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National Portrait Gallery Opens One Life: Martin Luther King Jr

Under the leadership of Martin Luther King Jr., non-violent protest became the defining feature of the modern civil rights movement in America.

Martin Luther King, Jr. by Robert Adelman, 1963. Gelatin silver print. Image: 15.8 x 23.7 cm (6 1/4 x 9 5/16"). Sheet: 20.2 x 25.6 cm (7 15/16 x 10 1/16"). National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution© Bob Adelman NPG.2006.16
Martin Luther King, Jr. by Robert Adelman, 1963. Gelatin silver print. Image: 15.8 x 23.7 cm (6 1/4 x 9 5/16″). Sheet: 20.2 x 25.6 cm (7 15/16 x 10 1/16″). National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution© Bob Adelman NPG.2006.16

The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery will open an exhibition recognizing King’s extraordinary impact on American civil rights June 28. “One Life: Martin Luther King Jr.” will mark the 50th anniversary of the “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom” and King’s stirring “I Have a Dream speech,” which took place Aug. 28, 1963. Through historic photographs, prints, paintings and memorabilia—chosen principally from the Portrait Gallery’s collection—this one-room exhibition will trace the trajectory of King’s career, from his rise to prominence as the leader of the national civil rights movement to his work as an anti-war activist and advocate for those living in poverty.

A brilliant strategist, King first demonstrated the power of passive resistance in 1955, while helping to lead the prolonged bus boycott in Montgomery, Ala., that succeeded in dismantling bus segregation laws. Fresh from the victory that brought him national recognition, the charismatic King cofounded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and took the lead in directing its civil rights initiatives. In a carefully orchestrated campaign of peaceful protest to expose and defeat racial injustice, King awakened the nation’s conscience and built support for the landmark civil rights legislation of the 1960s.

The exhibition includes photographs documenting significant moments in King’s career. One shows King and Rosa Parks at a mass meeting during the Montgomery bus boycott, another pictures King and Ralph Abernathy as they ride the first integrated bus in Montgomery and another represents King witnessing President Lyndon B. Johnson’s signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The exhibition also features commemorative buttons and the program from the “March on Washington,” the original art created for the Time cover when the magazine named King “Man of the Year” and two issues of Life magazine covering his assassination and funeral.

The National Portrait Gallery, part of the Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture, is located at Eighth and F streets N.W., Washington, D.C. Smithsonian Information: (202) 633-1000. Website: npg.si.edu