Martin Luther King Jr. news

Martin Luther King Jr. was born on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia. King was a Baptist minister and a famous civil-rights activist. King was well know for his amazing efforts to get equal rights for all men. King traveled the U.S giving speeches on the how the U.S is a nation of the free and those rights should extend to African-Americans too because they were as American as everyone else. Kings most famous speech was his "I Have a Dream" speech. King also founded the SCLC. King played a major role in ending legal segregation of African-Americans in the southern states and many other states. In the spring of 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. started a demonstration in downtown Birmingham, Alabama. Entire families attended. City police turned dogs and fire hoses on demonstrators. Martin Luther King was jailed along with large numbers of his supporters, but the event drew nationwide attention. On April 3, in what proved to be an eerily prophetic speech, he told followers, "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." The next day, while standing on a balcony outside his room at the Lorraine Motel, Martin Luther King Jr. was struck by a bullet. The shooter, a malcontent drifter and former convict named James Earl Ray, he was eventually apprehended after a two-month, international manhunt. Kings death sparked riots all across the nation and Kings acts have never been forgotten and are still celebrated on a national holiday in America to this very day.