The Doctrine of Leadership
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Although Martin had a strong religious background, it was Morehouse College president Benjamin Mays that influenced his decision to become a minister and serve society. His continued skepticism, however, shaped his subsequent theological studies at Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, and at Boston University. Martin decided while completing his PhD requirements to return to the South and accept the pastorate of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama.

The Boycott
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In the apparently secular America, racial discrimination was prevalent in many sections of the society. The normal civil rights were also denied to them and African-Americans were forced to sit in the back of buses and whites occupied the front seats. And if need arose, if there were too many whites riding the bus, the blacks were forced to abandon the seats in favor of the whites. One black activist, Rosa Parks refused to vacate her seat for a white. The event sparked up many events, which marked the attainment of equality in the black civil rights movements.

On December 5, 1955, five days after Montgomery civil rights activist Rosa Parks refused to obey the city’s rules mandating segregation on buses, black residents launched a bus boycott and elected King as president of the newly formed Montgomery Improvement Association. In his first speech to the group as its president, King declared :

“We have no alternative but to protest. For many years we have shown an amazing patience. We have sometimes given our white brothers the feeling that we liked the way we were being treated. But we come here tonight to be saved from that patience that makes us patient with anything less than freedom and justice.”

These words introduced to the nation a fresh voice, a skillful rhetoric, an inspiring personality, and in time a dynamic new doctrine of civil struggle.

Stride towards Freedom
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As the boycott continued during 1956, King gained national prominence as a result of his exceptional oratorical skills and personal courage. His house was bombed and he was convicted along with other boycott leaders on charges of interfering with the bus company’s operations. Despite these attempts to suppress the movement, Montgomery buses were made available to all in December, 1956, after the United States Supreme Court declared Alabama’s segregation laws unconstitutional.

In 1957, seeking to build upon the success of the Montgomery boycott movement, King and other southern black ministers founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). As SCLC’s president, King emphasized the goal of black voting rights when he spoke at the Lincoln Memorial during the 1957 Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom. In 1958, he published his first book, Stride Toward Freedom : The Montgomery Story.

In February 1959, he toured India, enriched his understanding of Gandhian non-violent philosophy and strategies. He and his party were warmly received by India’s Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru; after a brief discussion with followers of Gandhi about the Gandhian concepts of satyagraha (“devotion to truth”), King became more convinced than ever that nonviolent resistance was the most potent weapon available to the oppressed in their struggle for freedom.

At the end of 1959, he resigned from Dexter and returned to Atlanta where the SCLC headquarters were located and where he could assist his father as pastor of Ebenezer.

Although increasingly portrayed as the pre-eminent black spokesperson, King did not mobilize mass protest activity during the first five years after the Montgomery boycott ended. While King moved cautiously, southern black college students took the initiative, launching a wave of sit-in protests during the winter and spring of 1960. King sympathized with the student movement and spoke at the founding meeting of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in April 1960, but he soon became the target of criticisms from SNCC activists determined to assert their independence. Even King’s decision in October, 1960, to join a student sit-in in Atlanta did not allay the tensions, although presidential candidate John F Kennedy’s sympathetic telephone call to King’s wife, Coretta Scott King, helped attract crucial black support for Kennedy’s successful campaign.

The 1961 ‘Freedom Rides’, which sought to integrate southern transportation facilities, demonstrated that neither King nor Kennedy could control the expanding protest movement spearheaded by students. Conflicts between King and younger militants were also evident when both SCLC and SNCC assisted the Albany (Georgia) Movement’s campaign of mass protests during December 1961 and the summer of 1962.

An Open Combat
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After achieving few of his objectives in Albany, King appreciated the need to organize a successful protest campaign free of conflicts with SNCC. During the spring of 1963, he and his staff guided mass demonstrations in Birmingham, Alabama, where local white police officials were known for their anti-black attitudes. Clashes between black demonstrators and police using police dogs and fire hoses on them generated newspaper headlines through the world. King’s campaign to end segregation at lunch counters and in hiring practices drew nationwide attention when police turned dogs and fire hoses on the demonstrators.

