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In August 1963, King led another march to Washington.
Kennedy was trying to get a law through Congress against racial
inequality, and 250,000 people from across the US came in support
of it. This is where King delivered his historic "I have a
dream" speech. The Civil Rights Act was passed and followed
in 1965 by the Voting Rights Act. |
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Left: The Civil Rights march on Washington DC in 1963, where Martin Luther King made his "I have a dream" speech. | ||||
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| King was acclaimed the Time magazine Man of the Year in 1963, and
then in 1964 was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. In his later years, his non-violent ideals were disputed by other black leaders such as Malcolm X, and roundly condemned by other such as Stokely Carmichael. King, however, stayed utterly committed to the way of peace for the rest of his life. In the later sixties, he broadened his focus from segregation in the south to the deeper-rooted problem of poverty that oppressed black people – and also many white people – throughout the United States. He scheduled a Poor People's March in Washington for the summer of 1968. In April 1968 he flew to Memphis, Tennessee, to help sanitation workers organise a strike. He addressed them on 3 April, recalling what glorious days he would have missed if he had died in the stabbing ten years earlier. These were his closing words: "Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And he's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. And I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord." The following day, as he stood on his hotel balcony, he was shot and killed. King's birthday has been a US national holiday since 1986. At the time of his death, there was a long way to go towards real equality for black people in America, but not nearly such a long way as before he started. And it was his commitment to the non-violent ways of Jesus, learned at the feet of Gandhi, that prevented the struggle for freedom becoming a war. |
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