was only 39 when he was shot and killed in 1968.
"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that." - Martin Luther King Jr.
His words are still very relevant as we move into 2020 a big year filled with change, especially with the 2020 election coming up.
Martin Luther King Jr. fought for many things when the world felt very stuck. Today we see his impact across the country. In a space where it is easy to give up - he continued to fight for what he believed in, no matter the cost.
In 1954, Martin Luther King became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. Always a strong worker for civil rights for members of his race, King was, by this time, a member of the executive committee of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the leading organization of its kind in the nation. After the arrest of Rosa Parks on a Montgomery city bus, for not giving up her seat to a white person, MLK lead the now famous bus boycott in early December 1955. A then largely unknown 26 year old minister. During the boycott that lasted 382 days, he prominence in the civil rights movement through his eloquent and inspirational speeches and practice of non-violent civil disobedience.
It was not an easy rode for MLK. During the days of the boycott, King was arrested, his home was bombed, he was subjected to personal threats and abuse. But the sacrifice paid off. After the Supreme Court of the United States declared segregation on busses unconstitutional, on December 21, 1956, Negroes and whites finally rode the buses as equals.
In 1957 he was elected president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization formed to provide new leadership for the now burgeoning civil rights movement. The ideals for this organization he took from Christianity; and commitment to non-violent tactics from Gandhi. In the eleven-year period between 1957 and 1968, King traveled over six million miles and spoke over twenty-five hundred times, appearing wherever he could where there was injustice, protest, and action; and meanwhile he wrote five books as well as numerous articles. In these years, he led a massive protest in Birmingham, Alabama, that caught the attention of the entire world, providing what he called a coalition of conscience. and inspiring his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”, a manifesto of the Negro revolution; he planned the drives in Alabama for the registration of Negroes as voters; he directed the peaceful march on Washington, D.C., of 250,000 people to whom he delivered his address, “l Have a Dream”, he conferred with President John F. Kennedy and campaigned for President Lyndon B. Johnson; he was arrested upwards of twenty times and physically assaulted at least four times; he was awarded five honorary degrees; was named Man of the Year by Time magazine in 1963; and became not only the symbolic leader of American blacks but also a world figure for Justice.
At the age of thirty-five, Martin Luther King, Jr., was the youngest man to have received the Nobel Peace Prize. When notified of his selection, he announced that he would turn over the prize money of $54,123 to the furtherance of the civil rights movement.
On the evening of April 4, 1968, while standing on the balcony of his motel room in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was to lead a protest march in solidarity with striking garbage workers of that city, he was assassinated.
We remember this story every year at this time to never forget the risks taken to pave an incredible path in our history & future. It reminds us to keep fighting. To call out injustice and do our best to leave the world a better place then we found it. We hope that hearing this story reminds you to continue to fight & stay strong for the causes you believe in.
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." - MLK
