Martin Luther King a Dreamer

Martin Luther King

A DREAMER and HIS DREAM

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Biography

Martin Luther King, Jr. was born on January 15, 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia to Reverend Martin Luther King, Sr. And Alberta Williams (Brown, 2010). His siblings are Christine and the late Reverend Alfred Daniel Williams. He studied at the Yonge Street Elementary School in Atlanta, the David T. Howard Elementary School, the Atlanta University Laboratory School and the Booker T. Washington High School. Because of high scores at the college entrance examinations, he advanced to Morehouse College without first graduating from Booker T. Washington, skipping 9th to 12th grades. He was 15 when he enrolled at Morehouse College. He completed a B.A. degree in Sociology. Afterwards, he enrolled at the Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania and later at the University of Pennsylvania. He received the Pearl Plafker Award as the most outstanding student and the J. Lewis Crozer fellowship for graduate study in a university of his choosing. He finished a Bachelor of Divinity degree from Crozer Theology Seminary. In September 1951, he took up doctoral studies in Systematic Theology in Boston University. Later, he studied at Harvard University. He received honorary degrees from several colleges and universities in the U.S. And foreign countries (Brown).

In February 1948, he was ordained at the Ebenezer Baptist Church of Atlanta at only 13 years old (Brown, 2010). He became assistant pastor of Ebenezer. Afterwards, he accepted the invitation of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama to be its pastor from September 1954 to November 1959. He later resigned and went back to Atlanta to supervise the activities of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. He functioned as co-pastor with his father from 1960 till the time of his death in 1968. He was the symbol of the civil rights movement. He was president of the Montgomery Improvement Association, which implemented the successful Montgomery bus boycott from 1955 to 1956 at 381 days. His intense civil rights activities brought him behind bars 30 times. He founded and became president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference from 1957-1968. Martin Luther King, Jr. was also vice president of the national Sunday School and Baptist Teaching Union Congress of the National Baptist Convention; member of many national and local boards of directors of many institutions and agencies (Brown).

His organization, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, set forth non-violent tactics against racial discrimination (the Seattle News 2010). These were used and severely tested during a mass protest in Birmingham against fair hiring practices and the desegregation of department store facilities. His historic speech, "I Have a Dream," delivered in Washington, won him the Person of the Year Award for 1963 and the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize. He led a voter-registration campaign, which evolved into the Selma-to-Montgomery Freedom March. He launched rehabilitation and housing programs for the slum dwellers of Chicago. Later, he assumed the cause of the war in Vietnam. It was at this point that he turned his emphasis on poverty by guaranteeing family income, threatened to stay national boycotts, and creating non-violent "camp-ins" to disrupt entire cities. He inspired a massive march of the poor in Washington DC in order to put pressure on Congress to pay attention to the plight of the poor. But his grand design for them was snuffed out by an assassin's bullet on his neck on April 4, 1968 at the balcony of Lorraine Hotel. His assassination sparked nationwide events of violence. His greatness and memory are perpetuated by the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Non-Violent Social Change, set up by his widow, Coretta Scott King (the Seattle Times).

Personality Theory

The four groups of personalities are biological or trait theory, the psychoanalytic, the behavioral or social learning; and the humanistic theories (Kasschau, 1980; Boeree, 2006). The humanistic theory best applies to Martin Luther King, Jr. One stream of this theory is represented by Abraham Maslow, Carl Rodgers and George Kelly. Maslow presents a hierarchy of needs under the humanistic theory. Humanists like Maslow do not accept that people are pushed or pulled by mechanical forces, stimuli or reinforcements. Rather, they believe that human beings are driven by potentials. Human beings innately strive to go up in a ladder of capabilities. When reaching the top of the ladder, the person becomes fully functional, a healthy personality and a self-actualizing person (Kasschau, Boeree). Marlow's personality theory best fits Martin Luther King, Jr.

Hierarchy of Needs

Maslow sees a person's basic needs as equivalent to those of animals (Simons et al., 1987). They are instinctive. Human develop starts from a very weak disposition and proceeds to the next stage if the environment is right and conducive. If it is not, as it is in most cases, the person remains fixated in that stage and will not progress. The person does not feel the urge to proceed to the next higher level until the demands of the current level are fully satisfied. The five levels of basic needs he outlines are physiological, safety or security, love, affection and belongingness, esteem, and self-actualization. Above or beyond these five levels are higher ones, such as understanding, aesthetic appreciation and purely spiritual needs (Simons et al.).

