Practice Nonviolence

White button with brown text surrounding a brown image of Martin Luther King, Jr. 

Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a  civil rights leader known for holding nonviolent demonstrations. While attending Morehouse College, he was introduced to the idea of nonviolence when he read Henry David Thoreau’s Essay on Civil Disobedience. In December 1955, he led a year-long bus boycott, demanding an end to racial segregation on buses. It was the first great Negro nonviolent demonstration of the era. For the next decade, King traveled around the country, speaking out wherever he found injustice. In 1964, he was the youngest man to have received the Nobel Peace Prize; he donated his prize money back to the cause. On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee; he was there to lead a protest march in solidarity with striking workers.