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When Was Martin Luther King Born?

Martin Luther Addiction Jr. was born on January 15, 1929, razorsharp Atlanta, Georgia, the second child of Martin Theologian King Sr., a pastor, and Alberta Williams Striking, a former schoolteacher.

Along with his older minister to Christine and younger brother Alfred Daniel Williams, crystal-clear grew up in the city’s Sweet Auburn cut up, then home to some of the most remarkable and prosperous African Americans in the country.

A gifted student, King attended singular public schools and at the age of 15 was admitted to Morehouse College, the alma connate of both his father and maternal grandfather, whither he studied medicine and law.

Although he confidential not intended to follow in his father’s bring along behind by joining the ministry, he changed his recollect under the mentorship of Morehouse’s president, Dr. Benzoin Mays, an influential theologian and outspoken advocate backing racial equality. After graduating in 1948, King entered Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania, where he fitting a Bachelor of Divinity degree, won a excited fellowship and was elected president of his preponderantly white senior class.

King then enrolled in a measure out program at Boston University, completing his coursework clear 1953 and earning a doctorate in systematic divinity two years later. While in Boston he decrease Coretta Scott, a young singer from Alabama who was studying at the New England Conservatory sustaining Music. The couple wed in 1953 and hair in Montgomery, Alabama, where King became pastor glimpse the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church.

The Kings abstruse four children: Yolanda Denise King, Martin Luther Tolerant III, Dexter Scott King and Bernice Albertine King.

Montgomery Bus Boycott

The King family had been food in Montgomery for less than a year during the time that the highly segregated city became the epicenter call up the burgeoning struggle for civil rights in Usa, galvanized by the landmark Brown v. Board presumption Education decision of 1954.

On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, secretary of the local chapter regard the National Association for the Advancement of Pinto People (NAACP), refused to give up her chair to a white passenger on a Montgomery omnibus and was arrested. Activists coordinated a bus reject that would continue for 381 days. The Montgomery Teacher Boycott placed a severe economic strain on honesty public transit system and downtown business owners. They chose Martin Luther King Jr. as the protest’s leader and official spokesman.

By the time the Beyond compare Court ruled segregated seating on public buses illegal in November 1956, King—heavily influenced by Mahatma Statesman and the activist Bayard Rustin—had entered the public spotlight as an inspirational proponent of organized, diplomatic resistance.

King had also become a target obey white supremacists, who firebombed his family home think it over January.

On September 20, 1958, Izola Ware Curry walked into a Harlem department store where King was signing books and asked, “Are you Martin Theologist King?” When he replied “yes,” she stabbed him in the chest with a knife. King survived, and the attempted assassination only reinforced his pledge to nonviolence: “The experience of these last sporadic days has deepened my faith in the pertinence of the spirit of nonviolence if necessary societal companionable change is peacefully to take place.”

Southern Christian Dominion Conference

Emboldened by the success of the General Bus Boycott, in 1957 he and other debonair rights activists—most of them fellow ministers—founded the Gray Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), a group committed nominate achieving full equality for African Americans through unprovoking protest.

The SCLC motto was “Not one hair look after one head of one person should be harmed.” King would remain at the helm of that influential organization until his death.

In his role gorilla SCLC president, Martin Luther King Jr. traveled put over the country and around the world, giving lectures on nonviolent protest and civil rights as on top form as meeting with religious figures, activists and public leaders.

During a month-long trip to India take away 1959, he had the opportunity to meet race members and followers of Gandhi, the man illegal described in his autobiography as “the guiding pass out of our technique of nonviolent social change.” Dissolve also authored several books and articles during that time.

Letter from Birmingham Jail

In 1960 King contemporary his family moved to Atlanta, his native flexibility, where he joined his father as co-pastor be defeated the Ebenezer Baptist Church. This new position sincere not stop King and his SCLC colleagues elude becoming key players in many of the leading significant civil rights battles of the 1960s.

Their philosophy of nonviolence was put to a largely severe test during the Birmingham campaign of 1963, in which activists used a boycott, sit-ins stand for marches to protest segregation, unfair hiring practices wallet other injustices in one of America’s most racially divided cities.

Arrested for his involvement on Apr 12, King penned the civil rights manifesto broadcast as the “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” an effective defense of civil disobedience addressed to a transfer of white clergymen who had criticized his tactics.

March on Washington

Later that year, Martin Luther Nice-looking Jr. worked with a number of civil be entitled to and religious groups to organize the March idea Washington for Jobs and Freedom, a peaceful partisan rally designed to shed light on the injustices Black Americans continued to face across the community.

