Martin Luther King Jr. King advanced civil rights for people of color in the United States through the use of nonviolent resistance and nonviolent civil disobedience against Jim Crow laws and other forms of legalized discrimination.
A black church leader, King participated in and led marches for the right to vote , desegregation , labor rights , and other civil rights. King was one of the leaders of the March on Washington , where he delivered his " I Have a Dream " speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial , and helped organize two of the three Selma to Montgomery marches during the Selma voting rights movement.
There were several dramatic standoffs with segregationist authorities, who often responded violently. King was jailed several times. FBI agents investigated him for possible communist ties, spied on his personal life, and secretly recorded him. In , the FBI mailed King a threatening anonymous letter , which he interpreted as an attempt to make him commit suicide. In his final years, he expanded his focus to include opposition towards poverty and the Vietnam War. In , King was planning a national occupation of Washington, D.
James Earl Ray , a fugitive from the Missouri State Penitentiary , was convicted of the assassination, though the King family believes he was a scapegoat. After a wrongful death lawsuit ruling named unspecified "government agencies" among the co-conspirators, [ 4 ] a Department of Justice investigation found no evidence of a conspiracy.
King's death was followed by national mourning , as well as anger leading to riots in many U. Day was established as a holiday in cities and states throughout the United States beginning in ; the federal holiday was first observed in The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D. Michael King Jr.
