Martin Luther King Jr.

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Martin Luther King Jr : Philosophical Influences

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Introduction

Martin Luther King , Jr , was a Baptist minister and American political activist , as well as one of the most famous leaders of the American civil rights movement . King is widely regarded as a peacemaker and a martyr by many people around the world , in the tradition of non-violence as espoused by Gandhi . He was one of the most visible advocates of nonviolence and direct

action as methods of social change . King won the Nobel Peace prize in 1964 and was one of the youngest people to do so and was assassinated shortly after in 1968

King was born in Atlanta , Georgia , to a pastor father , and graduated from the Morehouse College with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology in 1948 , where he was mentored by President Benjamin Mays , a renowned civil rights leader . King later graduated with a Bachelor of Divinity degree in 1951 from the Crozer Theological Seminary and in 1955 received his PhD in Systematic theology from Boston University , where he deepened his understanding of theological scholarship and explored Mahatma Gandhi 's nonviolent strategy for social change (Martin Luther King Jr Research and Education Institute . As we can see , King grew up with a strong influence in religion and civil rights activity

Over the years , King gained national prominence as a black civil rights activist and the leader of the black power ' movement . He had an important role or was the leader in the Rosa Parks bus boycott the sit-in protests by black college students in the 1960s which led to the formation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee the mass demonstrations in Birmingham , Alabama , which led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 . He became Time magazine 's Man of the Year and to this day , remains a controversial symbol of the African American civil rights struggle

Non-violence

Martin Luther King was greatly influenced by the Gandhi-an philosophy of non-violence towards social change and reform to address the issues of social and economic injustice . Martin Luther King and his Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC ) had a motto , which was To Redeem The Soul of America , which reflected the fact that the SCLC was primarily an organization of black churches , as well as King and the SCLC commitment to orthodox Gandhi-an beliefs that non-violence could transform the oppressor (Ling , 2003

This can be seen in extracts from his Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech in 1964 , where he said

Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time - the need for mankind to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to violence and oppression . Civilization and violence are antithetical concepts . Sooner or later all the people of the world will have to discover a way to live together in peace , and thereby transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood . If this is to be achieved , man...