Martin Luther King's Famous Statement: “Injustice Anywhere Is A Threat To Justice Everywhere”.

Introduction

Martin Luther King, Jr. (born January 15, 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia) was an American Baptist minister and civil rights person. He is one of the most important representatives of the global public in the struggle against social oppression and racism (Ayton, Mel, p. 27). During the mid-1950s and mid 1960s, he was the best-known spokesman for the American Civil Rights Movement, in the United States (Civil Rights Movement). In this movement, he advocated the civil disobedience, as a means to the political practice of "Racial segregation" (apartheid) in the southern United States, and himself took part in relevant activities (Ayton, Mel, p. 27). Much used by Kings and effect of the Civil Rights Movement had become a mass movement, and succeeded ultimately the legal abolition of segregation and the enforcement of the unrestricted right to vote for the black population of the U.S. South. King's commitment to social justice led to his 1964 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded (Ayton, Mel, p. 27).

Discussion

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”.

This statement was made by Martin Luther King Jr. in response to the injustice, as well as, in response to the discrimination faced by the black people from the whites. He said this as he felt that discrimination is a form of injustice, and if it continues to the society, it is a threat to justice everywhere and to the progress of the society, as well (Hope, p. 45).

King became 1954 in Pastor of the Baptist Church Dexter Avenue in Montgomery, with 25 years of age. The southern United States at that time was characterized by violence exercised against blacks; a racism that would result in 1955 killed three black people Emmett Till, a 14 year activist Pastor George W. Lee and civil rights activist Lamar Smith (Hope, p. 45). On December 1, 1955, when Rosa Parks, a black woman, was arrested for violating segregation laws in the city of Montgomery to refuse to give way to a white man on a bus, Luther King launched a bus boycott in the help of Pastor Ralph Abernathy and Edgar Nixon, local director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (Hope, p. 45).

The black population supported and sustained the boycott and organized a car-pool system. Luther King was arrested during the campaign, which lasted 382 days and was extremely tense because of segregationist whites who resorted to terrorist methods to try to intimidate blacks: the home of Martin Luther King was firebombed on the morning of 30 January of 1956, as well as that of Ralph Abernathy and four churches (King, p. 90). The boycotts were subjected to constant physical abuse, but all the 40 000 blacks in the city continued their protest, sometimes even walking up to 30 km to reach their workplaces (King, p. 90). The boycott ended by a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States of November 13, 1956, which outlawed segregation in ...