Dr. Martin Luther King Jr was one of the most inspirational human figures of all time. Not only in the United States but in the world, Dr Martin Luther King Jr changed this nation his legacy was to enforce equality for all races such as, Blacks (African-American), Whites (Caucasien) Asians and Hispanics. Dr Martin Luther King Jr also focused on the US economic system to help bring jobs, better working conditions and higher wages to all US citizens no matter their race or religion. Dr King’s “I have a dream” speech on August 28 1963 was and is one of the most recognizable and inspirational speeches of all time. Unfortunately, Dr King was assassinated on April 4 1968 by James Earl Ray. After his death, his birthday became a holiday and many laws changed.
As his death was announced the whole entire nation was shocked, African American people were heartbroken and nervous, after 10 minutes of his death the whole nation knew what had happened, and within 1 hour the assassination it had made international headlines, countries all of the world had known. People were very nervous and even scared thinking that racial segregation will return. police had no suspect, people were anxious to know who had killed him, after one year of his death US and British intelligence had convicted someone of the crime. On March 10th 1969 James Earl Ray confessed to the crime and pleaded guilty. He was sentenced to 99 years in prison without parole, although many people say he was framed, and there is no 100% concrete proof that he had committed the crime.
After his death there were many protests, lawmakers and government officials quickly went to change laws and values because most of them faced death threats and wanted to avoid discrimination. Most African-Americans got jobs some went into the military and racism decreased dramatically. Other countries had discriminated against America urging us to change laws, most people turned to violence to overthrow the racist government around 70,000 military service members were deployed and many African-American and Hispanics joined the military bringing people of all races together. The government was changing fast and time after time Americans including whites started to view the Ku Klux Klan negatively. In the early 70s more democrats were elected into office and around 39 states had democrat representatives. But racial discrimination wasn’t completely over.
After MLK’s death racial discrimination did not completely come to an end, there were a few nationalist groups against it, also, the Republican party changed it’s message, they made it more racial friendly and brought all races together but they they still were very restrictive when it came to immigration. Around 25% of conservatives did not approve of MLK and so many republicans turned to the democratic party and/or independant. And in the 80’s and 90’s America was a peaceful and almost discriminative free country, but around 6 to 15% of Americans were considered far right. They were known as racists and anti-cultural people, it was mainly in the south where these numbers were very high.
As a result, today in 2019 Martin Luther King jr impacts the US like never before, racial discrimination is as lowest it’s ever been and Republicans are not considered racist. As you can see the US has schools, churches restaurants and stores open to all people religion or race. There are very little cases of racial discrimination and our politicians are very reasonable and don’t really care if your Black, White, Asian or Hispanic. We have politicians from all different races and ethnicities, and that’s what makes america great, it’s the diversity in our country. Yes MLK has impacted the way we see the world and who we are as Americans.
