edHelper.com
Black History and Blacks in U.S. History
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Theme Unit

Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr.
Reading Level
     edHelper's suggested reading level:   grades 5 to 7
     Flesch-Kincaid grade level:   5.95

Vocabulary
     challenging words:    housing, nonviolence, persuasive, slum, sniper, teaching, pastor, discrimination, spokesman, unconstitutional, equality, achievement, demonstration, resistance, marches, refused
     content words:    Martin Luther King Jr, Montgomery Bus Boycott, On December, Rosa Parks, In November, Supreme Court, Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Civil Rights Act, President Dwight D., Mohandas Gandhi

Print Martin Luther King Jr.
edHelper.com subscriber options:
     Print Martin Luther King Jr.  (font options, pick words for additional puzzles, and more)
     Quickly print reading comprehension
     Print a proofreading activity

Feedback on Martin Luther King Jr.
     Leave your feedback on Martin Luther King Jr.  (use this link if you found an error in the story)

Martin Luther King Jr.
By Mary L. Bushong 		  
1     Not long ago, our Southern states were much different from the way they are today. The people lived divided lives. White people and black people did not eat in the same restaurants, go to the same schools, or even drink from the same water fountains. That division is called segregation. Many people did not like that and wanted to change things, but they needed a leader. That leader was Martin Luther King Jr.
 
2     Dr. King was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia. He learned about segregation at the age of six, when the parents of his white friends would not let him play with them anymore. After finishing college in Boston, he returned to the South and became the pastor of a church in Montgomery, Alabama. Dr. King knew that segregation was wrong. It meant that people got treated better or worse just because of the color of their skin.
 
3     People began to notice Dr. King during the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The law then said that white people got to sit at the front of the bus and got in at the front door of the bus. Blacks sat at the back of the bus and got in at the back door. On December 1, 1955 a black woman named Rosa Parks got on the bus and did not move to the back. She had worked all day, and she was tired. When a white man wanted to sit in her seat, she refused, and she was arrested.
 
4     Her trial made many people angry, and they refused to ride the buses. They would walk or ride bicycles to work, which made the bus company lose a lot of business. Dr. King convinced the people to act with an attitude of dignity and courage rather than anger. At age 27 his self-control and insistence on nonviolence made him a great spokesman for the boycott and a strong leader for the civil rights movement. In November 1956, the Supreme Court ruled that segregation on transportation was unconstitutional. The first of many battles had been won.
 
5     In 1957 Dr. King took another big step as a leader for civil rights by forming the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Then on May 17 of that year he spoke to a crowd of 15,000 in Washington, D.C.
 
6     In response to that conference, in 1958 Congress passed the first Civil Rights Act since Reconstruction. Not everyone liked Dr. King's influence, though. One day, while on a walking tour through Harlem, he was attacked and stabbed. That did not stop him from doing what he thought was right. He met with other black leaders and President Dwight D. Eisenhower to discuss problems.
 
7     Dr. King was very interested in the idea of nonviolent protest that Mohandas Gandhi had been teaching in India. It was an idea that Dr. King believed in, and he was finally able to go to India in 1959 to study Gandhi's ideas more fully.
 
8     Early in 1960, he and his family moved back to Atlanta. In those days, blacks could not go and sit down in any café or lunchroom. Dr. King was arrested there while he waited to be served in a restaurant. He did not serve jail time, because John F. and Robert Kennedy stepped in to help.

Paragraphs 9 to 18:
For the complete story with questions: click here for printable
Copyright © 2008 edHelper