Today we remember January 15, 1929, on which day Martin Luther King Jr. was born. From 1955, he was a powerful leader in the American civil rights movement. He led marches to give blacks the right to vote, to secure labor rights and other civil rights, and to bring an end to segregation. He also led a bus boycott in Montgomery in 1955 in which blacks refused to ride the bus in opposition to segregated bus seating.
In 1963, King helped organize the march on Washington where he delivered his speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial with the famous words, “I Have a Dream.”
As King was preparing to speak with colleagues while preparing for a worker’s march in Memphis, TN on Thursday, April 4th of 1968, he was killed by a single shot fired by an escaped prisoner. President Lyndon B. Johnson called for a national day of mourning to be observed on April 7th.
