In spite of all these difficulties, he emerged as a Negro leader of the first rank. In the eleven-year period between 1957 and 1968, King traveled over six million miles and spoke over twenty-five hundred times, appearing wherever there was injustice, protest, and action. In those years he led a massive protest in Birmingham, Alabama, that caught the world by surprise. He delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech in Washington D.C. in front of 250,000 people. In 1963, King was named "Man of the Year" by Time magazine. At the age of thirty-five, Martin Luther King Jr., was the youngest man to ever receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Sadly, on April 4, 1968, King was assassinated while standing on the balcony of his motel room in Memphis, Tennessee.
Harriet Ross was born into slavery in 1819, in Dorchester County, Maryland. Harriet was known as a black "Moses" because she believed that God selected her to lead her people out of slavery. In 1849, at the age of twenty-nine Harriet feared that she would be sold to the South; so she made her escape. She had faithfully gone down to Egypt and had delivered six-bondmen by her own heroism. Harriet's success was wonderful. Time and time again she made visits to Maryland on the Underground Railroad and made preparations for herself and her passengers. The idea of being captured by slave-hunters or slaveholders seemed to never enter her mind. Half of the time, she had the appearance of someone asleep and would actually sit down by the roadside and go fast asleep. In all, she is believed to have delivered approximately 300 persons to freedom in the North. She died on March 10, 1913, and was buried with military honors in Auburn, New York.
Perhaps one of the best examples of past history would be Malcolm Little born on May 19, 1925, in Omaha, Nebraska. Malcolm was a smart, focused student and graduated from junior high at the top of his class. By 1942 Malcolm was coordinating various narcotic, prostitution, and gambling rings.