Martin Luther King Jr National Parks

March on Washington

The early summer of 1963 was filled with planning for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, sponsored by the Urban League, the NAACP, the American Negro Labor Council, the National Council of Churches, the National Catholic Conference, the American Jewish Council, SNCC, SCLC, and other groups. On August 28, more than 250,000 people of every race and creed marched on Washington. The leaders met with President Kennedy and then several spoke to the assembled crowds. King electrified the audience with his now-famous "I Have a Dream" speech.

MLK I Have a Dream

"I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood…I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope."

It was a momentous year for King a/k/a MLK. In December Time magazine chose him as its Man of the Year. The following year, at the insistence of King and his followers and with the prodding of President Lyndon B. Johnson, Congress passed the first civil rights bill since 1875. In autumn 1964 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace. It was, perhaps, the events of the preceding year as well as his hopes for the future that moved King to write in 1964 his second book, Why We Can’t Wait. Even as he explained why blacks could not wait, roadblocks were clearly visible. The march from Selma to Montgomery in March 1964 to press for a voting rights bill was almost stalled as the opposition gained strength. By this time, moreover, some segments of the civil rights movement began to lose confidence in non-violence as a means of achieving equality. Although the Voting Rights Act became law in 1965, King’s efforts the following year to fight discrimination in Chicago were less than successful. The old tactics of boycotting, picketing, and demonstrating were unfruitful. White backlash and more subtle forms of discrimination immeasurably complicated the task.

Martin Luther King Jr and The Vietnam War

In 1967 MLK surprised many observers by speaking out against the Vietnam War. He was aware that his position might undercut his role as spokesman for civil rights, but he was convinced that his position in the movement would be compromised if he did not oppose the war. Thus the Vietnam War was more than a distraction; it became an occasion for King to look at himself, his own people, his government, and the way in which economic privation, political disadvantage, and the relations of nations were interconnected. It was a time of reevaluation and earnest searching for permanent solutions. His quest was expressed in his book Where Do We Go from Here?, published in 1967.

Even as he sought a resolution of his dilemmas, King continued the task of supporting those who attempted to better their condition. In early spring 1968 he went to Memphis to assist the sanitation workers who were on strike. It was there that he was fatally shot on a motel balcony on April 4, 1968. News of the assassination set off several days of rioting in some cities as millions in this nation and around the world mourned his death.

King was not only the most eloquent spokesman for racial justice of his time; he was also the most successful. He raised the discussion of human rights to a new level, and he developed techniques and approaches that made activism in civil rights a viable policy by which stated goals could be achieved. He discovered, however, that it was far easier to secure basic civil and voting rights – as difficult as that was – than to remove from a society the racial prejudices and discriminatory practices by which it had lived for centuries. But by his teachings and example, he infused his own and succeeding generations with a commitment to racial equality and a zeal to work diligently for it. That legacy was second in importance only to the goals that he achieved in his own time.