European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - January 19, 1986, Darmstadt, Hesse Caretta King and children from left Matanda Bernice Albertine Dexter Scotland Martin Luther Iii in 1964. However. The Georgia legislature last year voted to give slate workers a Holiday to coincide with the King Celebration gov Jos Frank Harris cancelled Jefferson Darla Day to make room on the Calendar. Macon Savannah and Atlanta Ell decided to give their workers the Day off. But Many smaller communities refused to go along among them Claxton. Where the or Lyon declared Why. The people of Claxton would just As soon celebrate my birthday in his 1963 speech King said i have a dream thai one Day Clown in Alabama with irs vicious racists Wib its governor George Wallace having his lips dropping Wilh ins words of interposition and nullification one Day right there in Alabama. Jetlje Black boys and Black girls will join hands with Little White boys and Whito girls As Sisters and in 1982. George Wallace won a fourth term As Alabama s governor thanks in Large part to support a won from the Black Community alter repenting his past deeds. Race made Wallace a National figure in 1963 when he gave his segregation forever speech at his la Rel Gubern Irlam inauguration. That year he irked to keep thai Promise Wilh his stand in the schoolhouse door to prevent integration of the University of Alabama. In an interview reflecting on his career Wallace said i never said in unkind word against people because of their color. I did say i was Lor segregation in the Days i was for it. But it was not Lor any expediency but that is past and since ii is past and it s Good that it s past and gone we should look Forward and not last year Wallace appointed a committee to coordinate the stale s Celebration of the Federal Holiday honouring King who was killed by a sniper s Bullet on april 4. 1968. In Memphis. Tonn. Among the weaken for the King festivities in Alabama will be . District judge . Clemon. The stale s first Black Federal Edge. King s final words to the 963 marchers. From every Mountainside let Freedom ring. And when this happens and when we allow Freedom to ring when we let it ring from every Village and every Hamlet. Irom every state and every City we will be Able to Speed up that Day when All god s children Black men and while men jews and gentiles protestants and catholics will be Able to join hands end sing the words of the old negro spiritual " free at last. Free at last. Thank god almighty we Are free at last " Inman called troublemaker notorious liar in the country years later Ronald Reagan walked at the Nolion that he deserved Federal. Sainthood. But when Reagen finally signed the Holiday legislation Wilh King s widow Al his Side in t983, the president declared that King had stirred our nation to the very Depths of its ii american history grows Rorn two centuries to / 20," said Reagan his words that Day will never be when King delivered that speech 101 years after lha emancipation proclamation nine years after the supreme court declared dual school systems unconstitutional he regarded his work barely begun. It was still a time when restaurants and hotels could refuse to serve Black patrons when properly owners refused to sell them Homes when state governments connived to deny them ballots and when police used dogs and water hoses and cattle prods to repress the peaceful protests King organized against All that. He Wes. Then Only 34 years old and would live just Iva More years before a White drifter shot him Down in Memphis Tenn. But he did live to see great Progress since that Day in the Capitol including the passage of two landmark Laws the civil rights act of1964, the same year he won the Nobel peace prize. And the voting rights act of 1965. Of Boms a irony in the Laos that King an apostle of by Lee Byrd associated press nonviolence died by the Bullet. The truth is that he courted confrontations with those who fostered rage and ignorance. The streets were his Baill ground and he marched in hundreds of them sometimes bloodied. He often wound up in jail Lor the Opportunity to turn the other Cheek while standing toe to toe Wilh someone like sheriff Jim Clark of Selma Ala our he once said is not a brag it is not a boast it is not a thing we whistle up in the dark hours of the night when we know nol from which direction a blow May Tail or an Assassin s Bullet May King was born on Jan. 15, 1929, in a Middle class 12-room Atlanta Home. He was named Michael Luther until he was 6. When his lather a preacher prophetically renamed himself and his son alter the Christian protester of the 16th Century. Martin graduated irom High school at 15, attended Atlanta s Morehouse College was one of six Blacks in a student body of 100 at Crozer theological Seminary in Chester. A and won e Fellowship for his doctoral study at Boston University. He wrote his dissertation on a comparison of the conceptions of god in the thinking of Paul to illicit and Henry Nelson woman. He read the works of Hegel Tillich Reinhold Niebuhr Henry David Thoreau and Mohandas k. Gandhi. But in was a tired Black lady Rosa Parks who truly set him on the path that made him the pre eminent Leader of the civil rights revolution. On dec. 1, 1955. Parks a seamstress got on a bus and in violation of the social norms of Montgomery refused to take a Back seat when a White Man demanded the one she was in. King then the pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church organized a 382-Day Boycott of the City s buses by Blacks. When the Boycott ended after 1he supreme court declared bus segregation unconstitutional. King was known and notorious to Many throughout the South. The Montgomery experience led him to marches by the hundreds and Jailhouse by the score. Al lunch counters healers department stores colleges and libraries he led sit in Piol ests against the South s thoroughly accepted racial segregation. In 1957 alone he travelled 780.000 Miles and made sob speeches. His tactics bold and unsettling when he first used them Only partly explained his Success. His greatest Gilt the uncanny Quality thai roused Blacks to confront police dogs Billy clubs and tear Gas to Echo the movement s fight song. We shall overcome was simply his own personal magnetism. Rarely did the austere or. King unveil his wit. But it was there. In the 1964 Selma to Montgomery March someone in the rear called to King let s sing Thwe is no Balm in Gilead. Let s do King answered. And let s Pray thai there is no bomb in in 1965, King turned against the Vietnam War for draining resources irom the poor he was planning a March on Washington in 196b, when on april 4, he was shot and killed As he stood on the Balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. King is buried in Atlanta. His Tombstone bears his words free Al last freest last thank god almighty i m free Al last.". 1886 the stars and stripes Page 15
