Martin Luther King Ive Been To The Mountaintop
Martin Luther King: "I've been to the mountaintop"
Biography
Martin Luther King was an American clergyman and Nobel Prize winner, one of the principal leaders of the American civil rights movement, of which he was the voice He was an advocate of non-violent protest and direct action as methods of social change. King's challenges to segregation and racial discrimination in the 1950s and 1960s helped convince many white Americans to support the cause of civil rights in the United States. After his assassination in 1968, King became a symbol of protest in the struggle for racial justice.
Martin Luther King was born in Atlanta, Georgia on 15th January, 1929. After considering careers in medicine and law, he entered the ministry. …show more content…
While studying at Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania, King heard a lecture on Mahatma Gandhi and the nonviolent civil disobedience campaign that he used successfully against British rule in India. King became convinced that the same methods could be employed by blacks to obtain civil rights in America. King was also influenced by Henry David Thoreau and his theories on how to use nonviolent resistance to achieve social change.
King became pastor in Montgomery, Alabama. In Montgomery, like most towns in the Deep South, buses were segregated. On 1st December, 1955, Rosa Parks, a prominent member of the local NAACP, who was tired after a hard day's work, refused to give up her seat to a white man.
After the arrest of Rosa Parks, King and his friends helped organize protests against bus segregation. It was decided that black people in Montgomery would refuse to use the buses until passengers were completely integrated. The boycott lasted 13 month and eventually, the loss of revenue and a decision by the Supreme Court forced the Montgomery Bus Company to accept integration, and to desegregate the buses. King became a national figure. His book about the bus boycott, Stride Toward Freedom (1958), provided a thoughtful account of that experience and further extended King's national influence.
In 1957 King helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), an organization of black churches and ministers that aimed to challenge racial segregation
In Greensboro, North Carolina, a small group of black students read the book "stride toward freedom by MLK, started a student sit-in at the restaurant of their local Woolworth's store which had a policy of not serving black people.
Within six months these kinds of sit-ins had ended restaurant and lunch-counter segregation in twenty-six southern cities. Student sit-ins were also successful against segregation in public parks, swimming pools, theaters, churches, libraries, and museums
In the early 1960s King led SCLC in a series of protest campaigns that gained national attention. An important one took place in 1961 in Albany, Georgia, where the SCLC joined local demonstrations against segregated restaurants and hotels. The Movement was successful in mobilizing massive protests, but it secured few concrete gains due to the jailing of hundreds of protesters. So, the movement was a failure. Such a campaign did work in Birmingham, Alabama, where the SCLC joined a local protest during the spring of 1963 to end segregation at lunch counters. Hundreds of people filled the streets of Birmingham, but the police commissioner sent police officers with attack dogs and fire-fighters with high-pressure water hoses against the marchers. Scenes of young protesters being attacked by dogs were shown in newspapers and on televisions around the world. During the demonstrations, King was arrested and sent to jail. In his cell he wrote his "Letter from Birmingham Jail," which argued that individuals had the moral right and responsibility to disobey unjust laws, was widely read at the time and added to King's standing as a moral leader. King and other black leaders then organized the 1963 March on Washington, a massive protest in Washington, D.C., for jobs and civil rights. On August 28, 1963, King delivered his most famous and moving speech to an audience of more than 200,000 civil rights supporters. His "I Have a Dream" speech expressed the hopes of the civil rights movement.. This speech, adding to the Birmingham demonstrations, led to the enactement of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
The 1964 Civil Rights Act made racial discrimination in public places, such as theaters, restaurants and hotels, illegal.
It also required employers to provide equal employment opportunities.
King then concentrated on achieving a federal voting-rights law. In March 1965 he organized a protest march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. The marchers were attacked by state troopers. After the attacks, Lyndon Johnson persuaded Congress to pass his Voting Rights Act. This legislation proposed to remove the right of states to impose restrictions on who could vote in elections. It was passed by a large majority.
King concentrated on helping those suffering from poverty. King realised that race and economic issues were closely connected and he began talking about the need to redistribute wealth.in 1966 he became a strong opponent of the Vietnam War. He then became involved in trade union struggles. In late 1967, King initiated a Poor People's Campaign designed to confront economic problems that had not been addressed by earlier civil rights reforms. The following year, while supporting striking sanitation workers in Memphis, he delivered his final address "I've Been to the Mountaintop." The next day, 4 April 1968, King was …show more content…
assassinated.
