9/6/2023

EARLY LIFE OF MARTAIN LUTHER KING

At his childhood home, King and his two siblings would read aloud the Bible as instructed by their father.[25] After dinners there, King's grandmother Jennie, whom he affectionately referred to as "Mama", would tell lively stories from the Bible to her grandchildren.[25] King's father would regularly use whippings to discipline his children.[26] At times, King Sr. would also have his children whip each other.[26] King's father later remarked, "[King] was the most peculiar child whenever you whipped him. He'd stand there, and the tears would run down, and he'd never cry."[27] Once when King witnessed his brother A.D. emotionally upset his sister Christine, he took a telephone and knocked out A.D. with it.[26][28] When he and his brother were playing at their home, A.D. slid from a banister and hit into their grandmother, Jennie, causing her to fall unresponsive.[29][28] King, believing her dead, blamed himself and attempted suicide by jumping from a second-story window.[30][28] Upon hearing that his grandmother was alive, King rose and left the ground where he had fallen.[30]

King became friends with a white boy whose father owned a business across the street from his family's home.[31] In September 1935, when the boys were about six years old, they started school.[31][32] King had to attend a school for black children, Yonge Street Elementary School,[31][33] while his close playmate went to a separate school for white children only.[31][33] Soon afterwards, the parents of the white boy stopped allowing King to play with their son, stating to him "we are white, and you are colored".[31][34] When King relayed the happenings to his parents, they had a long discussion with him about the history of slavery and racism in America.[31][35] Upon learning of the hatred, violence and oppression that black people had faced in the U.S., King would later state that he was "determined to hate every white person".[31] His parents instructed him that it was his Christian duty to love everyone.[35]

King witnessed his father stand up against segregation and various forms of discrimination.[36] Once, when stopped by a police officer who referred to King Sr. as "boy", King's father responded sharply that King was a boy but he was a man.[36] When King's father took him into a shoe store in downtown Atlanta, the clerk told them they needed to sit in the back.[37] King's father refused, stating "we'll either buy shoes sitting here or we won't buy any shoes at all", before taking King and leaving the store.[14] He told King afterward, "I don't care how long I have to live with this system, I will never accept it."[14] In 1936, King's father led hundreds of African Americans in a civil rights march to the city hall in Atlanta, to protest voting rights discrimination.[26] King later remarked that King Sr. was "a real father" to him.[38]