Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, January 16, 1995                   TAG: 9502020002
SECTION: NEWSFUN                    PAGE: NF1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

SO?!!!

His family lived with the ``Jim Crow'' laws that existed then throughout the South. These laws tried to keep blacks and whites separated. Drinking fountains, buses, bathrooms - almost everything- was segregated (separate).

He grew up seeing many signs saying, ``whites only.''

One day his father took him to buy new shoes. When they sat down in the store, the clerk told them to move to the back. His father said he was comfortable where he was, but the clerk would not wait on them if they wouldn't move.

His father took the young boy by the hand and they left the store without new shoes. His father refused to be treated that way.

The parents of the boy's friends told him his friends couldn't play with him because he was black and they were white. His mother tried to explain to him that even though blacks were no longer slaves, they were still not really free.

The young boy loved to read. In high school, his ability to use words helped him win a speech contest. Listening to his father's sermons made him realize that words could be powerful. If you could speak well, people would listen to you.

When he was only 15, he entered Morehouse College in Atlanta, where his father and grandfather had gone. It was for blacks only. At 18, he was an ordained minister.

When he went to study at a seminary in Pennsylvania, he was in a school with white students for the first time. He began to realize that people were just people, no matter what their color.

After finishing his studies, he went back to the South to try to help his fellow blacks. One day, Rosa Parks, a black woman on her way home from work, was told to move to the back of the bus. She refused and was arrested. He was called in to help organize a bus boycott. After more than a year of protests, the Supreme Court ruled that segregation on buses was against the law.

He began to speak all over the country, urging nonviolent ways of fighting for freedom and equality. He organized marches, but many times the nonviolent protests were met with violence.

In 1963, more than 200,000 blacks and whites joined the historic March on Washington, D.C. The man spoke to them on the steps of Lincoln Memorial. ``I have a dream,'' he told them, ``that one day ... the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.''

He planned the Poor People's March on Washington, D.C., which would include a rainbow of people from all over America. He never made it.

Today we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday.