Martin Luther King Jnr

Ok, I know who this guy is – he had a dream, right?

He certainly did.  Most people can quote Martin Luther King’s famous line “I have a dream”, but fewer people are able to say when and where and, most importantly, why he said it.

So let’s start at the beginning (it’s a very good place to start)…

Martin Luther King Junior was born in Atlanta, Georgia, in the South of the United States of America on 15 January 1929.

Martin Luther King Junior was known as Martin Luther King Junior because his father was Martin Luther King Senior.  True story.

Well, no - actually, it isn’t.

Martin Luther King was in fact born Michael King.  His Dad’s name was Michael King too.  When the family went to Fifth Baptist World Alliance Congress (a big meeting of Baptists from all over the world) in Berlin in 1934, Michael King Senior changed his and his son’s name to Martin Luther King Snr and Jnr, in honour of the German religious reformer Martin Luther.

Martin Luther: German religious bloke from the 16th century 

Although slavery had been ended in the USA in 1865, conditions for Black people in America, particularly in the southern states were still very bad.  They had to use separate facilities, such as schools, shops and public transport.  The Jim Crow Laws that had existed since the 1880s stated that Black facilities had to be ‘separate but equal’.  In reality, they were anything but equal.  In fact, they were much, much worse.

There were three important factors in King’s teenage years that influenced his later teaching and activism (this means actively doing something about something you believe in):

1.  The way his father refused to accept the segregation that was imposed upon him and his family, on one occasion refusing to listen to a policeman who referred to him as “boy” (something white people did to humiliate Black men)
2. He suffered from depression, which was partly due to the humiliation that he felt because of segregation
3. He had a very religious upbringing

He was a super intelligent child and skipped a couple of years of school before going to university at the age of fifteen.  After getting his first degree, in sociology, at the age of 19, he decided that he wanted to go into the church and studied to become a pastor (like a vicar).

As if that wasn’t enough studying, King then went on to gain a PhD (Philosophy Doctorate) from Boston University in 1955.  This meant that from that point onwards he was a Doctor.  Of Philosophy.  You probably wouldn’t have wanted him to operate on you.

After this, he became the pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, a city in Alabama, one of the southern states of the USA.

He married his wife Coretta Scott on 18 June 1953, with whom he had four children.

Civil Rights

Dr Martin Luther King Jnr became involved in Civil Rights from an early age.

The word ‘civil’ refers to anyone who is an ordinary citizen of a country – people like you and me.  So Civil Rights are the basic rights of ordinary people.  In the USA, during the 1950s, African Americans didn’t have the same rights as white Americans.  King felt, quite rightly, that African Americans deserved the same rights as white Americans and he became involved in the fight for Black Civil Rights.

No, not that sort of fight.

King was a big fan of non-violent protest.  He was inspired by Gandhi, who had used non-violent protest to help India gain independence from the British in the 1930s and 1940s.

Non-violent protest involved peaceful marches and simply sitting where the law said Black people were not allowed to sit.

However, this did lead to criticism from other Black civil rights campaigners, like Malcolm X, who felt that Black people should fight back.  They also accused King of being too friendly with white politicians.  With some people, he just couldn’t win.

Montgomery Bus Boycott

The buses of Montgomery were segregated, which meant that Black people had to sit at the back of the bus.  I know, they must have been pretty cool, huh?  Everyone wants to sit at the back of the bus.  Well, actually, no – in Montgomery in the 1950s, people wanted to sit at the front.

Not only did Black people have to sit at the back, but if white people had filled up the seats at the front, Black people were required to give up their seats for any more white people getting on.  As if that wasn’t unfair enough, Black people had to pay for their tickets at the front of the bus, then get off and get back on through the back doors.  Often the bus drivers would drive off before they could get back on!

On 1 December 1955, a Black woman named Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white person on a Montgomery bus.  She was arrested.

A man named E.D. Nixon, who was the president of local branch of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), organised a meeting of local ministers at Martin Luther King’s church.  They decided to organise a boycott of the buses by all Black people in Montgomery.

Black people stopped using the buses for 17 days.  People rallied together to organise car sharing and walked long distances to work.  The boycott lasted long enough to cause the bus companies to lose lots of money and eventually the courts decided that segregating the buses was unconstitutional.  (This means it was against the constitution of the United States, which is the document that sets the ground rules for all the laws in the country).

