Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr. was born Michael King on January 15, 1929, at 501 Auburn Avenue in Atlanta. In the summer of 1941 the family moved from Auburn Avenue to 193 Boulevard in Atlanta.⁠[1]

His father, Martin Luther King Sr., born Michael King on December 19, 1897, in Stockbridge, Georgia, was a Baptist minister and civic leader in Atlanta; he married Alberta Christine Williams at Ebenezer Baptist Church on Thanksgiving Day 1926. They had three children: Willie Christine (born 1927), Martin Luther King Jr. and Alfred Daniel Williams (born 1930). His maternal grandfather, A. D. Williams, led Ebenezer Baptist Church from 1894; after Williams died in 1931, King Sr. succeeded him and served the church for 44 years. In 1934 father and son took the name Martin Luther King.⁠[2][3]

Clayborne Carson judges that his family’s social gospel tradition and NAACP activism, together with the economic hardship of the Depression, shaped King’s political outlook.⁠[3]

King entered Morehouse College on September 20, 1944, where he was influenced by Benjamin E. Mays and George Kelsey. On August 6, 1946, the Atlanta Constitution published his letter to the editor on the rights of Black Americans. On February 25, 1948, he was ordained and became assistant pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church, and on June 8 of that year he received a B.A. in sociology from Morehouse College.⁠[1][3]

On September 14, 1948, King entered Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, PennsylvaniaPennsylvaniaPennsylvania (officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania) is a Middle Atlantic state of the United States; its capital is Harrisburg, and Philadelphia and Pittsburgh are its two great metropolitan areas. One of the original 13 states, it ratified the U.S. Constitution on December 12, 1787, the second state to do so. Its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 13,002,700.Open the full entry. He graduated at the top of his class in May 1951 with a B.D. and gave the valedictory address. On September 13 of that year he began graduate study in systematic theology at Boston University, which awarded him a doctorate in systematic theology on June 5, 1955.⁠[1][3]

On September 1, 1954, King began his pastorate at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, AlabamaAlabamaAlabama is a U.S. state in the Southeast on the Gulf of Mexico, with its capital at Montgomery. It was admitted to the Union on December 14, 1819, as the 22nd state, and the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted 5,024,279 residents.Open the full entry.⁠[1]

On December 1, 1955, Rosa ParksRosa ParksRosa Parks (1913–2005) was an American civil rights activist. Her arrest in 1955 for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white passenger in Montgomery, Alabama, helped spark the 1955–56 Montgomery bus boycott, often seen as the start of the U.S. civil rights movement.Open the full entry was arrested in Montgomery for refusing to give up her bus seat, and Jo Ann Robinson and other members of the Women’s Political Council printed leaflets calling for a one-day bus boycott. On December 5 the Montgomery Improvement Association was formed at Holt Street Baptist Church, with King as president. BritannicaEncyclopædia BritannicaEncyclopædia Britannica is a general English-language encyclopedia first published in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1768; the name also refers to its publisher, Chicago-based Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. (which presents itself as The Britannica Group). The print edition ended in 2012, and the company’s main businesses since then have been the online encyclopedia Britannica.com, digital education products for schools and libraries, and Merriam-Webster dictionaries.Open the full entry judges that he was chosen partly because he was young, well trained and new enough to the city to have made few enemies.⁠[1][4]

King became the boycott’s principal spokesman and adopted nonviolent protest under the influence of Gandhi. On January 30, 1956, his home was bombed while he was speaking at a mass meeting; his wife and daughter were unhurt, and he urged the angry crowd outside to remain nonviolent.⁠[3][1]

On November 13, 1956, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed Browder v. Gayle, ruling bus segregation in Montgomery and Alabama unconstitutional. On December 21 Montgomery buses resumed full service on all routes, and King was among the first to ride the integrated buses.⁠[1]

On January 10–11, 1957, Southern Black ministers met in Atlanta and named King chairman of the Southern Negro Leaders Conference on Transportation and Nonviolent Integration, later known as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Britannica judges that the organization gave him a base across the South and a national platform.⁠[1][5]

