Martin Luther King jr.
Martin Luther King Jr. was one of the best leaders during the Civil Rights Movement. Not only did he think of others before himself, but he was also a brave, courageous, and inspiring person. King Jr. was born on January 15, 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia. He was very smart and graduated from at high school at age 15. Later on in his life, King Jr. realized how bad segregation was getting and he decided to do something about it. He was in a group called the Souther Christian Leadership Conference (S.C.L.C.). This group believed in non-violence and did many things to protest like sit-ins, boycotts, marches,etc. Martin Luther King Jr. followed Ghandi's teachings of non-violence and he was very successful with it. At the end of the day, the people who really looked bad were the whites because they were being violent and the African Americans just sat there, calmly. Sadly, in 1963 at Memphis, Tennessee Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed. It was a tragic event especially to the African Americans. But that didn't stop them from still trying to stop segregation. They still protested and this caught on around the country and people started to realize that segregation was very bad. So in 1964 the Civil Rights Act was passed by President Lyndon Johnson. Because of King Jr. being such a brave person and for him standing up for what he believed in, discrimination on today's world isn't nearly as bad as it used to be.