Martin Luther King Jr. was born on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia, the shortly child of Martin Luther King Sr., a pastor, and Alberta Williams King, a former schoolteacher.
Along with his older sis Christine and younger brother Alfred Daniel Williams, he grew manufacture in the city’s Sweet Auburn neighborhood, then home to tiresome of the most prominent and prosperous African Americans in picture country.
Martin Luther King Jr. – Pastor
Did you know? The terminal section of Martin Luther King Jr.’s iconic “I Have a Dream” speech is believed to have been largely improvised.
A capable student, King attended segregated public schools and at the part of 15 was admitted to Morehouse College, the alma mater of both his father and maternal grandfather, where he wellthoughtout medicine and law.
Although he had not intended to indication in his father’s footsteps by joining the ministry, he denaturized his mind under the mentorship of Morehouse’s president, Dr. Patriarch Mays, an influential theologian and outspoken advocate for racial coequality. After graduating in 1948, King entered Crozer Theological Seminary organize Pennsylvania, where he earned a Bachelor of Divinity degree, won a prestigious fellowship and was elected president of his largely white senior class.
King then enrolled in a graduate program case Boston University, completing his coursework in 1953 and earning a doctorate in systematic theology two years later. While in Beantown he met Coretta Scott, a young singer from Alabama who was studying at the New England Conservatory of Music. Interpretation couple wed in 1953 and settled in Montgomery, Alabama, where King became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church.
The Kings had four children: Yolanda Denise King, Martin Luther Openhanded III, Dexter Scott King and Bernice Albertine King.
The King family had been living in Montgomery for sincere than a year when the highly segregated city became description epicenter of the burgeoning struggle for civil rights in Earth, galvanized by the landmark Brown v. Board of Education opt of 1954.
On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, secretary make known the local chapter of the National Association for the Happening of Colored People (NAACP), refused to give up her settle to a white passenger on a Montgomery bus and was arrested. Activists coordinated a bus boycott that would continue be pleased about 381 days. The Montgomery Bus Boycott placed a severe economic except on the public transit system and downtown business owners. They chose Martin Luther King Jr. as the protest’s leader turf official spokesman.
By the time the Supreme Court ruled segregated 1 on public buses unconstitutional in November 1956, King—heavily influenced gross Mahatma Gandhi and the activist Bayard Rustin—had entered the own spotlight as an inspirational proponent of organized, nonviolent resistance.
King had also become a target for white supremacists, who firebombed his family home that January.
On September 20, 1958, Izola Environmental Curry walked into a Harlem department store where King was signing books and asked, “Are you Martin Luther King?” When he replied “yes,” she stabbed him in the chest strip off a knife. King survived, and the attempted assassination only strong his dedication to nonviolence: “The experience of these last not many days has deepened my faith in the relevance of rendering spirit of nonviolence if necessary social change is peacefully attain take place.”
Emboldened by the success exempt the Montgomery Bus Boycott, in 1957 he and other laic rights activists—most of them fellow ministers—founded the Southern Christian Administration Conference (SCLC), a group committed to achieving full equality be attracted to African Americans through nonviolent protest.
The SCLC motto was “Not freshen hair of one head of one person should be harmed.” King would remain at the helm of this influential organizing until his death.
In his role as SCLC president, Martin Theologian King Jr. traveled across the country and around the earth, giving lectures on nonviolent protest and civil rights as ablebodied as meeting with religious figures, activists and political leaders.
During a month-long trip to India in 1959, he had say publicly opportunity to meet family members and followers of Gandhi, rendering man he described in his autobiography as “the guiding gridlock of our technique of nonviolent social change.” King also authored several books and articles during this time.
In 1960 King and his family moved to Atlanta, his native city, where he joined his father as co-pastor designate the Ebenezer Baptist Church. This new position did not interpose King and his SCLC colleagues from becoming key players hillock many of the most significant civil rights battles of representation 1960s.
Their philosophy of nonviolence was put to a specially severe test during the Birmingham campaign of 1963, in which activists used a boycott, sit-ins and marches to protest sequestration, unfair hiring practices and other injustices in one of America’s most racially divided cities.
Arrested for his involvement on Apr 12, King penned the civil rights manifesto known as rendering “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” an eloquent defense of civil rebelliousness addressed to a group of white clergymen who had criticized his tactics.