On February 18 of that year King appeared on the cover of Time. On March 6 he attended Ghana’s independence celebrations and met Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah. On May 17, at the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom at the Lincoln Memorial, he gave his first national address, “Give Us the Ballot.” On June 13 he and Ralph AbernathyRalph AbernathyRalph Abernathy (1926–1990) was an American Baptist pastor and civil rights leader who was Martin Luther King Jr.’s chief aide and closest associate in the 1950s and 1960s. He co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with King and led it as president from 1968, after King’s assassination, until 1977.Open the full entry met Vice President Richard NixonRichard NixonRichard Nixon (1913–1994) was an American politician who represented California in the U.S. House and Senate, served as vice president from 1953 to 1961 and was the 37th president of the United States from 1969 to 1974. His administration opened relations with China, signed strategic arms limitation agreements with the Soviet Union and ended U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War; he resigned over the Watergate scandal on August 9, 1974, the only U.S. president to do so.Open the full entry.⁠[1]

On June 23, 1958, King and other civil rights leaders met President Dwight D. EisenhowerDwight D. EisenhowerDwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) was an American army general and politician who served as supreme commander of Allied forces in western Europe during World War II and as the 34th president of the United States, a Republican, from 1953 to 1961.Open the full entry in Washington. His book Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story was published on September 17. On September 20, during a book signing at Blumstein’s department store in Harlem, New York City, he was stabbed by Izola Ware Curry; doctors at Harlem Hospital removed the seven-inch letter opener.⁠[1]

On February 3, 1959, King began a month-long visit to India, meeting Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and followers of Gandhi. Britannica judges that his discussions with Gandhi’s followers strengthened his conviction that nonviolent resistance was the most potent weapon available to oppressed people.⁠[1][5]

On February 1, 1960, King moved to Atlanta to devote more time to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and joined his father as co-pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church. In May an all-white Montgomery jury acquitted him of tax fraud. On June 23 he met privately in New York City with John F. KennedyJohn F. KennedyJohn F. Kennedy (1917–1963) was an American politician who represented Massachusetts in the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate and served as the 35th president of the United States from 1961 to 1963. The youngest person elected president and the first Roman Catholic to hold the office, he was assassinated in Dallas on November 22, 1963.Open the full entry, then a presidential candidate.⁠[1][5]

On October 19, 1960, King was arrested at a sit-in at Rich’s department store in Atlanta and was then sentenced to four months of hard labor for violating probation and sent to Reidsville State Prison Farm; he was released on $2,000 bond on October 27. Britannica judges that Kennedy’s intervention on his behalf was widely publicized and is believed to have helped Kennedy’s narrow election victory eight days later.⁠[1][5]

On May 21, 1961, after Freedom Riders were attacked in Alabama, King addressed a rally at a Montgomery church besieged by a mob. On October 16 he met President Kennedy and urged him to issue a second Emancipation Proclamation. On December 16 King, Ralph Abernathy, William G. Anderson and others were arrested by police chief Laurie Pritchett during a campaign in Albany, Georgia; from July 27 to August 10, 1962, King was jailed for two weeks after an arrest at an Albany prayer vigil. Britannica judges that King and his colleagues did not achieve their goal of desegregating parks and other facilities in Albany.⁠[1][5]

In the spring of 1963 King led protests in Birmingham, Alabama, against segregated lunch counters and discriminatory hiring. He was arrested on April 12, wrote his “Letter from Birmingham Jail” on April 16 in response to eight clergymen, and was released on April 19. Defending nonviolent direct action, the letter states, “Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension.” The confrontation peaked on May 7, when police used fire hoses, dogs, clubs and cattle prods against about 4,000 demonstrators.⁠[6][1]

On August 28, 1963, the March on Washington, which King helped organize, brought more than 200,000 people to a peaceful gathering at the Lincoln Memorial. King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech and afterward met President Kennedy and Vice President Lyndon B. JohnsonLyndon B. JohnsonLyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) was an American politician who served Texas as a U.S. representative and senator and led the Senate Democrats, became vice president in 1961 and succeeded to the presidency on the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963, serving as the 36th president of the United States from 1963 to 1969. His administration enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and other “Great Society” legislation while expanding the U.S. military commitment in the Vietnam War.Open the full entry at the White House.⁠[6][1]

