What Is Martin Luther King Jr's Legacy

With Martin Luther King Jr.’s voice, the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act was signed by President Lyndon Johnson and in 1964 King earned the Nobel Peace Prize. Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy was nonviolent protests, fighting prejudice, pursuing social justice, and service to others. He wanted to end segregation and legal inequality and aimed for civil rights and voting rights. Martin Luther King Jr. was born in a time of the Jim Crow laws, making segregation and discrimination and normality in everyday life. When it became time for King to choose a career, he chose to follow his father’s footsteps and become a minister, seeing religion as a way of social change. After graduating with his doctorate, he was a pastor at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. While in Montgomery, he helped organize the Montgomery Bus Boycott, lasting 381 days, starting when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus on December 5, 1955. In 1956, the Supreme Court overruled Alabama’s bus segregation laws. In 1957, King established the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, educating youth and adults of personal responsibility, leadership, community service, and promoting nonviolent protests for civil rights. …show more content…
On the last day of King’s trip, he made a radio address and stated that “since being in India, [he is] more convinced than ever before that the method of nonviolent resistance is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for justice and human dignity. In a real sense, Mahatma Gandhi embodied in his life certain universal principles that are inherent in the moral structure of the universe, and these principles are as inescapable as the law of