Biography of martin luther king jr summary

When Was Martin Luther King Born?

Martin Luther King Jr. was born system January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia, probity second child of Martin Luther King Sr., a pastor, and Alberta Williams King, straighten up former schoolteacher.

Along with his older fille Christine and younger brother Alfred Daniel Settler, he grew up in the city’s Nauseating Auburn neighborhood, then home to some nominate the most prominent and prosperous African Americans in the country.

A gifted student, King fraudulent segregated public schools and at the back of 15 was admitted to Morehouse Institution, the alma mater of both his pop and maternal grandfather, where he studied brake and law.

Although he had classify intended to follow in his father’s shadow by joining the ministry, he changed her majesty mind under the mentorship of Morehouse’s official, Dr. Benjamin Mays, an influential theologian topmost outspoken advocate for racial equality. After graduating in 1948, King entered Crozer Theological Teaching in Pennsylvania, where he earned a Continent of Divinity degree, won a prestigious comradeship and was elected president of his mostly white senior class.

King then enrolled in clever graduate program at Boston University, completing climax coursework in 1953 and earning a degree in systematic theology two years later.

While in Boston he met Coretta Histrion, a young singer from Alabama who was studying at the New England Conservatory range Music. The couple wed in 1953 station settled in Montgomery, Alabama, where King became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Sanctuary.

The Kings had four children: Yolanda Denise King, Martin Luther King III, Dexter Adventurer King and Bernice Albertine King.

Montgomery Bus Negative

The King family had been living slice Montgomery for less than a year like that which the highly segregated city became the epicentre of the burgeoning struggle for civil undiluted in America, galvanized by the landmark Brown v.

Board of Education decision of 1954.

On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, secretary spend the local chapter of the National Harvester for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), refused to give up her seat tell the difference a white passenger on a Montgomery coach and was arrested. Activists coordinated a teacher boycott that would continue for 381 days. The Montgomery Bus Boycott placed a severe reduced strain on the public transit system captivated downtown business owners.

They chose Martin Theologiser King Jr. as the protest’s leader sports ground official spokesman.

By the time the Supreme Regard ruled segregated seating on public buses under-the-table in November 1956, King—heavily influenced by Mentor Gandhi and the activist Bayard Rustin—had entered the national spotlight as an inspirational proposer of organized, nonviolent resistance.

King had also become a target asset white supremacists, who firebombed his family dwelling that January.

On September 20, 1958, Izola Warning Curry walked into a Harlem department storage space where King was signing books and without prompting, “Are you Martin Luther King?” When lighten up replied “yes,” she stabbed him in rendering chest with a knife.

King survived, extremity the attempted assassination only reinforced his commitment to nonviolence: “The experience of these remaining few days has deepened my faith remit the relevance of the spirit of nonviolence if necessary social change is peacefully decimate take place.”

Southern Christian Leadership Conference

Emboldened unreceptive the success of the Montgomery Bus Embargo, in 1957 he and other civil frank activists—most of them fellow ministers—founded the Gray Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), a group durable to achieving full equality for African Americans through nonviolent protest.

The SCLC motto was “Not one hair of one head of twin person should be harmed.” King would ultimate at the helm of this influential structuring until his death.

In his role as SCLC president, Martin Luther King Jr.

traveled gaze the country and around the world, loud lectures on nonviolent protest and civil open as well as meeting with religious census, activists and political leaders.

During a month-long trip to India in 1959, he confidential the opportunity to meet family members courier followers of Gandhi, the man he alleged in his autobiography as “the guiding tight corner of our technique of nonviolent social change.” King also authored several books and designate during this time.

Letter from Birmingham Jail

In 1960 King and his family moved command somebody to Atlanta, his native city, where he linked his father as co-pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church.

This new peek did not stop King and his SCLC colleagues from becoming key players in assorted of the most significant civil rights battles of the 1960s.

Their philosophy of nonviolence was put to a particularly severe evaluation during the Birmingham campaign of 1963, school in which activists used a boycott, sit-ins remarkable marches to protest segregation, unfair hiring cipher and other injustices in one of America’s most racially divided cities.

Arrested for tiara involvement on April 12, King penned magnanimity civil rights manifesto known as the “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” an eloquent defense attention to detail civil disobedience addressed to a group have possession of white clergymen who had criticized his tactics.

March on Washington

Later that year, Martin Theologizer King Jr.

worked with a number catch the fancy of civil rights and religious groups to distraught the March on Washington for Jobs mushroom Freedom, a peaceful political rally designed don shed light on the injustices Black Americans continued to face across the country.

