Read this text very carefully and do the Written Comprehension exercice. 

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Written Comprehension

Martin Luther King, the famous Afro-American Civil-Rights leader was born in Atlanta, Georgia on January 15^th, 1929 from a Baptist minister and a school teacher. 

In 1948, at the age of 15, he graduated from Morehouse College in Atlanta. As he wanted to become a preacher, he was sent to be educated in the north where there was no official racial segregation. He went to university to study theology, and obtained his Ph.D in 1951. He began a non­violent campaign for Civil Rights.

At that time, Blacks and Whites in the South of the United States did not have equal rights: they were not allowed to go to the same schools, to have the same jobs, to live in the same neighbourhood. It was called Segregation: living separately. Even public buses had separate seats for Blacks and for Whites.

On June 18^th, 1951, MLK married Coretta Scott: they had 2 boys and 2 girls together.

The family moved to Montgomery in 1954 just a few months before Rosa Parks, a black woman, was arrested because she had sat in a section of the bus reserved for whites. Martin Luther King took up the protest and organized a boycott of the buses which lasted for eleven months. Finally, the Supreme Court in Washington ruled that segregation in the buses in Alabama was against the law.

After winning that battle, King continued to organize protests against segregation, using the same non-violent methods as the Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi had done.

He was arrested many times, and in April 1963, he wrote his “Letter from Birmingham City Jail” after  having been arrested for demonstrating in defiance of a court order. This text is a classic of the civil-rights movement.

On August 28^th, to commemorate the 100^th anniversary of President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, he led a great march on Washington, where he gave his famous speech “I have a dream” to over 250,000 people. He asked President Kennedy to end segregation and said “I have a dream that one day little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers”.

A year later, in 1964, he received the Nobel Peace Prize. He was the youngest man ever to have received that famous Prize.

In the spring of 1968, at the age of 39, he was shot dead by a white man. It was a shock to the nation, but the peace fighter himself had always feared such a tragedy. His cause had been a dangerous one, and his detractors had attacked him and his family several times before that fatal day.

Martin Luther King has been celebrated every year on the first Monday around the 15^th of January since 1986 in the Martin Luther King Day.

Exercise 2: Say if the statements are right or wrong. Develop your answers thanks to the text

1. MLK went to University in his native town of Atlanta.
2. He used violence to impose his points of view.
3. As a child, he went to school with white children.
4. He did not have time to start a family.
5. MLK never went to prison.
6. He died of cancer when he was a middle-aged man.
7. People were really sad when he died.  (Find 2 justifications)

Exercise 3: Answer the questions in your own words.

1. Who is this text about?
2. In what country was he born?
3. What were his parents' jobs?
4. In the 1950s, what was the difference between the North of the country and the South?
5. Who was Rosa Parks?
6. Did the Supreme Court approve of segregation in buses?
7. Who was his model?
8. What is his most famous speech? When did he do it?
9. What is MLK's record?
10. Was his death a surprise? Justify.

Exercise 4: Written expression

What is MLK's legacy? What is the situation today? In what aspect is it different from the 1950s? In what aspect is it the same as in MLK's times?

In a 10 lines paragraph, give your personal opinion.

Ask someone to correct your exercise.