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8 GROUNDCOVER NEWS MLK DAY JANUARY 13, 2023 The evolution and revolution of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. — from segregation to equality On January 16, 2023, the University of Michigan and the metropolitan community of Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti will celebrate the life and accomplishments of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The University of Michigan has one of the largest MLK birthday celebrations in the nation. U-M’s MLK events formally started in 1986 on the Ann Arbor campus. Today, the Dearborn and Flint campuses have become integral components of Dr. King’s birthday celebration. In addition to the January 16 events on U-M campuses, there are also significant events to celebrate MLK's birthday at Eastern Michigan University, Concordia College, Washtenaw Community College, and the public school systems of Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti, Lincoln Consolidated, Willow-Run, Dexter, Saline and Chelsea, as well as most of the major towns and townships in Washtenaw County. What is the Michigan connection to Dr. King’s birthday celebration? Four days after the assassination of Dr. King on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee, Michigan Congressman John Conyers introduced a bill in the House of Representatives to honor Dr. King with a federal holiday on his birthday. Conyers's bill was reintroduced in Congress year after year. The MLK Federal Holiday Bill was eventually approved in the Senate (78-22) and President Ronald Wilson Reagan signed it into law in 1983. Michigan was among the first states to celebrate MLK as a federal holiday. Some states, such as Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Arizona refused to honor King on the third Monday of January as prescribed by the 1983 legislation. But America’s civil rights advocates and millions of ordinary citizens persevered. By the year 2000, all 50 states in the United States had chosen to make the MLK federal holiday a state government holiday, too. Furthermore, University of Michigan Professor Emeritus of Architecture and Afro-American Studies, Dr. James Chaffers, was invited to serve on the National Design Council for Dr. King’s Memorial Statue, located near the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. In 2023, the University of Michigan’s theme for its annual symposium at Hill Auditorium in Ann Arbor is: “The (R) EVOLUTION OF MLK FROM SEGREGATION TO ELEVATION.” The Office of Academic Multicultural Initiatives and the School of Business are the primary planners of U-M’s MLK Symposium events. They have defined “EVOLUTION” as the gradual process WILL SHAKESPEARE Groundcover vendor No. 258 of development and/or diversification from earlier realities, especially from simple to more complexity. The concept of “REVOLUTION” is defined as a forcible, sudden or complete change in favor of a new system. I intend to present Dr. King’s evolution from his birth to his staggering impact as a civil rights leader, struggling against segregation in the southern and northern regions of America. Dr. King had a dream that he said, “was rooted in the American dream.” After the basic anti-discrimination civil right laws and the voting rights law were passed respectively in 1964 and 1965, Dr. King called for genuine equality in income opportunities, non-discriminatory fair/open housing policies, socio-economic advancement, healthcare access and equity, and educational access and equity. The bottom-line is that Dr. King called for an equitable and inclusive multiracial democracy which strives for a “more perfect union” through an implementation of the constitutional Bill of Rights and the key preambles of the July 4, 1776 Declaration of Independence —“We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, and are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, and among them are the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” After the Keynote Speech at the U-M Hill Auditorium by Dr. Aletta Maybank, Chief Equity Officer and Vice President of the American Medical Association, U-M Distinguished University Professor of History and Public Policy, Dr. Earl Lewis will moderate the conversations on equity, diversity and inclusion. Mr. Jalen Rose, former U-M and NBA basketball player and founder of the Jalen Rose Leadership academy, and Mr. Edward Buckles, director and documentary film producer will join the conversation at Hill Auditorium. Specific topics may include Black excellence, poverty solutions, campus climate, healthcare disparities, economic inequality, unequal Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. pictured with his wife Coretta Scott King, son Martin Luther King III and daughter Yolanda Denise King. They had two other children, Dexter Scott and Bernice Albertine King. Photo credit: Parade. educational access and resources, racial injustice, wealth gap, school achievement gap, career achievement gap, homelessness, mass incarceration and criminal justice reform. A Brief History of Dr. King’s Evolution Dr. King was born on January 15, 1929 in the segregated southern city of Atlanta. His baptismal name was Michael King, not Martin Luther King. His dad was a renowned pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church who traveled to Germany in 1934. History. com editors said that Dr. King’s dad was “inspired by the Protestant Reformation Leader, Martin Luther.” As a result, King Sr. changed his own name as well as that of his six-year old son. Historians say that Dr. King entered College at the age of 15. He attended a Divinity School in Pennsylvania known as Crozer Theological Seminary, following his graduation from Morehouse College at the age of 19. After he received his Divinity Degree from Crozer, he enrolled at Boston University. Dr. King majored in Systematic Theology and his doctorate was awarded in 1955 — one year after the Supreme Court unanimously ruled in favor of Linda Brown and overturned the Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court decision of 1896. That decision said that Separate but Equal was the law of the land. In May 1954, Chief Justice Earl Warren and other members of SCOTUS said that Plessy was wrongly decided. The Brown decision was momentous! After about six decades of separate and unequal law, African Americans looked forward to a more equal, tolerant and inclusive society. In 1955, Dr. King was appointed pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama after the previous pastor, Rev. Dr. Vernon John, left. That same year, Dr. King became one of the leaders of the Montgomery Improvement Association which worked with community leaders such as Ms. Rosa Parks to undertake the Bus Boycott of December, 1955.The Montgomery Bus Boycott lasted for more than one year before the local civil rights group achieved a durable victory. On May 17, 1957, King gave a speech before an audience estimated between 15,000 and 30,000. History.com noted that Dr. King’s speech “drew strong reviews and positioned him in the forefront of the civil rights leadership.” Dr. King was nearly assassinated in Harlem, New York City, on September 20, 1958. He was at a signing ceremony for his first book, titled “Strides Toward Freedom” at Blumstein’s department store. He was approached by a mentally deranged woman named Izolia Ware Curry. She asked Dr. King if he was really Martin Luther King. After he said yes, the woman proceeded to say that she had been looking for him for five years, and she stabbed Dr. King in thee chest with a 7-inch knife. King underwent an emergency surgery. The doctors told him that the blade came so close to his aorta that one sneeze could have punctured the aorta and killed him instantly. A little white girl from White Plains High School sent a very kind letter to Dr. King telling him that she read the newspaper story, and was happy to learn that he did not sneeze. That letter can be located at the Morehouse College’s central archives of Dr. King’s papers. Dr. King also talked about it in his April 3, 1968 “Mountaintop Speech.” The second major assassination attempt on King’s life took place in Memphis. King arrived in Memphis to see MLK next page 

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