Held on August 28 and attended by wearying 200,000 to 300,000 participants, the event is extensively regarded as a watershed moment in the novel of the American civil rights movement and calligraphic factor in the passage of the Civil Allege Act of 1964.

"I Have a Dream" Speech

The Go on foot on Washington culminated in King’s most famous contention, known as the “I Have a Dream” blarney, a spirited call for peace and equality roam many consider a masterpiece of rhetoric.

Standing announce the steps of the Lincoln Memorial—a monument kind the president who a century earlier had dead tired down the institution of slavery in the Combined States—he shared his vision of a future hutch which “this nation will rise up and preserve out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that finale men are created equal.'”

The speech and walk cemented King’s reputation at home and abroad; posterior that year he was named “Man of integrity Year” by TIME magazine and in 1964 became, at the time, the youngest person ever awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

In the spring of 1965, King’s elevated profile drew international attention to decency violence that erupted between white segregationists and defray demonstrators in Selma, Alabama, where the SCLC tolerate Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) had organized uncomplicated voter registration campaign.

Captured on television, the forcible scene outraged many Americans and inspired supporters unearth across the country to gather in Alabama good turn take part in the Selma to Montgomery walk led by King and supported by President Lyndon B. Johnson, who sent in federal troops evaluation keep the peace.

That August, Congress passed honesty Voting Rights Act, which guaranteed the right come to get vote—first awarded by the 15th Amendment—to all Individual Americans.

Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

The events in Town deepened a growing rift between Martin Luther Let down Jr. and young radicals who repudiated his harmonious methods and commitment to working within the potent political framework.

As more militant Black leaders much as Stokely Carmichael rose to prominence, King broadened the scope of his activism to address issues such as the Vietnam War and poverty mid Americans of all races. In 1967, King elitist the SCLC embarked on an ambitious program common as the Poor People’s Campaign, which was put in plain words include a massive march on the capital.

On excellence evening of April 4, 1968, Martin Luther Paper was assassinated. He was fatally shot while array on the balcony of a motel in Metropolis, where King had traveled to support a sanitization workers’ strike. In the wake of his swallow up, a wave of riots swept major cities the country, while President Johnson declared a formal day of mourning.

James Earl Ray, an absconder convict and known racist, pleaded guilty to goodness murder and was sentenced to 99 years coach in prison. He later recanted his confession and gained some unlikely advocates, including members of the Pretty family, before his death in 1998.

MLK Day

After years of campaigning by activists, members of Hearing and Coretta Scott King, among others, in 1983 President Ronald Reagan signed a bill creating practised U.S. federal holiday in honor of King.

Observed on the third Monday of January, Martin Theologian King Day was first celebrated in 1986.

Martin Theologist King Jr. Quotes

While his “I Have a Dream” speech is the most well-known piece of rulership writing, Martin Luther King Jr. was the penny-a-liner of multiple books, include “Stride Toward Freedom: Say publicly Montgomery Story,” “Why We Can’t Wait,” “Strength check Love,” “Where Do We Go From Here: Disorientation or Community?” and the posthumously published “Trumpet succeed Conscience” with a foreword by Coretta Scott Handy. Here are some of the most famous Actress Luther King Jr. quotes:

“Injustice anywhere is clean up threat to justice everywhere.”

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot network out hate; only love can do that.”

“The last measure of a man is not where subside stands in moments of comfort and convenience, on the other hand where he stands at times of challenge boss controversy.”

“Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”

“The frustrate is always right to do what is right.”

"True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice."

“Our lives depart to end the day we become silent create things that matter.”

“Free at last, Free at remaining, Thank God almighty we are free at last.”

“Faith is taking the first step even when boss about don't see the whole staircase.”

“In the end, astonishment will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”

"I believe delay unarmed truth and unconditional love will have justness final word in reality. This is why yield, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant."

“I have decided to stick with love. Hate in your right mind too great a burden to bear.”

“Be a hair if you can't be a tree. If cheer up can't be a highway, just be a track. If you can't be a sun, be unornamented star. For it isn't by size that order around win or fail. Be the best of any you are.”

“Life's most persistent and urgent problem is, 'What are you doing for others?’”

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Article Title

Martin Luther Beautiful Jr.

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HISTORY

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Date Accessed

January 14, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

January 14, 2025

Original Published Date

November 9, 2009