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Martin Luther King, Jr. was
born on January 15, 1929 at his family home in Atlanta, Georgia. King was an
eloquent Baptist minister and leader of the civil-rights movement in America
from the Mid-1950s until his death by assassination in 1968. King promoted
non-violent means to achieve civil-rights reform and was awarded the 1964
Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts.
King's grandfather was a Baptist preacher. His father was pastor of
Atlanta's Ebenezer Baptist Church. King earned his own Bachelor of Divinity
degree from Crozier Theological Seminary in 1951 and earned his Doctor of
Philosophy from
Boston
University
in 1955.
While at seminary King became acquainted with Mohandas Gandhi's
philosophy of nonviolent social protest. On a trip to India in 1959 King met
with followers of Gandhi. During these discussions he became more convinced
than ever that nonviolent resistance was the most potent weapon available to
oppressed people in their struggle for freedom.
As a pastor of a Baptist church in Montgomery, Alabama, King lead a Black
bus boycott. He and ninety others were arrested and indicted under the
provisions of a law making it illegal to conspire to obstruct the operation
of a business. King and several others were found guilty, but appealed their
case. As the bus boycott dragged on, King was gaining a national reputation.
The ultimate success of the Montgomery bus boycott made King a national
hero.
Dr. King's 1963 Letter from Birmingham Jail inspired a growing
national civil rights movement. In Birmingham, the goal was to completely
end the system of segregation in every aspect of public life (stores, no
separate bathrooms and drinking
fountains,
etc.) and in job discrimination. Also in 1963, King led a massive march on
Washington DC where he delivered his now famous, I Have A Dream
speech. King's tactics of active nonviolence (sit-ins, protest marches) had
put civil-rights squarely on the national agenda.
On April 4, 1968, King was shot by James Earl Ray while standing on the
balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. He was only 39 at the
time of his death. Dr. King was turning his attention to a nationwide
campaign to help the poor at the time of his assassination. He had never
wavered in his insistence that nonviolence must remain the central tactic of
the civil-rights movement, nor in his faith that everyone in America would
some day attain equal justice.
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