Speech
Context: Just a few days before he gave this famous "I've been to the mountaintop speech", one of his demonstration in Chicago against poverty was taken over by angry black men who were angry because of the slow pace of King's non-violent movement strategy, so there were some shootings, some looting and many injuries. King was depressed at the time, he felt like his last movements had failed, and that he was himself a failure. But there were still people that believed in him and rallied behind him. So he went to Memphis to help the black sanitation workers in their strike against unfaire labor practices. These people wanted improve their wages and working conditions. A rally was being held in a hall in Memphis on April 3, 1968, and King was expected to speak at the rally but King worried that there would be a small turnout. So, he asked his chief aid Ralph Abernathy to speak in his place. But Abernathy called King at his motel and told him there were 2000 sanitation workers waiting there to hear him speak. So King drove over to the mall and gave this speech, which is the second most famous of his speeches.
Description: The speech was not fully reproduced in the documents, it is actually much longer, it lasted about 45 minutes, because King spoke at a very slow pace. He used during the speech some elements of black folk preaching, including call and response interaction with listener, who answered him a lot by saying, yeah, that's right and things like that. The result is very powerful and deeply moving, especially because of his prophetic tone and his oratory talents. So, the speech was outstanding and very inspirational because of these elements, but also of course because of its content.
Introduction of the speech: So, King starts his speech by asking himself a question. If god had asked him the question "MLK, which age of human history would you like to live in ?" what would he have answered ? He answers that he would have wanted to witness the journey across the Red sea of the oppressed Hebrew people led by moses that were searching for the promised land, that he would have liked to see the Emancipation Proclamation signed by Lincoln in 1863, and that he would have wanted to live during the New deal era of Franklin Roosevelt, but he would not have chosen these periods of history. He would rather have chosen to live in the second half of the 20th century, and that would make happy. He then took a very apocalyptic tone which is linked to a sort of traditional black folk preaching, when he said the words "The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land; confusion all around". But he added that if he wanted to live in the mid 20th century, it was because "only when it is dark enough can you see the stars". It means that he wanted to live in troubled times, and the 50s and 6às were definitely troubled times for the black population in America, because it is only when times are troubled that it is possible to make a change, to make a difference, to make something happen that would mark history and which would make the world a better place to live in. Need to maintain unity: He then concentrates on the fact that the black population needs to maintain unity, to stay together in their fight for racial equality. To support this argument, he makes a very interesting comparison. He compares the black population to the slaves that were owned by the Egyptian Pharaoh. King made that analogy to emphasize the need to maintain unity, because when Pharaoh's segregated slave got together, something happened, and the Pharaoh could not keep them in slavery. Therefore by making such an historical analogy that showed that even centuries ago, at a time when humans were living in archaic civilization, such a strategy worked, he urges solidarity among the black sanitation workers and among the black population in general.
Non violent protest: Then he emphasizes what is at stake. He mentions that something happened the other day, which was actually 10 days before, he was in Memphis to demonstrate with the sanitation workers, but the demonstrations turned out to be violent, and the press only mentioned that there was some looting in Memphis, but they seldom talked about the reason of the demonstration and about the unfair treatment of the Memphis sanitation workers. Which justifies his claim that the movement ought not be violent. In this text, we have another good example of King's non violent methods of protest to change things "we don't need bricks and bottles. We don't need any Molotov cocktails". All they need to do according to King, is to oppose the unfair labor practices, and to demonstrate in the name of God, because blacks are humans beings, and human beings are God's children. And if the people in charge of the sanitation of Memphis do not comply with their demands, King calls for an economic withdrawal of the black population.
Economic withdrawal of the black population: The paragraph about economic withdrawal is very interesting in King's speech. This paragraph is a good example of how MLK stressed the need for economic withdrawal and the huge consequences that such a practice could have. King reminds us that individual Americans together, even financially poor black Americans, have a tremendous amount of consumer power, in fact, collectively they are richer than all the nations in the world with the exception of nine. This tremendous consumer power therefore should be used in the fight for economic justice, and the labor movement in Memphis is one of them . But he did not want to stop to the labor movement, in the speech. he actually encouraged poor people to use their collective buying power against the corporations that were treating them unjustly. He therefore urges people to not buy coca cola, nor sealtest milk and Wonder Bread, because these companies haven't been fair in their hiring policies.
In the next paragraph, he stresses the need for economic self-help, like Malcolm X did because for both leaders, the divisions of economic class were as important as--and were inseparable from--the issue of race Therefore he stresses the need to strengthen black institutions, especially black insurances, because that would put pressure where it really hurts.
