Happy 78th Birthday MLK!

By Shawn Healy

Today we celebrate the 78th birthday of famed civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. At the McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum we tell the story of freedom in American through the lens of the First Amendment, and no American better epitomizes this narrative than Martin Luther King, Jr. His life embodies the use of the Five Freedoms of the First Amendment.

RELIGION: An ordained minister with a PhD in theology, King used the power of moral suasion to nudge a people away from racial apartheid.

SPEECH: MLK's address atop the steps of the Lincoln Memorial gave a benediction to the 1963 March on Washington. His eloquence allowed his words to transcend race, leading to the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act one year later.

PRESS: King's 1963 Letter From Birmingham Jail protests his arrest for parading without a permit. Through the power of the pen MLK makes a case that an unjust law is no law at all.

ASSEMBLY: King orchestrated a 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama to demand voting rights for all citizens. Demonstrators were heckled, threatened, even beaten (by authorities in some cases). Congress responded with the Voting Rights Act later in the same year.

PETITION: King rose to the forefront of the civil rights movement by coordinating the 1955 boycott of the Montgomery, Alabama, bus system after Rosa Parks was denied a seat at the front of the bus. After nine months the city responded by desegregating the system, proving the power of civil disobedience, King's mantra from this point forward.