Vocabulary Preview:
Civil rights movement: n., actions between 1954 and 1968 taken to change laws of racial discrimination
Protests: n., a gathering of people who believe the same thing and want others to learn about it.
Abolish: v., to eliminate or stop something completely
Segregation: n., when all of one kind of people have to be together; for example, racial segregation.
Boycott: n., to stop buying or using something as a protest
Unconstitutional: adj., an act or belief that is not part of the ruling document of a country
Orator: n., someone who speaks powerfully and well
Martin Luther King, Jr. was an important leader in the civil rights movement in America in the ‘50s and ‘60s. He used peaceful protests to secure basic rights for people of color, including the right to vote. It was by nonviolent methods that he helped abolish the racial discrimination and segregation laws that were in place at the time. These laws ruled where people of color could sit or walk or even go to school.
His first efforts in the civil rights movement were inspired by the Montgomery Bus boycott. This began in 1955, when an African American woman named Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus for a white man, as the driver had told her to. Parks was arrested and fined. Subsequently, people of color refused to ride the buses at all, and this boycott continued for over a year. Eventually, the Supreme Court ruled that these laws were unconstitutional.
King went on to work hard helping people of color, changing many laws and attitudes in America. He became known as a great orator, and his speech “I Have a Dream” is one of the most famous in this country’s history. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated when he was 39 years old, while still trying to improve the lives of others. We mark his birthday nation-wide as a federal holiday and try to increase our awareness of the racial problems that still exist in America.
Sign From Segregated Nashville Bus Number 351
Civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. addresses the crowd at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., where he gave his “I Have a Dream” speech on Aug. 28, 1963, as part of the March on Washington.
The speech was ranked the top American speech of the 20th century in a 1999 poll of scholars. The speech has also been described as having “a strong claim to be the greatest in the English language of all time.”
Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Have_a_Dream
AFP via Getty Images
To listen to King’s famous speech:
