Martin Luther King, Jr.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was born in Atlanta on Sunset Adams Street in 1929. If he was still alive today, he would be 67 years old. He changed his name from Michael L. King. As a kid, he liked to fly kites, ride his bike and play baseball and football. He was also a paper boy. His Mom taught him to read before he went to school. He read books about black people who were heroes, like Frederick Douglass and George Washington Carver. The Jim Crow laws separated the blacks from the whites. His parents didn’t like segregation which kept the blacks away from the whites.

A white mom wouldn't let her son play with Martin Luther King, Jr. because he was a different color. When blacks came into the stores, white people wouldn't answer their questions. Another person said to get out of the bus seat and Martin said it was not fair. Martin was having a hard time liking whites.

He married Coretta Scott, who thought the same way that he did about the injustice of segregation, in 1953. Martin Luther King, Jr. was the President of the Montgomery Improvement Association. Like Gandhi, he believed that love, not violence, was the most powerful weapon for change. In 1960, some black people were arrested for not leaving a restaurant when the white people refused to serve them, king was a victim of this and was sent to jail without having committed a crime. John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy helped get Martin out of jail when he was arrested. These happenings triggered Martin’s determination in the civil rights movements. Martin told people not to obey unjust laws. Children marched in the Children's March in 1963. The police were too surprised to do anything. Police squirted people with hoses and the marchers were bitten by dogs. People watched on TV and started thinking about black people's rights. White people came to hear Martin Luther King, Jr.’s "I Have a Dream" speech in Washington, DC which turned out to be the one of the most important events in the history of America.

Martin Luther King Jr. is my hero because of his belief and his strong will. He is a hero because of his motto to not give up; for the dream he had that helped his people (blacks) and for his ability to use nonviolence to get what he wants. He was a great man who stood up for what he believed in. He brought the nations together in a bond that could never be broken.