Sunday 24 February 2013

Martin Luther King, Jr. - The Activist and African - American Leader





Sketch Details:

Title:                   Martin Luther King, Jr. -  The Activist And African - American Leader 

Created By:      Divyesh Lappawala

Medium:            Pencil (Black), 6H,4B,4B,Charcoal


Descriptions:

Martin Luther King was born in Atlanta, Georgia on 15th January, 1929. Both his father and grandfather were Baptist preachers who had been actively involved in the civil rights movement.

King graduated from Morehouse College in 1948. After considering careers in medicine and law, he entered the ministry. While studying at Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania, King heard a lecture on Mahatma Gandhi and the nonviolent civil disobedience campaign that he used successfully against British rule in India.
Over the next few months King read several books on the ideas of Gandhi, and eventually became convinced that the same methods could be employed by blacks to obtain civil rights in America. He was particularly struck by Gandhi's words: "Through our pain we will make them see their injustice". King was also influenced by Henry David Thoreau and his theories on how to use nonviolent resistance to achieve social change.

After his marriage to Coretta Scott, King became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church inMontgomery, Alabama. In Montgomery, like most towns in the Deep South, buses were segregated. On 1st December, 1955, Rosa Parks, a middle-aged tailor's assistant, who was tired after a hard day's work, refused to give up her seat to a white man.

After the arrest of Rosa Parks, King and his friends, Ralph David Abernathy, Edgar Nixon, and Bayard Rustinhelped organize protests against bus segregation. It was decided that black people in Montgomery would refuse to use the buses until passengers were completely integrated. King was arrested and his house was fire-bombed. Others involved in the Montgomery Bus Boycott also suffered from harassment and intimidation, but the protest continued.

For thirteen months the 17,000 black people in Montgomery walked to work or obtained lifts from the small car-owning black population of the city. Eventually, the loss of revenue and a decision by the Supreme Court forced the Montgomery Bus Company to accept integration. and the boycott came to an end on 20th December, 1956. (Reference)


Martin Luther King Jr Quotes:


The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character - that is the goal of true education.


Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.

Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase.

I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.


Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.


The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.


We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. 

When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.


An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.


He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.

Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. 

A man can't ride you unless your back is bent.


Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.

Take the first step in faith. You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.

Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.

A man who won't die for something is not fit to live.

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.

Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable... Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated  individuals.

A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.

History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.

We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.

To be a Christian without prayer is no more possible than to be alive without breathing.

I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

A man can't ride your back unless it's bent.

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

Nonviolence means avoiding not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him.

When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative.

We must concentrate not merely on the negative expulsion of war but the postive affirmation of peace.

We who in engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive.

Seeing is not always believing.

Quote Reference:  brainyqoute