Henry David Thoreau was born on July 12, 1817 in Concord, Massachusetts. Thoreau ended up attending Harvard College and studied Greek, Latin, and German while there. During the study period he fell ill and had to take a break from studying. In 1837 he graduated from Harvard but after that he didn't really know what he would do. Because he didn't know what he wanted to do, he ended up creating a school with his brother in 1838. Not long after John fell ill and the school soon collapsed. After this happened, Thoreau began working for his father. After college he became friends with Ralph Waldo Emerson and Emerson showed him transcendentalism. Interestingly enough, Emerson became like a teacher to Thoreau and they began to live together. Some of Thoreau's work was published in The Dial, a transcendentalist magazine. In 1845, Thoreau built a small house that sat on Emerson's land and on Walden Pond. Thoreau changed the way he lived life, which gave him enough time to focus on his interests. Before moving into his home he took a boat trip which inspired him to start writing again. He soon began writing about life living on Walden Pond. Interestingly enough he realized that many people were interested in his life because he showed readers the work of naturalists, environmentalists and writers. Thoreau's life was not all writing; he also ran into trouble with the law. It all started when he didn't pay a poll tax, so he had to spend a day in prison. He later wrote the essay known as "Civil Disobedience", the reason he did it was because he didn't agree with what the government was doing that... halfway through the document... which caused confusion. This became the headline and the result was that a march was created that included approximately 250,000 protestors in Washington, DC and this is where Martin Luther King gave one of the most famous speeches, “I have a dream”. This speech talked about the fact that there should be no division of races. All King wanted was for everyone to be equal and for discrimination to not exist. As a result, most of his protests have resulted in many people being threatened, arrested, beaten, and sometimes worse. On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King was killed by an assassin. King's death caused riots in many cities and 46 people were killed. In March 1969, James Earl Ray was found guilty of King's murder and sentenced to 99 years in prison. Many years after his sentence began, Ray maintained that he was innocent.