Monday the country celebrates the anniversary of the birth of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. It’s a day to recognize the life and accomplishments of the civil rights leader, who was gunned down in 1968 at the age of 39. During the 1950s and ‘60s King became the face of a nonviolent movement demanding an end to the Jim Crow and segregation laws that had oppressed people of color in this country for a century, since the end of the Civil War in 1865.