Seattle times mlk timeline biography

Searching for the hidden Martin Luther King Jr.

I’d like to share with you some of my own questions about the novel I’m writing in hopes that it might shed some light on what I think is the process of writing creative historical fiction.

The first question to ask is, why a book about Martin Luther King Jr.? We have many libraries of documentation and historical material on this man. And by writing about someone so many of us remember, a writer takes on a tremendous risk because the subject’s friends and relatives are still alive and will certainly have something to say about any book concerning King.

He is someone who we think we know. He was the nation’s preacher and our most prominent moral philosopher, although he is only now being examined as an ethical philosopher. His photograph is on display in elementary and secondary schools all across America; and it’s difficult to visit a major American city and not find a street or a public building named after him. Most of our states honor the national holiday established in his name.

But despite the overwhelming presence of this man in our lives, he is strangely absent. Even though I grew up in the 1960s, and even though I remember the day he was killed in 1968, I realized a few years ago that I really didn’t know this

• Graduates from Morehouse College in Atlanta

• Graduates from Crozer Theological Seminary

• Supreme Court rules racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional
  (Brown v. Board of Education)

• Supreme Court orders desegregation of public schools
• Earns Ph.D. from Boston University
• Rosa Parks is arrested on Montgomery bus
• Leads protest involving Rosa Parks, and the Montgomery Bus Boycott begins

• Supreme Court rules bus segregation unconstitutional

• Becomes president of new Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)
• Featured on Time Magazine cover
• Delivers his first national address, “Give Us The Ballot”
• Congress passes Civil Rights Act of 1957

• Visits India to study nonviolent tactics, meets Gandhi’s family

• President Eisenhower signs Civil Rights Act of 1960 covering voter registration

• Negotiates for Freedom Riders
• Segregation in interstate travel formally banned
• Makes his only visit to Seattle, speaking at Mt. Zion and leading a march  with community on Denny Way, close to Seattle Central campus

• Writes his “Letter from Birmingham Jail”
• Meets with President John F. Kennedy
• Delivers “I Have a Dream” speech at Lincoln Memorial to 250,000 people at the
• March on Washington

• Named Time Magazine “Man of the Year”
• Civil Rights Act of 1964 signed into law
• Receives Nobel Peace Prize, youngest person ever

• 1965 Voting Rights Act signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson
• Marches from Selma to Montgomery and is arrested

• Leads demonstrations in Chicago
• Leads “March against Fear” from Memphis to Jackson

• Thurgood Marshall appointed first black on U.S. Supreme Court

• Organizes (with the SCLC) the “Poor People’s Campaign” on Washington
• Leads striking sanitation workers in a march in Memphis
• Delivers his last speech,“I’ve Been to the Mountaintop”
• A

Martin Luther King Jr.

The struggle to change conditions in America, and to win equal protection under the law for citizens of all races, formed the backdrop of Martin Luther King's short life.

Civil rights

It may be hard to believe that less than 50 years ago, America had separate drinking fountains for whites and blacks and "colored balconies" in movie theaters.

• January 15. Michael Luther King Jr., later renamed Martin, born to schoolteacher Alberta King and Baptist minister Michael Luther King. Boyhood in Sweet Auburn district.

• King graduates from Morehouse College in Atlanta, Ga., with a B.A.

• Graduates with a B.D. from Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pa.

• June 18. King marries Coretta Scott in Marion, Ala.. They will have four children: Yolanda Denise (b.1955), Martin Luther King III (b.1957), Dexter (b.1961), Bernice Albertine (b.1963).

• September. King moves to Montgomery, Ala., to preach at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church.

• Brown vs. Board of Education: U.S. Supreme Court bans segregation in public schools.

• After coursework at New England colleges, King finishes his Ph.D. in systematic theology.

• Bus boycott launched in Montgomery, Ala., after an African-American woman, Rosa Parks, is arrested December 1 for refusing to give up her seat to a white person.

• January 26. King is arrested for driving 30 mph in a 25 mph zone.
• January 30. King's house bombed.

• December 21. After more than a year of boycotting the buses and a legal fight, the Montgomery buses desegregate.

• January. Black ministers form what became known as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. King is named first president one month later.
• In this typical year of demonstrations, King traveled 780,000 miles and made 208 speeches.

• Garfield High School becomes first Seattle high school with more than 50 percent non

• = Key moments in MLK's life and beyond
• = Key moments in the Civil Rights Movement and beyond