Jan. 15-21, 2015, Current Events Lesson Plan
Current Event: Nation Celebrates Martin Luther King, Jr., Day
On January 19, the United States celebrated the birthday and legacy of famed civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. King was the main leader of the civil rights movement in the United States during the 1950′s and 1960′s. In 1983, Congress established the third Monday in January as a federal holiday in King’s honor. First celebrated on Jan. 20, 1986, Martin Luther King, Jr., Day is now observed by the federal government and by all the states. In 1994, the U.S. Congress designated the holiday as a national day of service–a “day on, not a day off.” Many volunteers work with nonprofit and community groups, faith-based organizations, and schools and businesses to promote King’s dream of a Beloved Community, a society of justice, peace and harmony achieved through nonviolence.
Objective:
Martin Luther King, Jr., (1929-1968) was an African American Baptist minister and the main leader of the civil rights movement in the United States during the 1950′s and 1960′s. King was born on Jan. 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia. At the age of 15, he entered Morehouse College in Atlanta. King was ordained just before he graduated from Morehouse in 1948. In 1954, King became the pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. King’s civil rights activities began when he helped lead the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955. In 1957, King and other ministers founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to expand the nonviolent struggle against racism and discrimination. In 1960, King moved from Montgomery to Atlanta to devote more effort to SCLC’s work. Early in 1963, King and his SCLC associates launched massive demonstrations to protest racial discrimination in Birmingham, Alabama, one of the South’s most segregated cities. Later that year, King gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. King won the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize for leading nonviolent civil rights demonstrations. In 1965, King and a crowd that swelled to about 25,000 marched from Selma, Alabama, to Montgomery, the state capital. At the capital, King demanded that African Americans be given the right to vote without unjust restrictions. Despite King’s stress on nonviolence, he often became the target of violence. On April 4, 1968, King was shot and killed. The Behind the Headlines news story and related World Book articles explore Martin Luther King, Jr., and other civil rights leaders.
Words to know:
- Civil rights
- Civil rights movement
- Coretta Scott King
- I Have a Dream
- Lincoln Memorial
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
- Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial
- Montgomery bus boycott
- Selma marches
- Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)
Discussion Topics:
1. Ask your students to name other civil rights leaders. (Students might say Viola Desmond [Canada]; Mohandas Gandhi [India]; Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu [South Africa]; Ralph Abernathy, Julian Bond, Medgar Evers, Jesse Jackson, and Rosa Parks [United States].)
2. Martin Luther King, Jr., was born in 1929. Ask your students to name some people who were living when King was born. (Students might say Winston Churchill, Marie Curie, Walt Disney, Amelia Earhart, Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Mohandas Gandhi, Ernest Hemingway, Adolf Hitler, Helen Keller, Nelson Mandela, Jesse Owens, Rosa Parks, Eleanor Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Babe Ruth, Joseph Stalin, Mother Teresa.)
3. In 2011, the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial in Washington, D.C., opened. Most memorials and monuments in Washington, D.C., honor political or military figures. What other American “private citizen” do you think deserves a memorial or monument in D.C.? (If you live outside the United States, what person deserves to have a memorial or monument in your country’s capital city?)
4. During his “I Have a Dream” speech, King said that he had a vision of a United States that was not divided along racial lines. Ask your students to debate: “King’s dream that people would be judged on their character and not their skin color has been realized.”
5. Ask your students to use World Book’s Timelines feature to view or add to the Martin Luther King, Jr., timeline. (Students may wish to use World Book’s “Martin Luther King, Jr.” article for help.)