Summary of King's life: The next paragraph is also very interesting, because MLK actually sums up his life's work. King recalled an earlier attempt on his life. In New York he was stabbed by a deranged woman, narrowly escaping death when the knife lodged inches from his aorta. He was told that if he had sneezed, he would have died. This prompted a white high school student to write to him saying that she was "so happy that you didn't sneeze." He then sums up his life's work, by telling the audience that he was so happy that he didn't sneeze back then. He then used that phrase over and over, as he did with the phrase I have a dream in his most famous speech, that is an oratory technic that he likes to use to make his point. So, if he hadn't sneezed, he would not have been around in 1960, when students that read his book started sitting in at lunch counters, a practice that actually ended restaurant and lunch-counter segregation in twenty-six southern cities, and in public parks, swimming pools, theaters, churches, libraries, and museums. Nor would he have been there in 1962, in Albany, to help demonstrators against restaurant segregation, or in 63 in the Birmingham protest, when he was jailed and had the opportunity to write his "Letter from Birmingham Jail," which argued that individuals had the moral right and responsibility to disobey unjust laws. This protest led to the enactment of the Civil rights Act. He also could not have made his famous I have a dream speech, and could not have organized the Selma march. And most important of all, he could have spoken for the sanitation workers in Memphis. By placing the struggle in Memphis in the company of his own greatest achievements (neglecting to mention his more recent, unsuccessful campaign in Chicago), King elevated the strike from a minor, local event to a very important event in the history of the United States, as were the achievements that he mentioned.
End of the speech (famous part, foreshadowing of his death): The conclusion of the speech is the most famous part of it, it has been played and replayed since King died in 1968, especially on martin Luther king day.
In this conclusion, he seems to say that he knew that he would probably be murdered for his efforts. He first starts by comparing himself to moses and he then foretold his own death prior to the blacks' entry into the Promised land. The analogy between the African American population and the Old testament Hebrews is interesting, it is another one of his use of biblical imagery, which he often uses in his speeches. So basically, King compared himself to Moses standing on the mountaintop looking over the Promised land. He knew that he would not cross over, but that his people would. So this conclusion is remembered because King foreshadowed what was about to happen to him on the very next day of the speech, when he was murdered. He basically says that his job is done, he has achieved the journey to the promised land, and now he can rest in
peace.
It is difficult to say that the African population has today reached the promised land, but they are certainly closer because of MLK's achievements. He is remembered as a hero.
Biography
Martin Luther King was an American clergyman and Nobel Prize winner, one of the principal leaders of the American civil rights movement, of which he was the voice He was an advocate of non-violent protest and direct action as methods of social change. King's challenges to segregation and racial discrimination in the 1950s and 1960s helped convince many white Americans to support the cause of civil rights in the United States. After his assassination in 1968, King became a symbol of protest in the struggle for racial justice.
Martin Luther King was born in Atlanta, Georgia on 15th January, 1929. After considering careers in medicine and law, he entered the ministry. …show more content…
While studying at Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania, King heard a lecture on Mahatma Gandhi and the nonviolent civil disobedience campaign that he used successfully against British rule in India. King became convinced that the same methods could be employed by blacks to obtain civil rights in America. King was also influenced by Henry David Thoreau and his theories on how to use nonviolent resistance to achieve social change.
King became pastor in Montgomery, Alabama. In Montgomery, like most towns in the Deep South, buses were segregated. On 1st December, 1955, Rosa Parks, a prominent member of the local NAACP, who was tired after a hard day's work, refused to give up her seat to a white man.
After the arrest of Rosa Parks, King and his friends helped organize protests against bus segregation. It was decided that black people in Montgomery would refuse to use the buses until passengers were completely integrated. The boycott lasted 13 month and eventually, the loss of revenue and a decision by the Supreme Court forced the Montgomery Bus Company to accept integration, and to desegregate the buses. King became a national figure. His book about the bus boycott, Stride Toward Freedom (1958), provided a thoughtful account of that experience and further extended King's national influence.
In 1957 King helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), an organization of black churches and ministers that aimed to challenge racial segregation
In Greensboro, North Carolina, a small group of black students read the book "stride toward freedom by MLK, started a student sit-in at the restaurant of their local Woolworth's store which had a policy of not serving black people.