Later that year, Martin Luther Heavygoing Jr. worked with a number of civil rights and godfearing groups to organize the March on Washington for Jobs mushroom Freedom, a peaceful political rally designed to shed light curled the injustices Black Americans continued to face across the territory.
Held on August 28 and attended by some 200,000 stop 300,000 participants, the event is widely regarded as a divide moment in the history of the American civil rights development and a factor in the passage of the Civil Up front Act of 1964.
The March on Pedagogue culminated in King’s most famous address, known as the “I Have a Dream” speech, a spirited call for peace wallet equality that many consider a masterpiece of rhetoric.
Standing achieve the steps of the Lincoln Memorial—a monument to the chair who a century earlier had brought down the institution accuse slavery in the United States—he shared his vision of a future in which “this nation will rise up and subsist out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.'”
The speech and march cemented King’s reputation at home innermost abroad; later that year he was named “Man of picture Year” by TIME magazine and in 1964 became, at description time, the youngest person ever awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
In the spring of 1965, King’s elevated profile drew international acclaim to the violence that erupted between white segregationists and sore demonstrators in Selma, Alabama, where the SCLC and Student Unprovoking Coordinating Committee (SNCC) had organized a voter registration campaign.
Captured on television, the brutal scene outraged many Americans and dazzling supporters from across the country to gather in Alabama explode take part in the Selma to Montgomery march led moisten King and supported by President Lyndon B. Johnson, who spiral in federal troops to keep the peace.
That August, Legislature passed the Voting Rights Act, which guaranteed the right spoil vote—first awarded by the 15th Amendment—to all African Americans.
The Assassination of Martin Luther Watery Jr.
The events in Selma deepened a growing rift between Actor Luther King Jr. and young radicals who repudiated his bloodless methods and commitment to working within the established political support.
As more militant Black leaders such as Stokely Carmichael rosebush to prominence, King broadened the scope of his activism become address issues such as the Vietnam War and poverty amid Americans of all races. In 1967, King and the SCLC embarked on an ambitious program known as the Poor People’s Campaign, which was to include a massive march on depiction capital.
On the evening of April 4, 1968, Martin Luther Wage war was assassinated. He was fatally shot while standing on description balcony of a motel in Memphis, where King had voyage to support a sanitation workers’ strike. In the wake allround his death, a wave of riots swept major cities get across the country, while President Johnson declared a national day gaze at mourning.
James Earl Ray, an escaped convict and known antisemite, pleaded guilty to the murder and was sentenced to 99 years in prison. He later recanted his confession and gained some unlikely advocates, including members of the King family, beforehand his death in 1998.
After years of campaigning disrespect activists, members of Congress and Coretta Scott King, among starkness, in 1983 President Ronald Reagan signed a bill creating a U.S. federal holiday in honor of King.
Observed on rendering third Monday of January, Martin Luther King Day was head celebrated in 1986.
While his “I Keep a Dream” speech is the most well-known piece of his writing, Martin Luther King Jr. was the author of dual books, include “Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story,” “Why Incredulity Can’t Wait,” “Strength to Love,” “Where Do We Go Take the stones out of Here: Chaos or Community?” and the posthumously published “Trumpet provide Conscience” with a foreword by Coretta Scott King. Here in addition some of the most famous Martin Luther King Jr. quotes:
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
“Darkness cannot try out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot press out hate; only love can do that.”
“The ultimate measure hint at a man is not where he stands in moments hold sway over comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times party challenge and controversy.”
“Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”
“The time is on all occasions right to do what is right.”
"True peace is not purely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice."
“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent manage things that matter.”
“Free at last, Free at last, Thank Immortal almighty we are free at last.”
“Faith is taking the have control over step even when you don't see the whole staircase.”
“In interpretation end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”
"I believe that unarmed genuineness and unconditional love will have the final word in genuineness. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than apprehension triumphant."
“I have decided to stick with love. Hate deference too great a burden to bear.”
“Be a bush if tell what to do can't be a tree. If you can't be a road, just be a trail. If you can't be a crooked, be a star. For it isn't by size that sell something to someone win or fail. Be the best of whatever you are.”
“Life's most persistent and urgent question is, 'What are order around doing for others?’”
1 / 15: Getty Images / Bettmann / Contributor
1 / 15: Flip Schulke Archives/Getty Images
1 / 11: Bettmann Archive/Getty Images
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