On September 18 King delivered the eulogy at the funerals of three of the four girls killed in the September 15 bombing of Birmingham’s Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. On October 10 Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy authorized the Federal Bureau of Investigation to wiretap King’s home telephone.⁠[1]

On January 3, 1964, Time named King its “Man of the Year.” On January 18 President Lyndon B. Johnson met King, Roy Wilkins, Whitney Young and James Farmer to seek their support for the War on Poverty. On March 26 King met Malcolm X in Washington, D.C., for the first and only time. On June 11 he was arrested and jailed in St. Augustine, FloridaFloridaFlorida is a U.S. state occupying mainly the Florida peninsula, with its capital at Tallahassee; its most populous city is Jacksonville. It entered the Union on March 3, 1845, as the 27th state, and had a population of 21,538,187 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry, for seeking service at a whites-only restaurant.⁠[1]

That year Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Britannica notes that the law enabled the federal government to enforce desegregation of public accommodations and outlawed discrimination in publicly owned facilities and in employment.⁠[7][6]

On November 18, after King criticized the Federal Bureau of Investigation, its director J. Edgar Hoover called him “the most notorious liar in the country”; the two met at the Justice Department on December 1.⁠[1]

On December 10, 1964, King received the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, awarded “for his non-violent struggle for civil rights for the Afro-American population.” At 35 he was then the youngest recipient, and he pledged the entire $54,000 award to the civil rights struggle.⁠[8][7][1]

On March 7, 1965, “Bloody Sunday,” marchers were beaten at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. After a federal judge upheld the marchers’ right to march, King, James Forman and John LewisJohn Lewis (civil rights leader)John Lewis (1940–2020) was an American civil rights leader and politician. He chaired the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee from 1963 to 1966, led the 1965 “Bloody Sunday” march in Selma, Alabama, and was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1986, representing Georgia’s Fifth Congressional District for more than thirty years.Open the full entry led the Selma to Montgomery march from March 17 to 25. Clayborne Carson judges that the Selma marches helped build support for the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which Congress passed that year.⁠[1][3][7]

On August 12 King publicly opposed the Vietnam War at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s ninth annual convention. That year the family moved to 234 Sunset Avenue in Atlanta.⁠[1]

On January 26, 1966, King and his wife moved into an apartment on South Hamlin Avenue in Chicago to draw attention to poor housing conditions, launching a campaign against housing discrimination. Britannica judges that the resulting agreement with the city to enforce existing housing laws had little effect and that the campaign was undercut by Mayor Richard J. Daley’s opposition and by Northern racism.⁠[1][9]

On June 7, after James Meredith was shot near Memphis, King, Floyd McKissick and Stokely Carmichael resumed Meredith’s “March Against Fear” toward Jackson, MississippiMississippiMississippi is a state of the United States on the Gulf of Mexico; Jackson is both its capital and its largest city. It was admitted to the Union on December 10, 1817, as the 20th state, and its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 2,961,279.Open the full entry.⁠[1]

On April 4, 1967, at Riverside Church in New York City, King delivered “Beyond Vietnam” to Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam, calling on the United States to take new steps to end the war; on April 15 he restated his opposition to U.S. involvement at a large peace rally.⁠[1][9]

On December 4 King publicly announced plans for the Poor People’s Campaign, a mass civil disobedience effort in Washington, D.C. Britannica judges that he sought to build a multiracial coalition of poor people to address poverty and unemployment, but that support for the effort was limited.⁠[1][9]

On March 28, 1968, King led a march of some 6,000 people in Memphis, TennesseeTennesseeTennessee is a U.S. state in the southeast-central United States, with its capital at Nashville. It was admitted to the Union on June 1, 1796, as the 16th state, and the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted 6,910,840 residents.Open the full entry, in support of striking sanitation workers; it turned violent and King was rushed from the scene. On April 3 he returned to Memphis and gave his final speech, “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop,” at Mason Temple, saying, “I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you.”⁠[1][9]

At about 6:05 p.m. on April 4, 1968, King was shot while standing on the second-floor balcony outside his room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis; a single bullet struck the lower right side of his face, and aides including Ralph Abernathy rushed to help him. An ambulance took him to St. Joseph’s Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 7:05 p.m. The killing set off riots in more than 100 cities.⁠[10][9]