The boycott was one of the first major successes of the Civil Rights movement and Martin Luther King played a big role in it.  He gave a lot of speeches and spent two weeks in prison as a result.  It also demonstrated that King was starting to get under the skin of all the Washington bigwigs who hoped that Black people would just shut up and accept their lot in life.  After the Montgomery Bus Boycott, J. Edgar Hoover, the chief of the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation – the US national police organisation), started investigating King to try and dig some dirt on him to make him and the Civil Rights movement look bad.

'Coloured' (or 'Colored' as the Americans spell it) was a

derogatory (BAD!) term that whites used to described

Black or African-American people

Letter from Birmingham Jail

Hang on, I though Martin Luther King was a good guy?  What was he doing in prison?

In 1957, King and some other ministers founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in order to try and organise the non-violent protest movements.  He was involved in lots of protests and marches against segregation laws.

In April 1963, the SCLC started a series of protests against segregation in the city of Birmingham, in Alabama.  They organised lots of sit-ins.  These were protests where Black people literally just sat in places they weren’t supposed to be, like Whites-Only cafes.  King intended to provoke mass arrests to raise publicity for his cause.

King himself was arrested early on the campaign.  He wrote a letter from his jail cell, which, funnily enough, became known as the Letter from Birmingham Jail.

The letter called for the Civil Rights movement to pursue all legal routes for change and responded to criticisms that change should be sought through the courts only, and not in the streets, as in the Birmingham campaign.

He wrote that Black Americans had been asked to wait for too long and the time had come to demand change – NOW.

The letter was published in lots of magazines and gained a lot of popularity for the strength of its words.

The Birmingham campaign was very successful.  Shortly after King was released in May 1963, thousands of children joined the protests in Birmingham and the city’s police chief, Eugene ‘Bull’ Connor turned high pressure hoses and police dogs on them.  The television images of police attacking children caused outrage in the rest of America and around the world.

As a result, Birmingham became less segregated – Connor lost his job and public places became more open to Blacks.

The March on Washington and THAT speech

A series of marches organised and lead by King and the SCLC culminated in the famous March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on 28 August 1963. (Washington is the capital city of the United States).  More than 200,000 people were in the crowd when King delivered his famous “I have a dream” speech.  His speech imagined a time when the promise of freedom and equality for all would become a reality in America.

After the speech…

Less than a month after King delivered his famous speech, four young Black girls were killed in by a bomb in a Birmingham church.  The dream may have been further off than King hoped.

However, the March on Washington had a major impact in the way Civil Rights were viewed around the world.  It prompted President John F. Kennedy to ask for a new Civil Rights Act to be drawn up.  However, there was still a lot of opposition from politicians and it wasn’t until July 1964 that the Civil Rights Act finally became law in the USA, which made segregation illegal.  The Act ended segregation in public places and banned discrimination (treating someone differently because of the colour of their skin, their religion, their gender or the country they were born in).  The Act is often seen as the crowning triumph of the Civil Rights Movement.

Actual Images of celebrations following the passing

of the Civil Rights Act.  Maybe.

In 1964, Martin Luther was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in it all.

But that wasn’t the end for Civil Rights.  Although African Americans had their rights under federal law (laws affecting the whole country), the individual states didn’t always change their laws straight away.  King kept campaigning to make sure that the laws actually did change.

He also started talking about other causes, championing the cause of poor people (who in many cases were also Black) and protesting against the Vietnam War (many of the soldiers sent to fight there were poor, and therefore often Black).

Death and Legacy

In April 1968, Martin Luther King arrived in Memphis, Tennessee, to support local rubbish collectors who were on strike.

The day after he arrived, the 4 April 1968, he was shot dead on his motel balcony.  James Earl Ray, an escaped prisoner, was convicted of King’s murder and sent to prison.  Many people, however, think Ray wasn’t the only person involved, but that mystery is as yet unsolved!

His death sparked riots in cities across the United States and President Lyndon B. Johnson declared a national day of mourning.

He left an enormous legacy behind.  A legacy is the things, both physical objects and ideas, that you leave behind when you die.  Martin Luther King certainly left a lot of brilliant ideas behind.  He had greatly improved Civil Rights for Black people, as well as other minorities and poor people, in America.  Only a few days after his death, Congress passed the 1968 Civil Rights Act.  He is remembered as someone who never gave up on the things he believed in and inspired others to do the same.

Sound Smart!

