Martin Luther King Jr. | Be Somebody | YouTube Rabbithole
Hello @YouTheReader,
Tomorrow being a federal holiday in the United States for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I figured this Stumblin’ Along history should be a bit about the man…
Born on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia, Martin Luther King Jr.’s name at birth was Michael. His father changed Michael’s name to Martin Luther King Jr. when his son was only 5, after King Sr. went to Germany and was inspired by the Protestant Reform leader Martin Luther. Both of his parents were Baptist preachers. MLK grew up middle-class on Auburn Avenue, also known as “Sweet Auburn” for being home to some of the country’s most successful Black businesses at this time. One such business was Atlanta Life Insurance of which Alonzo Herndon, a former slave, founded the first black-owned life insurance company. On this avenue, other financial businesses such as Citizen’s Trust Bank, the first African-American-owned bank was founded in 1919.
Martin Luther King Jr. was a very bright student. At 15 years old, he skipped high school grades 9 through 12 and went right to Morehouse College. During WWII, a special wartime program was created to boost the enrollment of promising students such as MLK. Before he went to Morehouse College, however, he spent one summer on a tobacco farm up north in Connecticut. It was one of the first times he ever experienced race relations outside of the South. He wrote a letter to his parents, “Blacks and whites go [to] the same church. I never [thought] that a person of my race could eat anywhere.” In 1948, he graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Sociology. MLK would credit the president of Morehouse College, Dr. Benjamin E. Mays, as one of the most inspirational people of his life. It was Mays who convinced MLK to become a preacher as the then college student was unsure if he wanted to go down the path of his parents.
After graduating from Morehouse College, Martin Luther King Jr. got his doctorate at Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania. Crozer is where Dr. MLK (sorry it’s a long name to keep spelling out) learned the ways of Mohandas Gandhi and his philosophy of nonviolent protest. Even though it was the 1950s and Crozer was nearly exclusively a student body of white students, Dr. MLK was elected president. After Crozer, he would meet his wife Coretta in Boston and move back down to the South in 1953, becoming a pastor at a Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. Around this time, Dr. MLK started becoming a more active civil rights advocate. On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus to a white passenger, which got her arrested. From this unjust arrest, Civil Rights Activists started a boycott called the Montgomery Improvement Association and decided that King was the right man to lead the cause. Within a week of Rosa Parks’ arrest, Dr. MLK would be arrested for the first time on December 5, 1955. Dr. MLK would get arrested another 28 times, at least that is the recorded figure of the number of times he spent in jail. Quite a number of these were bogus arrests, such as one time in 1956 when he committed the cardinal sin of driving 30 mph in a 25 mph zone.
The Montgomery Bus Boycott proved to be successful as 40,000 Black bus riders boycotted the transit system. However, this did come with a price as Dr. MLK Jr’s home would be dynamited and his family’s safety was at extreme risk. Dr. MLK and the Montgomery Improvement Association created a list of demands that would need to be met before they uplifted the boycott such as demanding courtesy, the hiring of Black drivers, and a first-come, first-seated policy, with whites entering and filling seats from the front and African Americans from the rear. It wasn’t until the NAACP got involved that the city of Montgomery was sued to have busing segregation laws invalidated. These 40k Bus riders still had places to go and people to see, so to sustain the boycott, they started carpooling, African-American taxi drivers would only charge 10 cents (the same as the bus), and more people started simply just walking from place to place. On June 5, 1956, a Montgomery federal court ruled that any law requiring racially segregated seating on buses violated the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. That amendment, adopted in 1868 following the U.S. Civil War, guarantees all citizens—regardless of race—equal rights and equal protection under state and federal laws. The city of Montgomery would appeal this decision which brought it to the Supreme Court where on December 20, 1956, the US Supreme Court sided with the lower court. The very next day, Montgomery’s buses were integrated. (Source: History)
Following this major victory in Civil Rights, Dr. MLK would form the Southern Christian Leadership Conference as a way to keep the momentum going. Through the SCLC, Dr. MLK would gain a more prominent national platform to speak on behalf of civil rights. In 1960, Dr. MLK moved back to Atlanta to become a co-pastor with his father at Ebenezer Baptist Church. That October he would get arrested along with 33 others protesting the segregation of a lunch counter at an Atlanta department store. While the charges would be dropped, Dr. MLK had somehow violated his probation on minor traffic offenses like his speed limit offense from 1956 and thus would not get released from jail until the Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kennedy intervened. This event happened 8 days before Kennedy’s 1960 election win and certainly had a huge impact on his winning.
