Martin Luther King Junior 

Martin Luther King Jr.

 
Martin Luther King Jr. was a social activist and Baptist minister who played 
a key role in the American civil rights movement. King fought for equality 
and human rights for African Americans through peaceful protests and 
demonstrations. 
 
Martin Luther King was born on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia. His 
parents were Reverend Martin Luther King Sr. and Alberta Williams King. 
He had two siblings, the eldest was Christine and his younger brother was 
called Alfred Daniel. Both his father and grandfather had been pastors. The 
family lived on Auburn Avenue, otherwise known as “Sweet Auburn,” which 
was home to some of the most prosperous African Americans in the country. 
 
King suffered from depression through much of his life. In 1941, at the age 
of 12, after his grandmother died, King blamed himself and jumped out of a 
second-story window, but survived. 
 
At age 15, King entered Morehouse College in Atlanta, under a special 
wartime program. In his senior year he decided to enter the ministry, as his 
father had urged. He graduated from Morehouse in 1948. King spent the 
next three years at Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester. While here he 
became familiar with Gandhi’s philosophy of nonviolence. King was elected 
president of Crozer’s student body. From Crozer, King went to Boston 
University and received a doctorate for a dissertation titled “A Comparison of 
the Conceptions of God in the Thinking of Paul Tillich and Henry Nelson 
Wieman.”  
  
 
 
 
 
King married Coretta Scott on June 18, 1953. They had four children: 
children: Yolanda King, Martin Luther King III, Dexter Scott King, and 
Bernice King.  
 
King had been pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, 
Alabama, for just over a year when a small group of civil rights advocates in 
the city decided to contest racial segregation on that city’s public bus system. 
This event was called the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The boycott took place 
following the incident on December 1, 1955 involving Rosa Parks. Parks 
was an African American woman who had refused to surrender her bus seat 
to a white passenger. As a result she was arrested for violating the city’s 
segregation law. Activists formed the Montgomery Improvement Association 
to boycott the transit system. They chose Martin Luther King, Jr. as the 
protest’s leader and official spokesman. The boycott continued for 381 days, 
causing an economic strain on the public transit system and downtown 
business owners. The Montgomery Bus Boycott brought the subject of racial 
segregation to the focus of American politics. A lawsuit was filed against the 
racial segregation. On June 4, 1956 the laws were determined 
unconstitutional. The boycott had worked in that black people were now 
allowed to sit wherever they wanted to on the bus. In addition, the boycott 
had created a new leader for the civil rights movement in Martin Luther 
King, Jr. 
 
In 1957 King and other civil rights activists founded the Southern Christian 
Leadership Conference (SCLC), a group committed to achieving full equality 
for African Americans through nonviolent protest. As president of the 
organization, King lectured in all parts of the country and discussed 
race-related issues with religious and civil rights leaders at home and abroad 
in places such as India. While in India, he met family members and followers 
of Gandhi. King became increasingly convinced that nonviolent resistance 
was the best way to helping oppressed people in their struggle for freedom. 
 
In 1961, The Albany Movement took place. This was a desegregation 
coalition formed in Albany, Georgia. King and the SCLC became involved in 
the movement. Unfortunately, King and his colleagues failed to achieve their 
desegregation goals for public parks and other facilities. 
 
In April 1963, the SCLC began a campaign against racial segregation and 
economic injustice in Birmingham, Alabama. King was jailed along with 
large numbers of his supporters for protesting the treatment of blacks in 
Birmingham. From the Birmingham jail, King wrote a letter in which he 
explained his philosophy of nonviolence.  
 
Martin Luther King, Jr. worked with a number of civil rights and religious 
groups to organize the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, a 
peaceful political rally designed to shed light on the injustices African 
Americans continued to face across the country. On August 28, 1963, an 
interracial assembly of more than 200,000 people gathered in front of the 
Lincoln Memorial to demand equal justice for all citizens under the law. At 
the time, it was the largest gathering of protesters in Washington, D.C.'s 
history. It was here, in Washington that King delivered his famous “I Have a 
Dream,” speech. Standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial—a 
monument to the president who a century earlier had brought down the 
institution of slavery in the United States—he shared his vision of a future. 
“I Have a Dream" came to be regarded as one of the most influential 
speeches in the history of America. The March, and especially King's speech, 
helped put civil rights at the top of the agenda of reformers in the United 
States and also promoted passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The 
speech and march cemented King’s reputation at home and abroad; later that 
year he was named “Man of the Year” by TIME magazine and in 1964 
became the youngest person ever awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. 
  
King and the SCLC organised the civil rights march from Selma to 
Montgomery, Alabama, in 1965. The first attempt to march on March 7, 
1965, was halted because of mob and police violence against the 
demonstrators. This day has become known as Bloody Sunday and was a 
major turning point in the effort to gain public support for the civil rights 
movement. King was determined to lead a second march. 
 
 
He headed a procession of 1,500 marchers, black and white and he set out 
across Pettus Bridge outside Selma until the group came to a barricade of 
state troopers. While here, King delivered a speech that became known as 
"How Long, Not Long." In it, King stated that equal rights for African 
Americans could not be far away. Instead of going on and forcing a 
confrontation, he led his followers to kneel in prayer and then unpredictably 
turned back. This decision cost King many young radical supporters who 
blamed him for being too cautious. That August, Congress passed the Voting 
Rights Act, which guaranteed the right to vote. This occurred as a result of 
the Selma voting rights movement. 
 
The events in Selma deepened the rift between Martin Luther King, Jr. and 
young radicals who rejected his nonviolent methods and commitment to 
working within the political framework. On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther 
King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. He was shot while 
standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel, where he and his associates 
were staying. King had traveled to the area to support a sanitation workers’ 
strike. The killing sparked riots and disturbances in over 100 cities across 
the country. On March 10, 1969, the accused assassin, a white man, James 
Earl Ray, pleaded guilty to the murder and was sentenced to 99 years in 
prison. Ray later recanted his confession and since then the killing has 
remained a matter of controversy. 
President Lyndon B. Johnson declared April 7 a national day of mourning for 
 the civil rights leader. 
 
After years of campaigning by activists, members of Congress and Coretta 
Scott King, Martin Luther King Day was devised. In 1983 President Ronald 
Reagan signed a bill creating a U.S. federal holiday in honor of King. On the 
third Monday of January, Martin Luther King Day was first celebrated in 
1986. 
 
Martin Luther King Jr. was one of the main leaders in the civil rights 
movement from 1954 until his death in 1968.