Monday, January 15, 2007

"Lay my glory in the dust. Selah"

Psalm 7:5 - "Let the enemy pursue my soul and overtake it; And let him trample my life down to the ground and lay my glory in the dust. Selah."

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

January 15, 1929 - April 4, 1968

Michael Schwerner
November 6, 1939 - June 21, 1964

Andrew Goodman
November 23, 1943 - June 21, 1964

James Chaney
May 30, 1943- June 21, 1964

Three civil rights workers, Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney, were murdered by members of the Ku Klux Klan on June 21, 1964. These men worked to support the Mississippi Freedom Summer Project. Their deaths spurred the United States Congress to pass the 1965 Voting Rights Act. This law was intended to make it easier for minorities and poor people to vote. The Voting Rights Act was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson on August 6, 1965.

At the age of thirty-five, Martin Luther King, Jr., was the youngest man to have received the Nobel Peace Prize. When notified of his selection, he announced that he would turn over the prize money of $54,123 to the furtherance of the civil rights movement.

On the evening of April 4, 1968, while standing on the balcony of his motel room in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was to lead a protest march in sympathy with striking garbage workers of that city, he was murdered by an assassin.

No comments: