[Eoscstudents] Black History

[Levenia Carey]

Martin Luther, Jr King Biography


  (1929-68)

Baptist minister and civil rights leader, born in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. 
The grandson and son of Baptist ministers, in 1935 his father changed 
both their names to Martin to honour the German Protestant. Young Martin 
graduated from Morehouse College in Georgia (1948) and Crozer 
Theological Seminary (1951) and then took a PhD from Boston University 
(1955), where he also met his future (1957) wife, Coretta Scott, with 
whom he had four children. Ordained a minister (1947) at his father's 
Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, he became pastor of the Dexter 
Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, AL (1953).

Relatively untested when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat in a bus 
in December 1955, he led the boycott of Montgomery's segregated buses 
for over a year (eventually resulting in the Supreme Court decision 
outlawing discrimination in public transportation). In 1957 he was 
chosen president of the newly formed Southern Christian Leadership 
Conference (SCLC) and he began to broaden his active role in the 
civil-rights struggle while advocating his nonviolent approach to 
achieving results. His approach was based on the ideas of Henry David 
Thoreau and Mohandas Gandhi as well on Christian teachings.

In 1959 he moved to Atlanta to become co-pastor of his father's church, 
and in the ensuing years gave much of his energies to organizing protest 
demonstrations and marches in such cities as Birmingham, AL (1963), St 
Augustine, FL (1964), and Selma, AL (1965). During these years he was 
arrested and jailed by Southern officials on several occasions, he was 
stoned and physically attacked, and his house was bombed. He was also 
placed under secret surveillance by the FBI due to the strong prejudices 
of its director, J Edgar Hoover, who wanted to discredit King as both a 
leftist and a womanizer. King's finest hour came on 28 August 1963 when 
he led the great march in Washington, DC, that culminated with his 
famous 'I have a dream' speech at the Lincoln Memorial. At the height of 
his influence, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 and he used 
his new-found powers to attack discrimination in the US North. 
Meanwhile, as the Vietnam War began to consume the country, he also 
broadened his criticisms of American society because he saw the impact 
of the war on the country's resources and energies.

In the spring of 1968 he went to Memphis, TN to show support for the 
striking city workers, and he was shot and killed as he stood on the 
balcony of his motel there. (James Earl Ray pleaded guilty to the 
murder, although he later insisted that he was innocent.) With his 
oratorical style that drew directly on the force of the Bible, and with 
his serene confidence derived from his non-violent philosophy, he had 
advocated a programme of moderation and inclusion, and although later 
generations would question some of his message, few could deny that he 
had been the guiding light for 15 of the most crucial years in America's 
civil-rights struggle.


  Rosa (Lee McCauley) Parks Biography (1913-2005)

Civil-rights activist. Born Rosa Louise McCauley on February 4, 1913 in 
Tuskegee, Alabama. After briefly attending Alabama State University, she 
married and settled in Montgomery, Alabama, where by 1955 she was 
working as a tailor's assistant in a department store. Contrary to most 
early portrayals of her as merely a poor, tired seamstress, who on the 
spur of the moment refused to surrender her seat in a bus to a white 
passenger, she had long been a community activist.

Parks served as secretary of the local chapter of the National 
Association for the Advancement of Colored People and had worked for the 
Union of Sleeping Car Porters. She had also been involved in previous 
incidents when refusing to leave a bus seat. By forcing the police to 
remove, arrest, and imprison her on this occasion, and then agreeing to 
become a test case of segregation ordinances, she played a deliberate 
role in instigating the Montgomery bus boycott (1955-6).

Dismissed from her job at the department store, in 1957 she became a 
youth worker in Detroit, Michigan. As she eventually earned recognition 
as the 'midwife' or 'mother' of the civil rights revolution, she became 
a sought-after speaker nationally. Parks died at her home in Detroit on 
October 24, 2005, at age 92.


  Thurgood Marshall Biography (1908-93)

Supreme Court judge, civil rights advocate. Born Thoroughgood Marshall 
on July 2, 1908 in Baltimore, Maryland. The great-grandson of a slave, 
he graduated as valedictorian from Howard University Law School (1933) 
and soon began to represent civil-rights activists. Becoming a counsel 
for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People 
(1938), during the next 23 years he won 29 of the 32 major cases he 
undertook for that organization; several of the cases set constitutional 
precedents in matters such as voting rights and breaking down segregated 
transportation and education. His finest moment came with Brown v. Board 
of Education (1954), which overturned Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) and its 
'separate but equal' ruling that perpetuated segregated institutions and 
facilities.

President John F Kennedy named him to the US Court of Appeals, a seat he 
finally took despite the resistance of Southern senators (1962-5). 
President Lyndon Johnson appointed him US solicitor general (1965-7) and 
then to the US Supreme Court, the first African-American to hold such an 
office (1967-91). Consistently voting with the liberal block, he found 
himself increasingly isolated as the court's make-up changed, and he was 
forced by ill health to retire and see his seat taken by the 
conservative Clarence Thomas.

Marshall died of heart failure on January 24, 1993. He was buried in 
Arlington National Cemetery.


Thanks for reading


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