“Did you know?   President Kennedy was so worried about scandals upsetting the progress of the Civil Rights movement that he authorised wire-tapping of Martin Luther King’s phones by the FBI.”

“Martin Luther King wrote his famous ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail’ on the margins of a newspaper as it was the only paper available to him.”

Impress people by quoting from some of his other speeches!

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

(From a sermon given in Alabama in 1957)

“We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop… And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people will get to the promised land.”

(Delivered 3 April 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee.  It was his last speech)

Some other fun sources

The BBC Bitesize website has loads of information and videos about the Black Civil Rights movement

This history website also has several interesting videos and articles about Martin Luther King.  You can also browse their other Black History topics.

Watch a clip of Martin Luther King's most famous speech here:

Henry VIII

Henry Tudor

Born: 28 June 1491 (Age 18)

Occupation: King of England

Lives: In lots of palaces all over London

Hobbies and Interests: Jousting, hunting, dancing, reading, music, lay-dees

Relationship status: It’s complicated

What do we know about Henry VIII?

Henry VIII is probably one of England’s most famous monarchs (another word for king or queen). When you mention his name, almost anyone can picture a bearded, round-bellied monarch in his feathered hat and finery.  They can probably also tell you that Henry had six wives.

Was Henry fat?

Henry was a very sporty young man when he became King at the age of 18 in 1509 following the death of his father, Henry VII.  He enjoyed hunting, often wearing out eight horses in one day, and also loved dancing, jousting and wrestling.  He was very tall for a man during the Tudor period.  Historians think he could have been around 6 foot 3.

Unfortunately, Henry also had a huge appetite.

When he was 44, his horse rolled on him during a jousting tournament, leaving his leg permanently damaged.  He wasn’t able to exercise anymore, but he kept eating, and as a consequence he got very fat.  By the end of his life he weighed about 20 stone and had a 52 inch waist.

(That’s about the length of this fish)

Did he have six wives?

Henry did indeed have six wives.  But not all at the same time.  Even the King of England wasn’t allowed to do that.

Introducing...the six wives of Henry VIII!

So, what else do we know about Henry?

Henry was born in 1491, the second son of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York.  Whilst his older brother Arthur was paraded around as the future heir, Henry lived a much more sheltered life and was a bit of a mummy's boy.  Growing up, Henry had a tutor who taught him languages, maths, music and poetry.  He also had a fool to entertain him when he got bored.

DANCE FOOL !

Henry also had a whipping boy.  This was a servant employed purely to be whipped when Henry was naughty, because no one was allowed to hit the little prince. Hands up who wants that job?

When Arthur died in 1502, at the age of 15, shortly followed by Elizabeth in 1503, King Henry VII went crazy with grief, while his son, young Prince Henry, was left feeling a tad unloved.  When Henry VIII became king he promptly reversed most of his father's policies and executed his favourite servants.  Daddy issues much?

Henry was a very popular prince when he became king, known for his love of dancing and hunting. He also had an eye for the ladies and very quickly got special permission from the Pope to marry his brother's widow, Catherine of Aragon.

Henry was obsessed with having a son and heir to succeed him.  When Catherine was only able to produce a daughter, Mary (which of course had nothing to do with Henry, or, y'know, maybe just bad luck), Henry started eyeing up one of Catherine's ladies-in-waiting, Anne Boleyn. (A lady-in-waiting was a bit like a personal assistant - they opened post, looked after the Queen's wardrobe and kept her up to date on all the latest gossip.)

Unfortunately for Henry, being a Catholic meant he wasn't really allowed to get divorced.

Since the Pope wouldn't let Henry divorce his wife, he threw his toys out the pram and set up his own church instead - the Church of England.

Henry is quite famous for having founded the Church of England, but in reality it wasn't until his daughter Elizabeth I came to the throne that the church really began to take off.  All Henry really did was knock down lots of monastries and steal their gold.

It was Henry's third wife, Jane Seymour, who finally gave him the son he so badly wanted.  Edward VI was born in 1537 and Jane died from complications following the birth a few days later.  Henry always said that Jane was his favourite because she had given him a son, and he was buried next to her when he died on 28 January 1547 at the age of 55.

Henry was also a very clever King.  He was good at maths, knew a lot about astronomy and was very interested in politics.  He was also very cultured - he read widely and kept a library of over 1000 books, as well as playing, and some say composing, music. However, he has also been described as an overgrown child who was prone to tantrums if he didn't get his own way.  This made him very scary as, more often than not, the King's temper tantrums resulted in someone getting their head chopped off.

