he was an American pastor of the Baptist Church who developed crucial work in the United States at the forefront of the civil rights movement for African Americans and who also participated as an activist in numerous protests against the Vietnam War and poverty in general.
For this activity aimed at ending US segregation and racial discrimination through nonviolent means, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. in 1964. Four years later, at a time when his work had been specially oriented towards opposition to the war and the fight against poverty, he was assassinated in Memphis, as he prepared to attend an informal dinner of friends.
Martin Luther King, a civil rights activist from a very young age, organized and carried out various peaceful activities claiming the right to vote, non-discrimination and other basic civil rights for black people in the United States. Among his most remembered actions are the bus boycott in Montgomery, in 1955; his support for the foundation of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), in 1957 (of which he would be its first president); and the leadership of the March on Washington for Work and Freedom, in August 1963, at the end of which he would give his famous speech "I have a dream" ("I have a dream"), thanks to which he would extend throughout the country public awareness of the civil rights movement and would be consolidated as one of the greatest orators in American history.2 Most of the rights claimed by the movement would be legally approved with the enactment of the Law on Civil Rights. Civil Rights of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
The assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. is considered one of the assassinations of the 20th century. King is remembered as one of the greatest leaders and heroes in the history of the United States, and in the modern history of nonviolence. He was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Jimmy Carter in 1977 and the Gold Medal of the United States Congress in 2004. Since 1986, Martin Luther King Jr. Day is a holiday in the United States.