King was jailed with a large numbers of supporters, including hundreds of school children. His supporters did not, however, include all the black clergy of Birmingham, and he was strongly opposed by some of the white clergy who had issued a statement urging the blacks not to support the demonstrations. From the Birmingham jail, King wrote an eloquent letter, in which he spelled out his philosophy of nonviolence :

“You may well ask : “Why direct action ? Why sit-ins, marches and so forth ? Isn’t negotiation a better path ?” You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored…We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”

The Amnesty Lover
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The following year, King’s renown grew as he became Time magazine’s Man of the Year and, in December 1964, the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. Despite fame and accolades, however, King faced many challenges to his leadership. Malcolm X’s message of self-defense and black nationalism expressed the discontent and anger of northern, urban blacks more effectively than did King’s moderation. During the 1965 Selma to Montgomery march, King and his lieutenants were able to keep intra-movement conflicts sufficiently under control to bring about passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, but while participating in a 1966 march through Mississippi, King encountered strong criticism from ‘Black Power’ proponent Stokely Carmichael. Shortly afterward white counter-protesters in the Chicago area physically assaulted King during an unsuccessful effort to transfer non-violent protest techniques to the urban North. Despite these leadership conflicts, King remained committed to the use of non-violent techniques. Early in 1968, he initiated a Poor Peoples’ Campaign designed to confront economic problems that had not been addressed by early civil rights reforms.

Assassination
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King’s effectiveness in achieving his objectives was limited not merely by divisions among blacks, but also by the increasing resistance he encountered from national political leaders. FBI director J Edgar Hoover’s already extensive efforts to undermine King’s leadership were intensified during 1967 as urban racial violence escalated and King criticized American intervention in the Vietnam War. King had lost the support of many white liberals, and his relations with the Lyndon Johnson administration were at a low point.

His plans for a Poor People’s March to Washington were interrupted in the spring of 1968 by a trip to Memphis, Tennessee, in support of a strike by that city’s sanitation workers against low wages and intolerable conditions. On April 4, he was killed by a sniper’s bullet while standing on the balcony of the motel where he and his associates were staying. The President of the United States declared a day of mourning and flags flew at half-staff.

On March 10, 1969, the accused white assassin, James Earl Ray, pleaded guilty to the murder and was sentenced to 99 years in prison.

King’s immortal lines mark his invincible spirit :

“If any of you are around when I have to meet my day, I don’t want a long funeral. And if you get somebody to deliver the eulogy, tell them not to talk too long. And every now and then I wonder what I want them to say. Tell them not to mention that I have a Nobel Peace Prize – that isn’t important. Tell them not to mention that I have three or four hundred other awards – that’s not important. Tell them not to mention where I went to school. I’d like somebody to mention that day that Martin Luther King, Jr, tried to give his life serving others. I’d like for somebody to say that day that Martin Luther King, Jr, tried to love somebody. I want you to say that day that I tried to be right on the war question. I want you to be able to say that day that I did try to feed the hungry. And I want you to be able to say that day that I did try in my life to clothe those who were naked. I want you to say on that day that I did try in my life to visit those who were in prison. I want you to say that I tried to love and serve humanity. Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter. I won’t have any money to leave behind. I won’t have the fine and luxurious things of life to leave behind. But I just want to leave a committed life behind. And that’s all I want to say.”

President Ronald Reagan signed a legislation declaring the third Monday of January as the Martin Luther King Holiday to celebrate the birth, the life and the dream of Dr Martin Luther King Jr. In words of Coretta Scott King,

“We commemorate … the timeless values he taught us through his example – the values of courage, truth, justice, compassion, dignity, humility and service that so radiantly defined Dr King’s character and empowered his leadership. On this holiday, we commemorate the universal, unconditional love, forgiveness and nonviolence that empowered his revolutionary spirit… On this day we commemorate Dr King’s great dream of a vibrant, multiracial nation united in justice, peace and reconciliation.”

King remained a controversial symbol of the African-American civil rights struggle, revered by many for his martyrdom on behalf of nonviolence and condemned by others for his militancy and insurgent views.