Paragraph 1: Describe your History Fair Topic and tell how/why did you choose your topic? Explain why your topic is important.
I chose Martin Luther King Jr. because he was part of the equal rights movement. The Movement that made every race equal because we are all people. He did this so we can all be respected equally no matter how different we are. It’s Important because we are all people, and we are all different, and even though we are different, we are all equal.
Paragraph 2: Begin to explain where you found most of your research and if a person (librarian?) was very helpful, it is a good idea to mention them here.
I got my research about him on wikipedia, and his autobiography. The info about him was also in many books. I needed to find a lot of books about Martin Luther King to find everything I needed to write.
Paragraph 3: Also, mention two or three of your most useful sources here and explain why they were so helpful to your project.
The wiki information because then I know his quotes and his information, his autobiography because then I know what he did in his life, and the books because they were actually able to give some more information about Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr. Editor: Clayborne Carson. The autobiography of Martin Luther King Jr. originally published: 1998
Paragraph 4: If you encountered any problems during your research or in producing your project mention it here. If you were looking for a specific source and had difficulty locating it, mention it here as well.
My problems were that the information in the books was really hard to find; like, who were his children. I had to look at the autobiography very closely because some things he did in his life were hiding there in plain sight; such as, when did the boycott happen. the wiki page had some information that confused me; like when he did his speech, and why did James Earl Ray assassinate him?
Paragraph 5: State how your topic fits into the Contest theme of Breaking Barriers and stress the importance of your topic in history.
Martin Luther King Jr. set an example for us; so, his legacy still lives on. We are still fighting for equality today, and I’m a part of making everyone equal too.
Quotes:
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
The time is always right to do what is right.
The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.
Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?
The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education.
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.
In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends
About his speech quoted from Wikipedia:
“I Have a Dream” is a public speech that was delivered by American civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963, in which he called for civil and economic rights and an end to racism in the United States. Delivered to over 250,000 civil rights supporters from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., the speech was a defining moment of the civil rights movement and among the most iconic speeches in American history.
Beginning with a reference to the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed millions of slaves in 1863, King said “one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free”.Toward the end of the speech, King departed from his prepared text for a partly improvised peroration on the theme “I have a dream”, prompted by Mahalia Jackson‘s cry: “Tell them about the dream, Martin!” In this part of the speech, which most excited the listeners and has now become its most famous, King described his dreams of freedom and equality arising from a land of slavery and hatred. Jon Meacham writes that, “With a single phrase, Martin Luther King Jr. joined Jefferson and Lincoln in the ranks of men who’ve shaped modern America”. The speech was ranked the top American speech of the 20th century in a 1999 poll of scholars of public address.
About Martin Luther King Jr quoted from Wikipedia:
Martin Luther King Jr. (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American Christian minister and activist who became the most visible spokesperson and leader in the Civil Rights Movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968. Born in Atlanta, Georgia, King is best known for advancing civil rights through nonviolence and civil disobedience, inspired by his Christian beliefs and the nonviolent activism of Mahatma Gandhi.
King led the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott and in 1957 became the first president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). With the SCLC, he led an unsuccessful 1962 struggle against segregation in Albany, Georgia, and helped organize the nonviolent 1963 protests in Birmingham, Alabama. He helped organize the 1963 March on Washington, where he delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.
On October 14, 1964, King won the Nobel Peace Prize for combating racial inequality through nonviolent resistance. In 1965, he helped organize the Selma to Montgomery marches. The following year, he and the SCLC took the movement north to Chicago to work on segregated housing. In his final years, he expanded his focus to include opposition towards poverty and the Vietnam War. He alienated many of his liberal allies with a 1967 speech titled “Beyond Vietnam“. J. Edgar Hoover considered him a radical and made him an object of the FBI’s COINTELPRO from 1963 on. FBI agents investigated him for possible communist ties, recorded his extramarital liaisons and reported on them to government officials, and on one occasion mailed King a threatening anonymous letter, which he interpreted as an attempt to make him commit suicide.
In 1968, King was planning a national occupation of Washington, D.C., to be called the Poor People’s Campaign, when he was assassinated on April 4 in Memphis, Tennessee. His death was followed by riots in many U.S. cities. Allegations that James Earl Ray, the man convicted of killing King, had been framed or acted in concert with government agents persisted for decades after the shooting. Sentenced to 99 years in prison for King’s murder, effectively a life sentence as Ray was 41 at the time of conviction, Ray served 29 years of his sentence and died from hepatitis in 1998 while in prison.
King was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal. Martin Luther King Jr. Day was established as a holiday in numerous cities and states beginning in 1971; the holiday was enacted at the federal level by legislation signed by President Ronald Reagan in 1986. Hundreds of streets in the U.S. have been renamed in his honor, and a county in Washington was rededicated for him. The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., was dedicated in 2011.
Good job Drew! Keep up the great work!