On April 4, 1968, a single bullet fired in Memphis, Tennessee, took the world's most outspoken civil rights champion. An assassin had fatally shot Martin Luther King Jr. The civil rights leader had carried the banner for the causes of social justice—organizing protests, leading marches, and making powerful speeches exposing the horrors of segregation, poverty, and racism. Today marks the 50th anniversary of his death. Here are five civil rights issues King addressed during his lifetime:
SEGREGATION
Four days after Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, city bus, King helped launch a boycott. “Let us go out to stick together and stay with this thing until the end,” he said in 1955.
Years later, King stood behind President Lyndon Johnson at the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which banned segregation in public places and employment discrimination on the basis of race or national origin.
VOTING
King’s participation in the march from Selma, Alabama, to the state capital of Montgomery elevated awareness about the troubles blacks faced in registering to vote. President Johnson addressed Congress after white mobs and police attacked marchers. He successfully urged lawmakers to pass the Voting Rights Act.
POVERTY
King was assassinated in Memphis while coming to the aid of striking sanitation workers. He was in the midst of organizing the Poor People’s March on Washington, a campaign that sought to highlight the economic and human rights of citizens of all ethnic backgrounds struggling with poverty.
HOUSING
During King’s lifetime, landlords could refuse to rent to blacks and Latinos. People of color could also be prevented from buying homes in certain neighborhoods. After King’s assassination, President Johnson asked Congress to pass the Fair Housing Act. It banned refusing to rent or sell housing based on race, religion, sex, disability, familial status, or national origin.
WAR
“I oppose the war in Vietnam because I love America,” King said in 1967. “I speak out against this war, not in anger, but with anxiety and sorrow in my heart, and, above all, with a passionate desire to see our beloved country stand as the moral example of the world.”
“I still have a dream, a dream deeply rooted in the American dream—one day this nation will rise up and live up to its creed, ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.’ I have a dream.” –speech delivered during the 1963 march on Washington, D.C.)
(AP Photo: In this April 3, 1968 photo, Martin Luther King Jr., center, and his aides walk at the Lorraine Motel, in Memphis, Tennessee. The next day an assassin shot him just outside his second-floor room.)
