Martin Luther King Jr.: Did you know...?
It’s mid-spring, 1961. In the kitchen of a safe house in Montgomery, Ala., Martin Luther King Jr. is tense. In the house with the 32-year-old civil rights leader are 17 students — fresh-faced college kids who, moved by King’s message of racial equality, are literally putting their lives at risk. These are the groundbreaking practitioners of nonviolent civil disobedience known as the Freedom Riders, and over the past two harrowing weeks, as they’ve traveled across the state on integrated buses, their numbers have diminished at every stop in the face of arrests, mob beatings — even fire-bombings.
Right there along with the riders, capturing the mood of the movement as it swung between exhilarated and exhausted, thrilled and terrified, was 26-year-old LIFE photographer Paul Schutzer, who covered the landmark Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom march and rally in Washington, D.C., four years earlier and witnessed firsthand the courage and determination Dr. King inspired in his followers. (Filed along with Schutzer’s Pilgrimage photos in LIFE’s archives are notes from the magazine’s Washington bureau chief, Henry Suydam Jr., citing the energy and excitement swirling around King even then: “At the end of the ceremonies, a couple of hundred people pressed feverishly on Reverend King — seeking pictures, autographs, handshakes, or just a close look. The jam got so heavy that he had to be escorted to safety by police.”)
The nation paused to remember Martin Luther King Jr. Monday with parades, marches and service projects.
King was born Jan. 15, 1929, and the federal holiday is the third Monday in January.
In Atlanta, a service was planned at Ebenezer Baptist Church, where King was pastor. In Memphis, Tenn., where King was assassinated, an audio recording of an interview with King would be played at the National Civil Rights Museum. The recording sheds new light on a phone call President John F. Kennedy made to King's wife more than 50 years ago.
Historians generally agree Kennedy's phone call to Coretta Scott King expressing concern over her husband's arrest in October 1960 — and Robert Kennedy's work behind the scenes to get King released — helped JFK win the White House.
In Ann Arbor, Mich., activist and entertainer Harry Belafonte planned to deliver the keynote address for the 28th annual Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Symposium on Monday morning at the University of Michigan's Hill Auditorium.
Martin Luther King Jr., right, his wife, Coretta Scott King, and his brother, Alfred Daniel 'A.D.' King, in Atlanta in 1967.
Alfred Daniel "A.D." King, younger brother of Martin Luther King Jr., was distraught after the assassination as he "felt it was his duty to protect his brother."
Monday, when the world celebrates the life and legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., the family of his brother will say a prayer for a man who has been largely lost in history: King's younger brother, Alfred Daniel "A.D." King.
On July 20, 1969, 15 months after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, A.D. sat agitated in his home.
"They killed my brother. I'm gonna find out who did it," he told someone on the phone, within hearing of his daughter, Alveda.
A.D., who had been with Martin when he was cut down in Memphis, was still distraught. "He never recovered, because he felt it was his duty to protect his brother," A.D.'s widow, Naomi King, recalls.
Martin, whose work would change America for good, died a martyr.
A.D., who had labored in the background of the civil rights movement while other lieutenants — Ralph David Abernathy, Joseph Lowery, John Lewis and Andrew Young — flanked his brother, would die as a footnote.