Why is he so famous?

Henry was quite a colourful character.  Which is another way of saying he was off his rocker!  He also remembered for his six wives (not many men have that many) and for his role in breaking away from the Catholic church and founding the Church of England.  He was a physically dominant man whose image is instantly recognisable and lots of historians have spent a lot of time studying Henry's reign as King of England.

Sound smart!

"Henry VIII spent a week blubbering in public when he found out his fifth wife, Catherine Howard, had cheated on him."

"Henry VIII executed more people per year than any other king or queen in English history - he had 330 people killed between 1532 and 1540!"

"Some of the most important achievements of Henry VIII's reign include: the creation of the Church of England, bigging up the role of Parliament, joining Wales and Ireland with England, the arrival of lots of new and exciting art and literature and building A LOT of castles."

Some other fun sources

An interesting but fun website dedicated the Henry VIII and the Tudors

The BBC history page on Henry VIII has some fun facts, as well as videos and games

And finally, what else?

The Battle of Hastings

1066.

It's a date that absolutely everyone knows.

Pretty much everyone also knows that it's the date of the Battle of Hastings.

But what actually went down at the Battle of Hastings?

Well...

In January 1066, King Edward the Confessor died without any children.  He never quite got around to telling anyone who he wanted to take over as king.

There are rumours that he may have told his wife he wanted Harold Godwinson to be king, but no one was quite sure.  However, on 6 January 1066, the Witenagemot (The wite-what now?!  Witenagemot is an old Anglo-Saxon word meaning a 'meeting of wise men' - they were the King's advisers, basically) named Harold, previously a pretty powerful nobleman, as King.

Harold wasn't the only one after the throne, though.  His own brother, Tostig, was also sniffing around, as was Norwegian King Harald Hardrada and, of course, William, Duke of Normandy.

(Last surviving photograph of
Harald Hardrada)

After scrapping in the North with Tostig and Harald Hardrada (who had sneakily joined forces), King Harold managed to defeat them.

Unfortunately whilst Harold was up in Yorkshire, celebrating his victory with pork pies and tea cake, William's Norman forces had landed in the South.

Harold rushed back down South, gathering an army as he went, and even tried to surprise William's forces.  Unfortunately, a scout reported the location of the English army, and William marched his forces to meet them.

It is estimated that King Harold had about 7,000 men in his army, whereas William had about 10,000.  Despite this, the English army put up a good fight, and the Normans had to resort to sneaky tactics.  They pretended to run away in panic, and then turned on their attackers.

King Harold was pretty close to making it to the end of the battle, but he looked up at the wrong moment and ended up with an arrow in his eye (or so some people say).  Arrow or no arrow, his troops gave up without him to lead them and retreated.

The battle lasted about the length of a school day, and by the end historians think that around 6,000 soldiers had died.

Thinking that the English would now welcome him with open arms, William was surprised to meet resistance from other English nobles who also wanted to be king.  They weren't so keen on the idea of Norman rule, even if they were bringing with them great words like embezzle and purloin and beef.

After a bit more marching and a few scuffles, William finally defeated all the challengers and made it to London, where he was crowned King on 25 December 1066.  He had truly conquered England.  Which was probably why they called him William the Conqueror.

WIN.

Sound smart!

"No one is actually sure whether or not Harold Godwinson died from getting shot in the eye with an arrow.  The Bayeux Tapestry shows two men, one with an arrow in his eye and one under the hooves of a horse, under the caption 'Harold the King is killed', so no one is sure which is supposed to be Harold, or if they both are."

"The exact date of the Battle of Hastings was 14 October 1066."

"The Normans killed at the Battle of Hastings were buried in a communal grave that no one has found yet.  Fancy going on a grave hunt?"

Some other fun sources

A pretty cool animation of the Bayeux Tapestry!

A Horrible Histories clip (of course)

Ok, not technically a source, but a nifty, fun game that lets you recreate the Battle of Hastings, complete with medieval taunts!

http://www.funny-games.biz/1066-game.html

Magna Carta

It's the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta this year, so it seemed an appropriate topic to kick off with.

Magna Carta's one of those things, like Downton Abbey and car insurance, that everybody's heard of, but nobody's really sure what it's all about.  (Hint: it's not a Jay-Z album.)