Within six months these kinds of sit-ins had ended restaurant and lunch-counter segregation in twenty-six southern cities. Student sit-ins were also successful against segregation in public parks, swimming pools, theaters, churches, libraries, and museums
In the early 1960s King led SCLC in a series of protest campaigns that gained national attention. An important one took place in 1961 in Albany, Georgia, where the SCLC joined local demonstrations against segregated restaurants and hotels. The Movement was successful in mobilizing massive protests, but it secured few concrete gains due to the jailing of hundreds of protesters. So, the movement was a failure. Such a campaign did work in Birmingham, Alabama, where the SCLC joined a local protest during the spring of 1963 to end segregation at lunch counters. Hundreds of people filled the streets of Birmingham, but the police commissioner sent police officers with attack dogs and fire-fighters with high-pressure water hoses against the marchers. Scenes of young protesters being attacked by dogs were shown in newspapers and on televisions around the world. During the demonstrations, King was arrested and sent to jail. In his cell he wrote his "Letter from Birmingham Jail," which argued that individuals had the moral right and responsibility to disobey unjust laws, was widely read at the time and added to King's standing as a moral leader. King and other black leaders then organized the 1963 March on Washington, a massive protest in Washington, D.C., for jobs and civil rights. On August 28, 1963, King delivered his most famous and moving speech to an audience of more than 200,000 civil rights supporters. His "I Have a Dream" speech expressed the hopes of the civil rights movement.. This speech, adding to the Birmingham demonstrations, led to the enactement of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
The 1964 Civil Rights Act made racial discrimination in public places, such as theaters, restaurants and hotels, illegal.
It also required employers to provide equal employment opportunities.
King then concentrated on achieving a federal voting-rights law. In March 1965 he organized a protest march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. The marchers were attacked by state troopers. After the attacks, Lyndon Johnson persuaded Congress to pass his Voting Rights Act. This legislation proposed to remove the right of states to impose restrictions on who could vote in elections. It was passed by a large majority.
King concentrated on helping those suffering from poverty. King realised that race and economic issues were closely connected and he began talking about the need to redistribute wealth.in 1966 he became a strong opponent of the Vietnam War. He then became involved in trade union struggles. In late 1967, King initiated a Poor People's Campaign designed to confront economic problems that had not been addressed by earlier civil rights reforms. The following year, while supporting striking sanitation workers in Memphis, he delivered his final address "I've Been to the Mountaintop." The next day, 4 April 1968, King was …show more content…
assassinated.
Speech
Context: Just a few days before he gave this famous "I've been to the mountaintop speech", one of his demonstration in Chicago against poverty was taken over by angry black men who were angry because of the slow pace of King's non-violent movement strategy, so there were some shootings, some looting and many injuries. King was depressed at the time, he felt like his last movements had failed, and that he was himself a failure. But there were still people that believed in him and rallied behind him. So he went to Memphis to help the black sanitation workers in their strike against unfaire labor practices. These people wanted improve their wages and working conditions. A rally was being held in a hall in Memphis on April 3, 1968, and King was expected to speak at the rally but King worried that there would be a small turnout. So, he asked his chief aid Ralph Abernathy to speak in his place. But Abernathy called King at his motel and told him there were 2000 sanitation workers waiting there to hear him speak. So King drove over to the mall and gave this speech, which is the second most famous of his speeches.
Description: The speech was not fully reproduced in the documents, it is actually much longer, it lasted about 45 minutes, because King spoke at a very slow pace. He used during the speech some elements of black folk preaching, including call and response interaction with listener, who answered him a lot by saying, yeah, that's right and things like that. The result is very powerful and deeply moving, especially because of his prophetic tone and his oratory talents. So, the speech was outstanding and very inspirational because of these elements, but also of course because of its content.
Introduction of the speech: So, King starts his speech by asking himself a question. If god had asked him the question "MLK, which age of human history would you like to live in ?" what would he have answered ? He answers that he would have wanted to witness the journey across the Red sea of the oppressed Hebrew people led by moses that were searching for the promised land, that he would have liked to see the Emancipation Proclamation signed by Lincoln in 1863, and that he would have wanted to live during the New deal era of Franklin Roosevelt, but he would not have chosen these periods of history. He would rather have chosen to live in the second half of the 20th century, and that would make happy. He then took a very apocalyptic tone which is linked to a sort of traditional black folk preaching, when he said the words "The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land; confusion all around". But he added that if he wanted to live in the mid 20th century, it was because "only when it is dark enough can you see the stars". It means that he wanted to live in troubled times, and the 50s and 6às were definitely troubled times for the black population in America, because it is only when times are troubled that it is possible to make a change, to make a difference, to make something happen that would mark history and which would make the world a better place to live in. Need to maintain unity: He then concentrates on the fact that the black population needs to maintain unity, to stay together in their fight for racial equality. To support this argument, he makes a very interesting comparison. He compares the black population to the slaves that were owned by the Egyptian Pharaoh. King made that analogy to emphasize the need to maintain unity, because when Pharaoh's segregated slave got together, something happened, and the Pharaoh could not keep them in slavery. Therefore by making such an historical analogy that showed that even centuries ago, at a time when humans were living in archaic civilization, such a strategy worked, he urges solidarity among the black sanitation workers and among the black population in general.
