Forgiveness- Martin Luther King Jr.

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Forgiveness is the idea of making peace with a person who has harmed you in either a mental or physical way. Reconciliation allows you to release any emotional anguish you have towards a person. Instead of keeping the anger inside, which only affects yourself, you can learn from your experience and move on. Also, forgiving an individual gives them the familiarity of the gift of forgiveness and an on look into the purest part of a person’s soul. However, just because you forgive does not mean you should forget. Taking in what you experienced and learning from it, is the most crucial part to emotional and spiritual growth. One person that constantly modeled forgiveness and whom has always inspired me would be, Martin Luther King Jr. Martin Luther King was born on January 15, 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia. He was a Baptist minister. King became a civil rights activist early on in his career. He led the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott and helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1957, serving as its first president. King's efforts led to the 1963 March on Washington, where King delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech. There, he established his reputation as one of the greatest orators in American history. On October 14 1964, King received the Nobel Peace Prize for combating racial inequality through nonviolence. King was brutally assassinated on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee. After his death, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977 and Congressional Gold Medal in 2004. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was established as a U.S. federal holiday in 1986. Hundreds of streets in the U.S. and beyond have been renamed in his honor. Martin Luther King was a well recognized speaker and model for forgiveness. As he once stated from one of his sermons, "First, we must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the
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