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Martin Luther King Jr

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Martin Luther King Jr. an American Leader
Jessica McElrath
Santa Clara University School of Law, University of California, Berkeley

ABSTRACT:
There are a select few individuals who are able to still be recognized as "great" or "brilliant" because they and their accomplishments have forever changed society and the world. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was one of those individuals. Martin was raised in Atlanta Georgia, growing up in a world of segregation gave him the ambition to live by a heroic credo of nonviolence. People in his community looked up to his ability to be an outstanding leader, he was asked to be in charge of an organization named MIA (Montgomery Improvement Association). The success from MIA and King’s intelligence later lead him to arrange protest for jobs and freedom. Being the great leader that he was, he became very successful in achieving all of his major goals for his nation.

Martin Luther King attended Morehouse College in Atlanta Georgia. While studying at Morehouse he did some reading on a well-known leader named Gandhi, who king admired for being the first person to use the love ethic as a tool to effect social change. He spent years in South Africa working to end discrimination against Indians. Gandhi believed that passive resistance could challenge violence and win (Mc,Elrath, 2008). Nonviolent resistance is the practice of achieving goals through symbolic protests, civil disobedience, economic or political noncooperation, or other methods, without using violence. Martin believed this theory could also change America to ending discrimination and segregation. Gandhi refused to cooperate with evil, he was willing to accept punishment for his noncooperation, and he never reacted violence with violence. Dr. King did not adopt every method that Gandhi practiced, but despite these differences Martin would still later practice his overall

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