Martin Luther King, Jr. was born JANUARY 15,
1929.
In 1983, Republican President Ronald Reagan signed
the bill to make the 3rd Monday in January a
holiday in honor of Rev. Martin Luther King,
Jr.
Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., was a
Baptist minister like his father and grandfather.
He was pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church
in Montgomery and Ebenezer Baptist Church in
Atlanta.
He formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., was awarded the
Nobel Prize in 1964.
On April 16, 1963, Rev. Martin Luther King,
Jr., wrote:
“As the Apostle Paul carried the gospel of Jesus Christ…so am I
compelled to carry the gospel…”
King continued:
“One day the South will know that when these disinherited children
of God sat down at lunch counters they were standing up for what is
best in the American dream and for the most sacred values
in our Judeo-Christian heritage.”
Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., as well as
Archbishop Desmond Tutu, were influenced by the German church
leader Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who resisted Hitler’s
National Socialist Workers’ Party.
Bonhoeffer was himself influenced by the Black preacher, Adam
Clayton Powell Sr., pastor of Harlem’s Abyssinian Baptist
Church, once the largest Protestant church in America.
Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., was also influenced by
Henry David Thoreau, who wrote in his book, In
Civil Disobedience (1849):
“That government is best which governs least”
Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., attended Booker
T. Washington High School in Atlanta, 1942-44.
Booker T. Washington founded Tuskegee Institute in
Alabama, and wrote in Up From Slavery (1901):
“I resolved that I would permit no man, no matter what his color
might be, to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.
With God’s help, I believe that I have completely rid myself of any
ill feeling toward the Southern white man for any wrong that he may
have inflicted upon my race…
I pity from the bottom of my heart any individual who is so
unfortunate as to get into the habit of holding race
prejudice.”
Get the booklet Booker T. Washington – American
Hero
Booker T. Washington stated:
“In the sight of God there is no color line, and we want to
cultivate a spirit that will make us forget that there is such a
line anyway…”
“I have always had the greatest respect for the work of the
Salvation Army especially because I have noted that it draws no
color line in religion.”
Booker T. Washington wrote in Up From Slavery
(1901):
“There is a class of race problem solvers who make a business of
keeping the troubles, the wrongs and the hardships of the Negro
race before the public…
Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances
because they do not want to lose their jobs… They don’t want the
patient to get well…
Great men cultivate love…only little men cherish a spirit of
hatred.”
George Washington Carver-His Life and Faith in His
Own Words
A professor at Tuskegee was the world renown George
Washington Carver, who wrote to Robert Johnson, March 24,
1925:
“Thank God I love humanity; complexion doesn’t interest me one
single bit.”
George W. Carver wrote to YMCA official Jack
Boyd in Denver, March 1, 1927:
“Keep your hand in that of the Master, walk daily by His side,
so that you may lead others into the realms of true happiness,
where a religion of hate, (which poisons both body and soul) will
be unknown, having in its place the ‘Golden Rule’ way, which is the
‘Jesus Way’ of life, will reign supreme.”
Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., was influenced by the non-violent
methods of India’s Mahatma Gandhi.
Gandhi wrote in his autobiography of an incident
on a ship with 800 passengers traveling from India to the Natal
Province of South Africa. When some passengers learned that Gandhi
was aboard, they grew furious.
As Gandhi was disembarking, they punched him,
kicked him, and threw stones at him, but he refused to retaliate
and kept walking. He was finally rescued when the wife of the
town’s police superintendent opened her parasol and stood between
Gandhi and the mob.
Gandhi wrote:
“I hope God will give me the courage and the sense to forgive them
and to refrain from bringing them to law.
I have no anger against them. I am only sorry for their ignorance
and their narrowness.
I know that they sincerely believe that what they are doing today
is right and proper. I have no reason therefore to be angry with
them.”
On March 6, 1984, President Ronald Reagan
remarked at the annual convention of the National Association of
Evangelicals, meeting at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Columbus,
Ohio:
“During the civil rights struggles of the fifties and early
sixties, millions worked for equality in the name of their
Creator.
Civil rights leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King
based all their efforts on the claim that black or white, each of
us is a child of God. And they stirred our nation to the very
depths of its soul.”
On January 20, 1997, Rev. Billy Graham
delivered the invocation just prior to the second inauguration of
President Bill Clinton, stating:
“Oh, Lord, help us to be reconciled first to you and secondly to
each other. May Dr. Martin Luther King‘s dream
finally come true for all of us.
Help us to learn our courtesy to our fellow countrymen, that comes
from the one who taught us that ‘whatever you want me to do to you,
do also to them.’
In proclaiming 1990 the International Year of Bible Reading,
President George H.W. Bush stated:
“The historic speeches of Abraham Lincoln and Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr., provide compelling evidence of the role
Scripture played in shaping the struggle against slavery and
discrimination.”
On February 16, 2002, Dr. James Dobson
addressed 3,500 attendees at the National Religious Broadcaster’s
convention:
“Those of you who do feel that the church has no responsibility in
the cultural area… Suppose it were…1963, and Martin Luther
King is sitting in a Birmingham jail and he is
released.
And he goes to a church, yes, a church.
And from that church, he comes out into the streets of Birmingham
and marches for civil rights. Do you oppose that? Is that a
violation of the separation of church and state?”
In his address at Montgomery, Alabama, December 31, 1955, Rev.
Martin Luther King, Jr., declared:
“If you will protest courageously, and yet with dignity and
Christian love, when the history books are written in
future generations, the historians will have to pause and say,
‘There lived a great people-a black people-who injected new meaning
and dignity into the veins of civilization.'”
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., said August 28, 1963:
“Now is the time to open the doors of opportunity to all of God’s
children…
In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty
of wrongful deeds.
Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by
drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.
We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity
and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to
degenerate into physical violence.”
On April 16, 1963, Rev. King wrote:
“I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish
brothers… I stand in the middle of two opposing forces in the Negro
community.
One is a force of complacency…
The other force is one of bitterness and hatred, and it comes
perilously close to advocating violence.
It is expressed in the various black nationalist groups that are
springing up across the nation, the largest and best-known being
Elijah Muhammad’s Muslim movement…
This movement is made up of people who have lost faith in America,
who have absolutely repudiated Christianity, and who have concluded
that the white man is an incorrigible ‘devil.’
I have tried to stand between these two forces, saying that we need
emulate neither the ‘do-nothingism’ of the complacent nor the
hatred of the black nationalist.
For there is the more excellent way of love and non-violent
protest.
I am grateful to God that, through the influence of the Negro
church, the way of non-violence became an integral part of our
struggle.”
Rev. King proclaimed August 28, 1963:
“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out
the true meaning of its creed:
‘We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created
equal.’
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of
former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners 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…
I have a dream…where little black boys and black girls will be able
to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk
together as sisters and brothers.” American Minute is
a registered trademark. Permission is granted to forward, reprint
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