Martin Luther King

1 9 2 9 - 1 9 6 8

The Reverend Dr Martin Luther King Jr was the leading figure of the black Civil Rights Movement that swept the US in the 1950s and 1960s. His reform movement, based on non-violent disobedience, resulted in the segregation laws of the South being declared unconstitutional, and to laws being passed to ensure equal voting rights for Blacks.

King began his career as a Baptist minister in Montgomery, Alabama. It was there, in 1956, that a woman named Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to vacate a "whites only" seat on a city bus. Together with Ralph Abernathy, King organized a successful boycott of the city buses, and won national acclaim. In 1963, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC, he delivered his famous "I have a dream" speech to an audience of more than 250,000.

King's renown grew as he became Time magazine's 'Man of the Year' and he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in December 1964. His final years saw the rise of a militant black movement under the leadership of activists such as Malcolm X.

On 4 April 1968, Martin Luther King was assassinated while visiting Memphis, Tennessee. The killer was a sniper who shot Dr King as he stood on his motel room balcony. Fear and violence mounted as the shock of the assassination spread across the US, and set off a wave of rioting and looting. Riots erupted in 63 cities as the black community expressed its outrage and grief.

More than 150, 000 mourners attended his funeral at his old Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia. And television cameras were following all of this. Indeed the intensive coverage did not subside until, on 8 June 1968, James Earl Ray, the assassin, was arrested in London, England.