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MLK



He was born January 15, 1929 and died April 4, 1968. In 1957, he was elected president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization formed to provide new leadership for the now burgeoning civil rights movement. It was like Christianity with operational techniques from Gandhi. In the eleven-year period between 1957 and 1968, King traveled over six million miles and spoke over twenty-five hundred times, appearing wherever there was injustice, protest, and action; and meanwhile he wrote five books as well as numerous articles. He planned the drives in Alabama for the registration of African Americans as voters; he directed the peaceful march on Washington, D.C., of 250,000 people where he delivered his speech, "l Have a Dream". He was arrested about twenty times and assaulted at least four times; he was awarded five honorary degrees; was named Man of the Year by //Time// magazine in 1963; and became not only the symbolic leader of American blacks but also a world figure.

On April 4, 1968, while standing on the balcony of his motel room in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was to lead a protest march in sympathy with striking garbage workers of that city, he was assassinated.