Non violent protest: Then he emphasizes what is at stake. He mentions that something happened the other day, which was actually 10 days before, he was in Memphis to demonstrate with the sanitation workers, but the demonstrations turned out to be violent, and the press only mentioned that there was some looting in Memphis, but they seldom talked about the reason of the demonstration and about the unfair treatment of the Memphis sanitation workers. Which justifies his claim that the movement ought not be violent. In this text, we have another good example of King's non violent methods of protest to change things "we don't need bricks and bottles. We don't need any Molotov cocktails". All they need to do according to King, is to oppose the unfair labor practices, and to demonstrate in the name of God, because blacks are humans beings, and human beings are God's children. And if the people in charge of the sanitation of Memphis do not comply with their demands, King calls for an economic withdrawal of the black population.
Economic withdrawal of the black population: The paragraph about economic withdrawal is very interesting in King's speech. This paragraph is a good example of how MLK stressed the need for economic withdrawal and the huge consequences that such a practice could have. King reminds us that individual Americans together, even financially poor black Americans, have a tremendous amount of consumer power, in fact, collectively they are richer than all the nations in the world with the exception of nine. This tremendous consumer power therefore should be used in the fight for economic justice, and the labor movement in Memphis is one of them . But he did not want to stop to the labor movement, in the speech. he actually encouraged poor people to use their collective buying power against the corporations that were treating them unjustly. He therefore urges people to not buy coca cola, nor sealtest milk and Wonder Bread, because these companies haven't been fair in their hiring policies.
In the next paragraph, he stresses the need for economic self-help, like Malcolm X did because for both leaders, the divisions of economic class were as important as--and were inseparable from--the issue of race Therefore he stresses the need to strengthen black institutions, especially black insurances, because that would put pressure where it really hurts.
Summary of King's life: The next paragraph is also very interesting, because MLK actually sums up his life's work. King recalled an earlier attempt on his life. In New York he was stabbed by a deranged woman, narrowly escaping death when the knife lodged inches from his aorta. He was told that if he had sneezed, he would have died. This prompted a white high school student to write to him saying that she was "so happy that you didn't sneeze." He then sums up his life's work, by telling the audience that he was so happy that he didn't sneeze back then. He then used that phrase over and over, as he did with the phrase I have a dream in his most famous speech, that is an oratory technic that he likes to use to make his point. So, if he hadn't sneezed, he would not have been around in 1960, when students that read his book started sitting in at lunch counters, a practice that actually ended restaurant and lunch-counter segregation in twenty-six southern cities, and in public parks, swimming pools, theaters, churches, libraries, and museums. Nor would he have been there in 1962, in Albany, to help demonstrators against restaurant segregation, or in 63 in the Birmingham protest, when he was jailed and had the opportunity to write his "Letter from Birmingham Jail," which argued that individuals had the moral right and responsibility to disobey unjust laws. This protest led to the enactment of the Civil rights Act. He also could not have made his famous I have a dream speech, and could not have organized the Selma march. And most important of all, he could have spoken for the sanitation workers in Memphis. By placing the struggle in Memphis in the company of his own greatest achievements (neglecting to mention his more recent, unsuccessful campaign in Chicago), King elevated the strike from a minor, local event to a very important event in the history of the United States, as were the achievements that he mentioned.
End of the speech (famous part, foreshadowing of his death): The conclusion of the speech is the most famous part of it, it has been played and replayed since King died in 1968, especially on martin Luther king day.
In this conclusion, he seems to say that he knew that he would probably be murdered for his efforts. He first starts by comparing himself to moses and he then foretold his own death prior to the blacks' entry into the Promised land. The analogy between the African American population and the Old testament Hebrews is interesting, it is another one of his use of biblical imagery, which he often uses in his speeches. So basically, King compared himself to Moses standing on the mountaintop looking over the Promised land. He knew that he would not cross over, but that his people would. So this conclusion is remembered because King foreshadowed what was about to happen to him on the very next day of the speech, when he was murdered. He basically says that his job is done, he has achieved the journey to the promised land, and now he can rest in
peace.
It is difficult to say that the African population has today reached the promised land, but they are certainly closer because of MLK's achievements. He is remembered as a hero.