The Federal Bureau of Investigation opened an investigation. The fugitive James Earl Ray was extradited from Britain to the United States on July 19, 1968, pleaded guilty on March 10, 1969, and was sentenced to 99 years in prison; he died in prison on April 23, 1998. In 2000 the U.S. Justice Department announced that its internal investigation, opened in 1998 at the King family’s request, had not found sufficient evidence to warrant further investigation.⁠[10][9]

King was buried in Atlanta on April 9, 1968.⁠[1]

On November 2, 1983, President Ronald ReaganRonald ReaganRonald Reagan (1911–2004) was an American politician and actor who worked as a radio sports announcer and film actor before serving as governor of California from 1967 to 1975 and as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989.Open the full entry signed H.R. 3706 (Public Law 98-144) in the White House Rose Garden, making King’s birthday a federal holiday. The holiday was first observed in 1986.⁠[11][3]

The Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial at 1100 Ohio Drive SW in Washington, D.C., carved in granite, was dedicated on August 28, 2011, the 48th anniversary of the March on Washington. The King Center notes that King is the only non-president honored with a national holiday and the only non-president memorialized on the National Mall.⁠[12][7]

In Boston King met Coretta Scott KingCoretta Scott KingCoretta Scott King (1927–2006) was an American civil rights activist and the wife of Martin Luther King Jr. After his assassination in 1968 she founded the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change and led the campaign to make his birthday a federal holiday.Open the full entry, an Alabama native studying at the New England Conservatory of Music. They married on June 18, 1953, at the Scott family home near Marion, Alabama.⁠[4][1]

King and Coretta Scott King had four children: Yolanda Denise King (born November 17, 1955), Martin Luther King III (born October 23, 1957), Dexter Scott King (born January 31, 1961) and Bernice Albertine King (born March 28, 1963).⁠[1][4]

King’s books include Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story (1958); Strength to Love, a collection of sermons published on June 5, 1963; Why We Can’t Wait (June 1964); and Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (June 1967).⁠[1]

In 1968 Coretta Scott King formally founded the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change as a “living memorial” to King. Located at 449 Auburn Avenue in Atlanta, it displays artifacts from King’s life in Freedom Hall and adjoins the gravesite of King and Coretta Scott King.⁠[7][13]

The National Park Service’s Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site preserves places connected with King’s life along Auburn Avenue in Atlanta, including his birth home, Ebenezer Baptist Church and King’s crypt set in a reflecting pool; the birth home is open only for ticketed ranger-led tours. The National Park Service notes that King shared the pulpit of Ebenezer Baptist Church with his father for eight years.⁠[13]

Britannica’s David L. Lewis judges that King’s most significant contribution was linking Black aspirations to widely shared democratic and Christian ideals, which built broad support for civil rights reform, and that his strategy of nonviolent protest and interracial cooperation was effective against legalized segregation but proved inadequate in his final years, when he addressed national problems of race and economics. Lewis also notes that scholars have increasingly emphasized the role of local Black leaders, and that grassroots activists such as Rosa Parks and Fred Shuttlesworth paved the way for King’s national prominence.⁠[14]

The Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change: Official website: https://thekingcenter.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[15]

The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute (Stanford UniversityStanford UniversityStanford University is a research university in California founded by Leland and Jane Stanford in 1885 and opened in 1891.Open the full entry): Official website: https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/ (opens in a new window).⁠[16]

Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial (National Park Service): Web page: https://www.nps.gov/mlkm/learn/historyculture/index.htm (opens in a new window).⁠[12]

Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site (National Park Service overview): Web page: https://www.nps.gov/articles/kingsite.htm (opens in a new window).⁠[13]

Nobel PrizeNobel PrizeThe Nobel Prize is an international award established under the will of Alfred Nobel, comprising five prizes in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and peace, awarded since 1901; its funds are managed by the Nobel Foundation, whose Board is based in Stockholm. The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, established in 1968, is not a Nobel Prize.Open the full entry (1964 Peace Prize laureate facts): Web page: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1964/king/facts/ (opens in a new window).⁠[8]