Today, when racism and xenophobia, fuelled by intense migratory flows, seem to have taken root once again in people's minds and hearts, and the far right is gaining ground, we would need a charismatic and revolutionary figure like Martin Luther King more than ever.

Who was Martin Luther King

Martin Luther King was born into a family of Baptist Church ministers on 15 January 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia, in the deep south of the United States, where racism runs extremely deep. Young Martin quickly comes to realise that the colour of his skin represents an apparently insurmountable obstacle. Having become aware of this unacceptable discrimination, he dedicates himself body and soul to study, graduating in philosophy and becoming a minister himself, before embarking on his unstoppable and peaceful struggle against racial segregation.

The peaceful struggle

King admires the figure of Mahatma Gandhi and his doctrine of nonviolence, based on the rejection of physical violence as a means of achieving social goals or political change. When in 1955 Rosa Parks, a Black seamstress and activist, is arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white man on a bus, something clicks in King and he decides that it is no longer possible to endure injustice in silence. He goes on to lead a massive boycott campaign by all African Americans against local public transport. The boycott lasts for 382 days, attracting significant media attention, and ends with a major victory: in 1956, the United States Supreme Court rules that laws mandating segregation on public transport are unconstitutional.

I have a dream

Martin Luther King's most famous speech, containing the celebrated phrase "I have a dream", is delivered in Washington on 28 August 1963, during a major civil rights march, before a crowd of 200,000 people. In the passionate speech, King simply calls for justice and equality and dreams "that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character".

The Civil Rights Act

On 10 February 1964, the Civil rights act is passed, a civil rights law that abolished discrimination in public services of every kind, hotels and motels, restaurants and stadiums, theatres, public libraries, in the workplace and in workers' unions. That same year, Martin Luther King is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize; at 35 years of age, he is the youngest winner in the history of the prize (today this record belongs instead to Malala Yousafzai, awarded it in 2014 at just seventeen years old).

The Selma march

The American town of Selma, in Alabama, holds great importance in the history of the civil rights movement for African Americans in the United States. It was from here that three protest marches organised by Martin Luther King and headed for Montgomery set off; the first march, which later became known as Bloody Sunday, took place on 7 March 1965. Around six hundred people, who were demonstrating peacefully to demand the right to vote for all African Americans and an end to racial segregation, were charged by police as they crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge. During the final march, on 25 March 1965, King and around 25,000 people made their way from Selma to Montgomery, all the way to the doors of the Alabama governor's mansion, to demand equality. A 2014 film entitled Selma – La strada per la libertà retraces these events.

The assassination of Martin Luther King

Martin Luther King had become a point of reference for an entire community; his fame was constantly growing and he had by then become the undisputed symbol of the struggle for civil rights. It was precisely for this reason that white, bigoted, conservative America feared him: King became the target of threats of every kind (including a letter from the FBI containing details about his extramarital sex life and urging King to take his own life) and was arrested. On 30 June a dynamite attack destroyed his home, with no consequences for his family. On 4 April 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee, Martin Luther King was shot and killed by a large-calibre rifle bullet shortly before he was due to attend a meeting at a local church. His killer, James Earl Ray, was arrested two months later, but the man, after an initial confession, denied his involvement by speaking of a conspiracy against King. The murder inflamed the anger of the Black community, sparking an uprising across all the ghettos of America with a terrible toll: forty-three dead, five hundred injured and twenty-seven thousand arrests.

Martin Luther King Day

Despite his life being cut far too short, Martin Luther King radically changed the struggle for African American rights, breathing new life into the ideals of an entire generation. King had managed to transcend his own persona, rising almost to the role of prophet, shouldering the torment of his people in order to lead them towards a new era. To commemorate his struggle, on the third Monday of January (that is, a day close to 15 January, Martin Luther King's date of birth), the United States celebrates Martin Luther King Day. The occasion was celebrated for the first time on 20 January 1986, following a law signed in 1983 by President Ronald Reagan.