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Question: How did Martin Luther King die!?
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He was shot by James Earl Ray on April 4 1968!. Check out the song Pride (in the name of love) by the group U-2!. Dr!. King's death is one of the lyrics in that songWww@QuestionHome@Com

Dr King was shot dead in the southern US city of Memphis, Tennessee, where he was to lead a march of sanitation workers protesting against low wages and poor working conditions

He was shot in the neck as he stood on a hotel balcony and died in hospital soon afterwards!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

He was shot while leaving his hotel room in Memphis, TN by James Earl Ray in 1968 !Www@QuestionHome@Com

!.!.!.!.!.!.!. he got SHOT!. I thought everybody knew that!. He got shot in the neck!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

Martin Luther King, Jr!. (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was one of the pivotal leaders of the American civil rights movement!. King was a Baptist minister, one of the few leadership roles available to black men at the time!. He became a civil rights activist early in his career!. He led the Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955–1956) and helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (1957), serving as its first president!. His efforts led to the 1963 March on Washington, where King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech!. Here he raised public consciousness of the civil rights movement and established himself as one of the greatest orators in U!.S!. history!. In 1964, King became the youngest person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to end segregation and racial discrimination through civil disobedience and other non-violent means!.

King was assassinated on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee!. He was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Jimmy Carter in 1977!. Martin Luther King, Jr!. Day was established as a national holiday in the United States in 1986!. In 2004, King was posthumously awarded a Congressional Gold Medal!.[1]

Contents [hide]
1 Biography
2 Civil rights activism, 1953–1968
2!.1 Montgomery Bus Boycott, 1955
2!.2 Southern Christian Leadership Conference
2!.3 March on Washington, 1963
2!.4 "Bloody Sunday", 1965
2!.5 Chicago, 1966
2!.6 Opposition to the Vietnam War, 1967
2!.7 Poor People's Campaign, 1968
3 Assassination, 1968
3!.1 Allegations of conspiracy
3!.2 Recent developments
4 Influences
4!.1 Howard Thurman
4!.2 Bayard Rustin
4!.3 Mahatma Gandhi
5 Stance on compensation
6 King and the FBI
7 Awards and recognition
8 Honorary degrees
9 Plagiarism
10 Books by or about Martin Luther King, Jr!.
11 Wife and children
12 Legacy
13 Notes
14 References
15 External links
15!.1 Video and audio material



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Martin Luther King, Jr!., was born on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia!. He was the son of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Sr!. and Alberta Williams King!. King's father was born "Michael King", and Martin Luther King, Jr!. was initially named "Michael King, Jr!.", until 1935, when "his father changed both of their names to Martin to honor the German Protestant (Martin Luther)!."[2] He had an older sister, Willie Christine (September 11, 1927) and a younger brother, Alfred Daniel (July 30, 1930 – July 1, 1969)!. King sang with his church choir at the 1939 Atlanta premiere of the movie Gone with the Wind!. He entered Morehouse College at age fifteen, skipping his ninth and twelfth high school grades without formally graduating!. In 1948, he graduated from Morehouse with a Bachelor of Arts (B!.A!.) degree in sociology, and enrolled in Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania, and graduated with a Bachelor of Divinity (B!.D!.) degree in 1951!. In September 1951, King began doctoral studies in systematic theology at Boston University and received his Doctor of Philosophy (Ph!.D!.) on June 5, 1955[3]!. In 1953, at age 24, King became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama!.


Civil rights activism, 1953–1968

Montgomery Bus Boycott, 1955
At 11 am December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to comply with the Jim Crow laws that required her to give up her seat to a white man!. The Montgomery Bus Boycott, urged and planned by E!. D!. Nixon (head of the Montgomery NAACP chapter and a member of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters) and led by King, soon followed!. (In March 1955, a 15-year-old school girl, Claudette Colvin, had to give up her seat, but King did not then become involved!.[4]) The boycott lasted for 385 days, the situation becoming so tense that King's house was bombed!. King was arrested during this campaign, which ended with a United States District Court ruling in Browder v!. Gayle that ended racial segregation on all Montgomery public buses!.


Southern Christian Leadership Conference
King was instrumental in the founding of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957, a group created to harness the moral authority and organizing power of black churches to conduct non-violent protests in the service of civil rights reform!. King continued to dominate the organization!. In 1958, while signing copies of his book "Strive Toward Freedom" in a Harlem department store, he was stabbed in the chest with a letter opener by a deranged black woman, Izola Curry, and narrowly escaped death!.

King was an adherent of the philosophies of nonviolent civil disobedience as described in Henry David Thoreau's essay of the same name,[5] and used successfully in India by "the Mahatma", Mohandas K!. Gandhi!. King applied this philosophy to the protests organized by the SCLC!. In 1959, he wrote The Measure of A Man, from which the piece What is Man!?, an attempt to sketch the optimal political, social, and economic structure of society, is derived!.

The FBI, under written directive from then Attorney General Robert F!. Kennedy, began wiretapping King in 1961!. J!.Edgar Hoover feared that Communists were trying to infiltrate the Civil Rights Movement, but when no such evidence emerged, the bureau used the incidental details caught on tape over six years in attempts to force King out of the preeminent leadership position!.

King correctly recognized that organized, nonviolent protest against the system of southern segregation known as Jim Crow laws would lead to extensive media coverage of the struggle for black equality and voting rights!. Journalistic accounts and televised footage of the daily deprivation and indignities suffered by southern blacks, and of segregationist violence and harassment of civil rights workers and marchers, produced a wave of sympathetic public opinion that made the Civil Rights Movement the single most important issue in American politics in the early 1960s!.

King organized and led marches for blacks' right to vote, desegregation, labor rights and other basic civil rights!. Most of these rights were successfully enacted into United States law with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965!.

King and the SCLC applied the principles of nonviolent protest with great success by strategically choosing the method of protest and the places in which protests were carried out!. There were often dramatic stand-offs with segregationist authorities!. Sometimes these confrontations turned violent!. King and the SCLC were instrumental in the unsuccessful Albany Movement in Albany, Georgia, in 1961 and 1962, where divisions within the black community and the canny, low-key response by local government defeated efforts; in the Birmingham protests in the summer of 1963; and in the protest in St!. Augustine, Florida, in 1964!. King and the SCLC joined forces with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in Selma, Alabama, in December 1964, where SNCC had been working on voter registration for several months!.[6]


March on Washington, 1963
Main article: March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom

March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom
King is perhaps most famous for his "I Have a Dream" speech, given in front of the Lincoln Memorial during the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom!.King, representing SCLC, was among the leaders of the so-called "Big Six" civil rights organizations who were instrumental in the organization of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963!. The other leaders and organizations comprising the Big Six were: Roy Wilkins, NAACP; Whitney Young, Jr!., Urban League; A!. Philip Randolph, Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters; John Lewis, SNCC; and James Farmer of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)!. The primary logistical and strategic organizer was King's colleague Bayard Rustin!. For King, this role was another which courted controversy, since he was one of the key figures who acceded to the wishes of President John F!. Kennedy in changing the focus of the march!. Kennedy initially opposed the march outright, because he was concerned it would negatively impact the drive for passage of civil rights legislation, but the organizers were firm that the march would proceed!.

The march originally was conceived as an event to dramatize the desperate condition of blacks in the South and a very public opportunity to place organizers' concerns and grievances squarely before the seat of power in the nation's capital!. Organizers intended to excoriate and then challenge the federal governWww@QuestionHome@Com

he got shot inside a churchWww@QuestionHome@Com