{"id":841,"date":"2022-01-31T15:15:29","date_gmt":"2022-01-31T15:15:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lenapetechtimes.com\/?p=841"},"modified":"2022-01-31T15:15:33","modified_gmt":"2022-01-31T15:15:33","slug":"martin-luther-king-jr-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lenapetechtimes.com\/?p=841","title":{"rendered":"Martin Luther King Jr. Day\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>By: Jasmine Wolfe&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"259\" height=\"194\" src=\"https:\/\/lenapetechtimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/image-6.jpeg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-843\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Martin Luther&nbsp;King&nbsp;Jr.&nbsp;attended Booker T. Washington High School, where he was said to be a precocious student. He skipped both the ninth and eleventh grade, and entered Morehouse College in Atlanta at age 15, in 1944. In 1948, King earned a sociology degree from Morehouse College and attended the liberal Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania. He thrived in all his studies, and was valedictorian of his class in 1951, and&nbsp;was&nbsp;elected student body president. He also earned a fellowship for graduate study. In 1954, while still working on his dissertation, King became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church of Montgomery, Alabama. He completed his Ph.D. and earned his degree in 1955. King was only 25 years old&nbsp;when he achieved this success. &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Martin Luther King Jr.&nbsp;was a&nbsp;Baptist minister&nbsp;and civil-rights activist who had&nbsp;a&nbsp;seismic impact on&nbsp;race relations in the United States, beginning in the mid-1950s.&nbsp;Through his activism and inspirational speeches, he played a pivotal role in ending the&nbsp;legal segregation of African American citizens in the United States,&nbsp;as well as the creation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. King won&nbsp;the Nobel&nbsp;Peace Prize&nbsp;in 1964, among several other honors. He continues to be remembered as one of the most influential and inspirational African American leaders in history.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"740\" src=\"https:\/\/lenapetechtimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/image-8-1024x740.jpeg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-844\" srcset=\"https:\/\/lenapetechtimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/image-8-1024x740.jpeg 1024w, https:\/\/lenapetechtimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/image-8-300x217.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/lenapetechtimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/image-8-768x555.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/lenapetechtimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/image-8-1536x1111.jpeg 1536w, https:\/\/lenapetechtimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/image-8.jpeg 1600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThe March on Washington\u201d&nbsp;culminated in King\u2019s most famous address, known as the \u201cI&nbsp;Have a Dream\u201d speech, a spirited call for&nbsp;peace and equality that many consider a masterpiece of rhetoric. Standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, a monument to the president who a century earlier had&nbsp;brought down the institution of slavery in the United States. He shared his vision of a future in which \u201cthis nation will rise up and live out the true&nbsp;meaning of its creed: \u2018We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are&nbsp;created equal.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sadly, on&nbsp;the evening of April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King was assassinated. He was fatally shot while standing on the balcony of a motel in Memphis, where King had&nbsp;traveled to support a sanitation workers\u2019 strike. In the wake of his death, a wave of riots swept major cities across the country, while President Johnson declared a&nbsp;national day of mourning.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>James Earl Ray, an escaped convict and known racist, pleaded guilty to the&nbsp;murder,&nbsp;and was sentenced to 99 years in prison.&nbsp;He later recanted his confession and gained some unlikely advocates, including members of the King Family, before his death in 1998. After years of campaigning by activists, members of Congress&nbsp;and Coretta Scott King, among others, President Ronald Reagan&nbsp;signed&nbsp;a bill&nbsp;in 1983&nbsp;creating a U.S.&nbsp;Federal holiday in honor of King.&nbsp;Observed on the third Monday of January, Martin Luther King Day was first celebrated in 1986.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Two teachers were asked,&nbsp;If MLK was alive today, what would he think about our progress with equality?&nbsp;<strong>Mr. Veronesi<\/strong>&nbsp;said&nbsp;\u201cI&nbsp;think MLK would be happy about all the progress that has been made in civil rights.&nbsp;He would certainly find ways in which equality could be further increased. But I also feel he would be disappointed with the current state of our discourse, which focuses on division and strife. MLK was a uniter. He pursued&nbsp;change through love and compassion, not venom and&nbsp;vitriol. Our politicians, media, and other leaders could learn much from him.\u201d&nbsp;<strong>Mr.&nbsp;Haponski<\/strong>&nbsp;said,&nbsp;\u201cI think he would be satisfied with the progress that has been made, but I think that he would still be advocating and fighting for equality of all persons.\u201d&nbsp;When this day comes up students should be&nbsp;reminded&nbsp;of a dark past, and the&nbsp;need&nbsp;for equality and human rights for all people.&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By: Jasmine Wolfe&nbsp; Martin Luther&nbsp;King&nbsp;Jr.&nbsp;attended Booker T. Washington High School, where he was said to&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":1082,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-841","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lenapetechtimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lenapetechtimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lenapetechtimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lenapetechtimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lenapetechtimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=841"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lenapetechtimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/841\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1083,"href":"https:\/\/lenapetechtimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/841\/revisions\/1083"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lenapetechtimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lenapetechtimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lenapetechtimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lenapetechtimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}