First things first - why is it called Magna Carta?  Is it something to with the ice creams?

Er...no.

Magna Carta is a Latin name, and it means 'Great Charter' (people liked to write things in Latin back then - it made them feel clever).  A charter is a document that gives people their rights.  The United Nations have a charter that gives people all over the world their human rights, such as the right to free speech, the right to a fair trial, the right to education and the right to keep a pet unicorn on the roof of your house, etc.

So who did Magna Carta give rights to?

To answer this, we need to go back a little a bit.

In 1215, King John was on the throne of England.

(Earliest known picture of John)

He had become King after the death of his brother, Richard the Lionheart, in 1199.  Fortunately, John had some experience of ruling England, as he'd been left in charge whilst big brother Richard was away fighting in the Crusades.  Unfortunately, he was no better at being in charge when he was King than he had been as Prince.

He made some crazy decisions without asking anyone and justified them on the basis that he was the king so he could basically do whatever he wanted.

He was also a pretty bad soldier and managed to lose half of France.

He kept trying to get the land back, and kept losing.  It was all getting a little expensive.

So what did he do?  Raised taxes!

(Today, when people pay tax, the government uses it to fund useful things like schools and hospitals.  Back then, King John used the money to fight endless wars against the French.)

As if that wasn't bad enough, King John also managed to annoy the Pope, who banned all church services in England in 1207.

The barons (rich men who essentially ran the country for the King) were getting a little bit peeved about all King John's demands.  Plus, they owed him a lot of money and were getting a bit scared about their souls going to hell, what with not being able to go to church and all.

Their response was to rebel against the King.

In stepped the Archbishop of Canterbury...

To stop the spat between King John and the barons getting out of hand, the Archbishop of Canterbury drafted a charter for the King to sign.

It promised rights for the church in England and protection from illegal imprisonment for the barons, but mainly it promised that the King would stop demanding unreasonable amounts of money from them.  All this would be administered by a Council of Barons (a group of rich men sitting round a table, making decisions and eating a lot of biscuits).

King John sulked for a little bit, but eventually signed the Charter by Royal Seal at a place called Runnymede (a rather picturesque spot by the River Thames).

(King John's Royal Seal)

(Or...it may have looked more like this)

It didn't last long...

Magna Carta was a bit of a flop back in 1215, really.  Nobody really stuck to it, and the Pope declared it nul and void just 8 weeks later.

This, inevitably, led to more fighting.  (The First Barons' War)

This was all cut short when King John died in 1216 and his son, Henry III, who was only nine years old, became King.  Henry's Regency Government (a group of noblemen who made his decisions for him, since he was too busy deciding whether he wanted fish fingers or chicken nuggets for tea) decided to wave the (slightly changed) charter around in the hope that the Barons would stop hating on the whipper-snapper King.

When the First Barons' War ended in 1217, the charter formed part of the peace treaty.  This was when it first became known as Magna Carta.

And another...

When Harry-3 started to run out of money in 1225, he reissued Magna Carta in exchange for an agreement on some new taxes.

Henry's son, Edward I, followed in poppa's footsteps and did the same thing in 1297.

It's the 1297 version that finally made the Great Charter part of England's written laws.

The clauses included in the 13th century Magna Carta are pretty much obsolete (out of date) now, but nevertheless the charter is still referred to and admired by politicians today as the document that forms the foundations of representative democracy in Britain.  (Where ordinary people have a say in how the country is run, instead of the Queen just doing whatever she wants).

However, what people sometimes overlook is that Magna Carta only really gave rights to the very rich and was created to settle squabbles between the King and the aristocracy, rather than being envisaged as the start of Britain's march towards political freedom for all.  It would certainly take a long time (another 700-odd years!) before every adult in Britain had a say in how their country was run.

Sound Smart!

"It's not really the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta because it wasn't even known as Magna Carta until 1217 and the final version didn't even become proper law until 1297!"

"Magna Carta didn't really give rights to the ordinary man - it only helped the rich aristocracy."

"The 23rd clause of Magna Carta states: 'Neither a town nor a man shall be forced to make bridges over the rivers'. Remember that next time someone tries to force you or your town to build a bridge over a river."

Some other fun sources:

Horrible Histories song about the influences that Magna Carta has had...

Another Horrible Histories video (I'll be linking to them a lot!) about King John and the barons at Runnymede:

The history of representation in 60 seconds, from the UK Parliament website: