Martin Luther King, Jr.: Memphis, The Prophecy

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Martin Luther King, Jr.: Memphis, the Prophecy
Martin Luther King Junior is and will always be one of the most influential civil rights activists through out the history of America. As a Christian, Martin used his knowledge of the bible and passion for the freedom of the oppressed to marshal against the oppression from the government and the related institutions. One of the speeches that set the stage for Martin, as the great orator that he was, is the famous ‘I Have a Dream Speech’. This had been in Washington where he had managed to organise a massive rally back in the year 1963. He was one of the fiercest campaigners against the racial profiling that was vile at the moment. Most of the black Americans had been through the slavery period or majority of the parents and their grand parents had been affected directly. At the time Martin was growing up, most of the African Americans were regarded with disdain by the rest of the white populace. They would receive the worst treatment from the government and the related agencies simply due to the colour of their skin. Living and working conditions for the African Americans were deplorable as most of them worked in the menial jobs where they would only manage to make meagre earnings. Given the amount of support that Martin was getting from the population of African Americans and the whites that were like minded, some of the officials in the government did not like his ideas.
There were several threats made on Martin’s life, but even then, he did not let up the fight for the freedom of the African Americans and the other oppressed people in America. He stood his ground and focused all his energies towards the ultimate goal of freedom for the oppressed in the society. Towards the end of his life, there had been a nation wide strike by the sanitation workers. The workers were demanding better pay and appropriate working conditions in Memphis. According to Martin, people had the right to fight for their rights and thus the workers had acted within the bounds of the law. On the 4th of April 1968, Martin had been in the mason temple, a church in Memphis, Tennessee (Holley). Here, thousands of followers had gathered to listen to the great orator as he went about his speech. This is a speech that has had great significance to Martin’s life and his course for freedom. It is has over the years been labelled as the ‘Been to The Mountaintop Speech’. It is the last speech that Martin made when he was alive in a public gathering. In the speech, he was seen to use words that hinted that he knew that his time of death was near. Much of his last words related to the aspects of mortality and his death. According to Martin, he had gone to the mountain top and he had seen the future of a free people. Even though there were deaths threats upon his life, which he said, did not worry him and what mattered was the fact that his people would...