Creative People Who Changed The World

Over the course of history we have had many creative people. So many in truth that I could be writing until the end of time, but today I will focus on one. We have had people like Socrates who laid the foundations for western civilization to Mark Twain who is today part of the posthumous literary elite. As I said earlier today I will focus on one man and that is Martin Luther King.

King was born on the 15^th of January 1929 in Atlanta. Both his father and grandfather were ministers in an African-American Baptist church. He attended Morehouse college in Atlanta, Crozer Theological Seminary in Penssylvania and Boston University. It was at these colleges that he first experienced segregation and naturally it upset him. He married his wife Coretta Scott King at 24 and then moved to Montgomery, Alabama where he became the local Baptist minister. He was a respected man, a known public speaker and active in the local community.

King’s journey to becoming the man we know today began in Montgomery where a local seamstress named Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a segregated bus and was subsequently arrested for her “crime”. This led to the bus boycotts which lasted nearly a year and was sustained for that time by a volunteer car service and fundraising, all organised by King. It was eventually taken to the supreme-court where segregation on buses was made unconstitutional.

After his success with the boycott, King and other ministers founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), which proved to be a rendezvous for the civil rights movement. There were later arguments about what approach to take, with groups like the Black Panthers getting frustrated and violent, but King always maintained that peaceful means were the best way to go.

Kings finest hour undoubtedly came in 1963 when he marched on Washington D.C along with 250,000 followers and made his legendary “I have a dream” speech. My favourite part is “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character”. This summed up the whole civil rights movement for me. People should not every be judged by colour but by the contribution to society. It’s funny to think that groups like the KKK considered themselves superior to King, considering they were a violent mob, hated all things non-white Protestant, loved to spend their free time burning crosses and attacking innocent black people in the south. For me King was the driving force of the civil rights movement, his leadership and his speeches inspired many and won the hearts of many. They represented peace and there was never any malice in them.

In fairness, King did not do it by himself , there were many other people who were in the struggle. I respect the idealisms of people like Malcolm X because at the end of the day, they were all trying to achieve the same thing for black people, equality and fairness. While he was a little too extreme and bitter about himself, I actually do think he had his heart in the right place. King, in my opinion, embodied the human spirit. He was a peaceful man but was never afraid to stand in the face of injustice, he managed to pacify some exceptionally segregated cities like Birmingham and make them fair cities for all to live in and all during it he managed to make time for his wife and children.

While it was unfortunate and untimely that he was assassinated in 1968, he had already laid the foundations for what was to come down the road. Throughout the 1970’s, 80’s, 90’s, and into the 21^st century black people have become equal to whites in every way, this being symbolised in the fact there is a black president of the United States of America. He would probably agree that it was all worth the struggle in the end.

The whole story of King is like anybody’s a game of what ifs? What if King wasn’t the minister in Montgomery? Would the civil rights movement have taken off like it would? What if he never made those inspiring speeches throughout America? Would people have had the will to keep going with the struggle like they did? Who’s to say, it’s like a lot of things in history, there is no right or wrong answer. It’s a bit like saying what if Germany won WWII. We can only imagine what could have happened. Fortunately this time a good version was created and while naturally life has its trials, at least King made life easier for people.

To sum it all up he was a creative man who changed history and the world as we know it. His legacy lives on today and his ideas have helped others overcome injustice.

Such is the measure of a man.