On April 4, 1968, nearly 53 years ago, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. He was only 39 years old. Though his was a short life, King achieved a tremendous amount, such as winning a Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 at the age of 35, which made him the youngest at the time, and then donating the $54,123 prize to the Civil Rights Movement.
MLK spent his life encouraging nonviolent activism. One of his most famous orchestrations of activism was the March on Washington, a protest against racial discrimination and supporting an important pending civil rights legislation where King performed his most famous speech, “I Have A Dream…”.
It only took four days after King’s death for a congressman, John Conyers from Michigan, to urge Congress to create a holiday in honor of him, though he was not listened to. Conyers stayed persistent for 15 years, even calling upon the Congressional Black Congress (CBC) to assist him in presenting the legislation year after year.
Finally, during the early years of the 1980s, after the CBC got six million signatures supporting a federal holiday in honor of MLK on the 20th anniversary of the March on Washington protest and “I Have A Dream” speech, as well as the 15th anniversary of his death, the legislation went to the floor and was filibustered by Congressman Jesse Helms.
Helms went on to introduce the defamation of King by the FBI, to which many were appalled by, causing an overwhelming majority vote of 78-22, passing the legislation.
At one point, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover called King “the most notorious liar in the country.” The FBI believed King to be dangerous, affiliated with communism, and had started to surveil him in December of 1955 after his part in the Montgomery Bus Boycott. King was then subjected to an illegal project, COINTELLPRO, where he’d be wiretapped, monitored, bugged and harassed by the FBI, along with his wife, until his death. There were no results of communist influence, but alleged evidence of extramarital affairs.
Martin Luther King spent his life working towards the improvement of treatment towards people of color in America, and is, to this day, one of the most influential historical figures in the fight for racial equality. His sacrifices and the sacrifices of other people of color will not go unnoticed as we continue to fight for the respect of all people, regardless of skin color.