Physiological or biological needs are for food, water and constant body temperature (Simons et al., 1987). They come first and are the strongest needs in the search for satisfaction. When these basic survival needs are satisfied and no longer control a person, the need for security and safety becomes his preoccupation. When the need is satisfied, he focuses on the next type of need and so on. Maslow suggests that a person instinctively seeks to overcome his feelings of loneliness and separateness. The person does this by giving and receiving love, affection and develops a sense of belonging. The need for esteem consists of that esteem for oneself and from others. He deeply needs a strong, stable and high level of self-respect and respect from others. When this is fulfilled, the person acquires self-confidence and feels that he is valuable. When frustrated, he becomes or feels inferior, weak and worthless. When all fundamental survival needs are fulfilled, that for self-actualization is activated. This is the need to be and to do, for which a person is born or created. A sense of restlessness happens and stays until the need is fulfilled. For example, a musician must make music, a writer must write his or her composition and a leader must lead. Maslow presents these needs in the form of a pyramid, where the lower and more basic needs are larger at the base, tapering upward as development proceeds to self-actualization. Maslow believes that individual self-actualization does not occur naturally because of the obstacles placed on it by society. One hindrance is education, which stunts rather than induces personal growth. Educators fail to view the student as an individual with potentials of growing into a self-actualized person (Simons et al.).

Application of the Theory

In his lifetime, Martin Luther King, Jr. successive development needs, according to Maslow's hierarchy, were filled and brought him to the level of self-actualization. He was not only very well educated but also received numerous and prestigious recognitions for his ministry and, most especially, for his leadership in the Civil Rights Movement. He was completely intellectually endowed from childhood and throughout adulthood. At the same time, he lived and grew up at a time when black people, like himself, were deprived of basic civil rights in society (Garden of Praise, 2010). As a boy, he experienced racial discrimination when his white neighbors stopped allowing him to play with their white children with whom he grew up. In one occasion at a shoe store, he and his father were asked to move back to the back of the store for fitting to make way for white customers. They had to leave without buying any shoes but the impression lasted in his mind. His teacher, Miss Lemon, taught him to be independent. She also told him that he could rebel when an injustice is done but find harmless and quiet ways to resist. She taught him and his classmates about black history and to feel pride for their heritage. She brought them to field trips with successful black businessmen and professional, thus exposing the young Martin Luther to these successful people. In another occasion, he and his teacher were in a bus, full of people. The driver asked them to stand and give their seats to two white people, as was the law. Martin recognized this as an injustice and kept it in mind (Garden of Praise).

At 15 years old, he decided that he could best serve others as a minister (Garden of Praise, 2010). He first became the assistant minister of the Ebenezer Baptist church to his father, then the church minister. He graduated from Morehouse College and proceeded to Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania. At this seminary, he studied the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi and how his passive resistance movement changed India. Gandhi incited the people to protest peacefully rather than resort to violence. He believed that this form of rebellion suited the case of the blacks in America. After his doctorate studies at Boston University and his marriage to Coretta Scott, he became minister of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. In Montgomery, blacks and whites were segregated and made to attend different schools and sit in separate sections in buses. There were times blacks were forced to stand even if there were vacant seats in the white section. When Rosa Parks refused to give in to this discrimination on December 1, 1955 and was arrested by the police, a revolt developed among blacks E.D. Nixon bailed Rosa out and initiated a boycott of the buses. The media circulated the boycott. Black leaders urged for courteous treatment and for seating on a first-come, first-served basis. They also demanded for black drivers to drive the buses. The boycott lasted for a year until the Supreme Court ruled bus segregation as unlawful in December 1956. Black students staged "sit-ins" in lunch counters to protest being refused food service in eating places. In 1957, Martin Luther King Jr. helped establish the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and was its first president. He was the symbol and key figure of the Civil Rights Movement (the Seattle Times, 2010). He led the Montgomery Improvement Association and its successful Montgomery bus boycott for a year. His lectures and speeches, marches and movements awakened the conscience of the people. These led to significant changes in American social life. His exemplary courage and selfless devotion provided strong direction to civil rights activities for 13 years. His charismatic style of leadership awed people everywhere (the Seattle Times).