On April 4, 1966, the leader of the American civil rights movement Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee.
He was born in 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia and received a doctorate in theology from Boston University in 1955. He opposed segregation and very soon became the leader of American blacks.
In the spring of 1963, in a massive demonstration against segregation, Martin Luther King, along with a number of his companions was arrested and jailed.
Dr. Martin Luther King was awarded 1964 Nobel Prize for peace.
After his death, King came to represent black courage and achievement, high moral leadership, and the ability of Americans to address and overcome racial divisions. Recollections of his criticisms of U.S. foreign policy and poverty faded, and his soaring rhetoric calling for racial justice and an integrated society became almost as familiar to subsequent generations of Americans as the Declaration of Independence.
In 1959 King visited India and worked out more clearly his understanding of Gandhi’s principle of nonviolent persuasion, called satyagraha, which King had determined to use as his main instrument of social protest.