martin luther king whose given name was Michael King Jr.
was born in Atlanta, Georgia;
January 15, 1929
Dr. King married Coretta Scott on June 18, 1953, They were the parents of four children:
Yolanda King, Martin Luther King III, Dexter Scott King, and Bernice King.
An icon of America's civil rights struggle, Dr. King fought for social justice through
peaceful protest and gave some of the most legendary speeches of the 20th century.
was an American Baptist minister and activist who became the most visible spokesman
and leader of the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968.
African-American church leader and son of early civil rights minister and activist Martin
Luther King.
at age 15 he was accepted to Morehouse College, a historically black school in Atlanta. In
the summer before his senior year of college, Dr. King knew that he was destined to
continue the family profession of pastoral work and decided to enter the ministry. He
graduated from Morehouse at age 19, and then enrolled at Crozer Theological Seminary
in Chester, Pennsylvania, where he received his Divinity degree in 1951. He received his
Ph.D. in systematic theology from Boston University in 1955.
Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. was a civil rights legend. In the mid-1950s, Dr. King led
the movement to end racial segregation and counter prejudice in America through
peaceful protest. His speeches, some of the most iconic of the 20th century, had a
profound effect on the national consciousness of the United States. Through his
leadership, the civil rights movement opened doors to education and employment that
had long been closed to America's black population.
In 1954, when he was 25 years old, Dr. King became pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist
Church in Montgomery, Alabama. In March 1955, Claudette Colvin - a 15-year-old black
student from Montgomery - refused to give up her seat on the bus to a white man, in
violation of Jim Crow laws, local laws in the southern United States. States that enforced
racial segregation. Dr. King was part of the Birmingham African American community
committee that investigated the case. The local chapter of the National Association for
the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)
Dr. King's prominent and open role in the boycott led to numerous threats against his
life, and his home was bombed. He was arrested during the campaign, which culminated
in the United States District Court ruling in Browder v. Gayle (in which Colvin was a
plaintiff) ending racial segregation on all public buses in Montgomery. Dr. King's role in
the bus boycott made him a national figure and the best-known spokesman for the civil
rights movement.
On August 28, 1963, the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom became the
pinnacle of Dr. King's national and international influence. Before a crowd of 250,000, he
delivered the legendary "I Have a Dream" speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
That speech, along with many others Dr. King delivered, has had a lasting influence on
world rhetoric.
In 1964, King received the Nobel Peace Prize for his activism for civil rights and social
justice. Most of the rights that Dr. King organized protests for became law with the
passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Dr. King was driven to focus on social and economic justice in America. He had traveled
to Memphis, Tennessee, in early April 1968 to help organize a sanitation workers' strike,
and on the evening of April 3 he delivered the legendary "I've Been to the Mountaintop"
speech, in which he compared the strike with the long struggle for human freedom and
the battle for economic justice.
But Dr. King would not live to make that vision a reality. The next day, April 4, 1968, Dr.
King was shot to death on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis by James Earl
Ray, a petty criminal who had escaped the previous year from a maximum-security
prison.