Despite having the President of the United States on his side, Dr. MLK would still face more jail time for his peaceful civic rights protests. In the spring of 1963, he continued his campaign to end the segregation at lunch counters. He was once again thrown in jail, this time in Birmingham where he penned plenty of letters. Later that summer of 1963, after getting out of his Birmingham jail cell, Dr. MLK would join other civil rights leaders on the historic March on Washington. On August 28, 1963, Dr. MLK gave his “I Have A Dream” speech to over 200,000 of his fellow marchers in the shadows of the Lincoln Memorial with one of the most quotable lines being, “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed — we hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.” Dr. MLK would win the Nobel Peace Prize the following year in 1964. Despite the endorsement, Dr. MLK continued his work well past the accolades. His next goal was to fix the federal voting rights laws that disenfranchised African Americans in the South. This led to his march on Selma which would later bring about the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Sadly, Doctor Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968. Easily one of the most important figures in 20th-century American history, Dr. MLK in 1983 became the 3rd American to ever have a federal holiday observed for their birthday, joining George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. We celebrate Dr. MLK Jr. Day on the 3rd Monday of January every year and it just so happens that in ‘24, it is his actual birthday - he’d be 95.
Lastly, I feel like when I read about legends such as Dr. MLK in textbooks or on the internet, it can almost be easy to forget that he was a living breathing human just like the rest of us. Dr. MLK loved Star Trek, it was the only TV show he would allow his children to stay up late at night to watch. My guess is that he was a fan because it was pretty forward-thinking for its time. As a kid, he grew up playing baseball, football, and basketball, but his favorite sport was pool. He picked it up and played a ton in one of the basements of Crozer College, playing regularly until the wee hours of the night. Even after college, Dr. MLK Jr. would continue to play pool rooms in cities across the country as a means to talk to people. Yet another reason why sports are the best.
Today’s tune I went with Be Somebody by 3 Doors Down. For last year’s MLK Day, I wrote a piece about how Dr. MLK Jr. would be proud of the likes of Kendrick Lamar, Richard Sherman, and Sauce Gardner, for not only what they do in their respective fields, but the important work they do off of them. My grandma and I have a cool 1-text in the morning back and forth that we have been doing for a while. She is my harshest critic (not at all), but 99% of the time she is my only critic.
Anyway, last year my grandpa, who hates phones, and I don’t blame him one bit, texted me that he was very proud of me for the MLK Day piece. Later on a few weeks afterward my grandma texted me that he was listening to Be Somebody by 3 Doors Down and mentioned the song reminded him of me. She explicitly said, “Don’t feel like you need to use the song,” but when you hear these types of things from two of your biggest role models of course I tried to find the right to have this song in the background.
While this song may not have too much to do with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., I promise tomorrow to follow the same formula as last year, with a couple of adds and of course a mock draft.
The setting of the song is a mother waiting up late worrying about her son…Couldn’t be me!
I do specifically remember having a phone conversation with my mom right around the first weekends of #GuinnessChallengeSeason. It was like 10 AM on a Sunday while I was preparing to rip a pint from all the pubs on Stone Street. I could tell from her voice she was a bit worried. In fairness to her, I think any mother would be concerned to have a pretty much 30-year-old son with a new goal of drinking a gazillion Guinness pints from every pub in New York City…and beyond!
Most times when you hear about how “so and so” is trying to “be somebody” it can come with a negative connotation. Sorta like “Who do they think they are?” In this song, the narrator, or son, is trying to explain they are just trying to make something of themselves while also staying true to themself.
Ahh Ma! 🙄 Go worry about my nephew… I’m just having a bit of fun, you know I’ll be fine.
Honestly, I never know if I write this enough or too often, but getting to do this is awesome and something I don’t take for granted. I’d been writing a bit about football for friends for years before this. A lot of the music I have on in the background, I’ve heard plenty of times with friends or family. I’ve had a plentiful amount of pints of Guinness with friends, they’re the ones I learned about the Guinness Challenge with. Also, I’ve always been a history nerd so having a real reason to learn more about historical events, places, or important figures such as Martin Luther King Jr. is a joy to share with you.
Nice tune, still chokes me up a bit!
YouTube Rabbithole
The Story of Martin Luther King Jr. by Kid President