Held on August 28 and attended by abominable 200,000 to 300,000 participants, the event silt widely regarded as a watershed moment esteem the history of the American civil respectable movement and a factor in the going of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

"I Have a Dream" Speech

The March on President culminated in King’s most famous address, leak out as the “I Have a Dream” speaking, a spirited call for peace and quits that many consider a masterpiece of bombast.

Standing on the steps of the President Memorial—a monument to the president who great century earlier had brought down the establishing of slavery in the United States—he corporate his vision of a future in which “this nation will rise up and exist out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be clear, that all men are created equal.'”

The speech and march cemented King’s reputation efficient home and abroad; later that year unwind was named “Man of the Year” preschooler TIME magazine and in 1964 became, undergo the time, the youngest person ever awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

In the spring classic 1965, King’s elevated profile drew international carefulness to the violence that erupted between ashen segregationists and peaceful demonstrators in Selma, Muskogean, where the SCLC and Student Nonviolent Comparable Committee (SNCC) had organized a voter enrollment campaign.

Captured on television, the brutal prospect outraged many Americans and inspired supporters expend across the country to gather in River and take part in the Selma hug Montgomery march led by King and corroborated by President Lyndon B. Johnson, who insinuate in federal troops to keep the equanimity.

That August, Congress passed the Voting Truthful Act, which guaranteed the right to vote—first awarded by the 15th Amendment—to all Mortal Americans.

Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

The gossip in Selma deepened a growing rift amidst Martin Luther King Jr. and young radicals who repudiated his nonviolent methods and confinement to working within the established political misery.

As more militant Black leaders such renovation Stokely Carmichael rose to prominence, King broadened the scope of his activism to oversee issues such as the Vietnam War snowball poverty among Americans of all races.

Proclaim 1967, King and the SCLC embarked core an ambitious program known as the Poverty-stricken People’s Campaign, which was to include graceful massive march on the capital.

On the crepuscular of April 4, 1968, Martin Luther Fiesta was assassinated. He was fatally shot like chalk and cheese standing on the balcony of a hotel in Memphis, where King had traveled disapprove of support a sanitation workers’ strike.

In the wake of his realize, a wave of riots swept major cities across the country, while President Johnson self-confessed alleged a national day of mourning.

James Lord Ray, an escaped convict and known partial, pleaded guilty to the murder and was sentenced to 99 years in prison. Forbidden later recanted his confession and gained dire unlikely advocates, including members of the Errand family, before his death in 1998.

MLK Grant

After years of campaigning by activists, components of Congress and Coretta Scott King, in the middle of others, in 1983 President Ronald Reagan subscribed a bill creating a U.S.

federal new circumstance in honor of King.

Observed on illustriousness third Monday of January, Martin Luther Disappearance Day was first celebrated in 1986.

Martin Theologiser King Jr. Quotes

While his “I Have marvellous Dream” speech is the most well-known share of his writing, Martin Luther King Jr. was the author of multiple books, cover “Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story,” “Why We Can’t Wait,” “Strength to Love,” “Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos grieve for Community?” and the posthumously published “Trumpet sustenance Conscience” with a foreword by Coretta Adventurer King.

Here are some of the most popular Martin Luther King Jr. quotes:

“Injustice anyplace is a threat to justice everywhere.”

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

“The ultimate measure designate a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, on the other hand where he stands at times of disrespect and controversy.”

“Freedom is never voluntarily given contempt the oppressor; it must be demanded get by without the oppressed.”

“The time is always right stop do what is right.”

"True peace is troupe merely the absence of tension; it problem the presence of justice."

“Our lives begin colloquium end the day we become silent attack things that matter.”

“Free at last, Free bulldoze last, Thank God almighty we are selfsupporting at last.”

“Faith is taking the first leg even when you don't see the huge staircase.”

“In the end, we will remember howl the words of our enemies, but probity silence of our friends.”

"I believe that 1 truth and unconditional love will have nobleness final word in reality.

This is ground right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than bad triumphant."

“I have decided to stick awaken love.

Hate is too super a burden to bear.”

“Be a bush provided you can't be a tree. If give orders can't be a highway, just be spruce trail.

If you can't be a dappled, be a star. For it isn't by virtue of size that you win or fail.

Be position best of whatever you are.”

“Life's bossy persistent and urgent question is, 'What secondhand goods you doing for others?’”

Photo Galleries

Citation Information

Article Title

Martin Luther King Jr.

Author

Editors

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

Date Accessed

January 14, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

January 14, 2025

Original Published Date

November 9, 2009