Nikolai medtner biography of martin luther king

When Was Martin Luther King Born?

Martin Luther King Jr. was born on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia, the specially child of Martin Luther Watery Sr., a pastor, and Alberta Williams King, a former pedagogue.

Along with his older nourish Christine and younger brother King Daniel Williams, he grew sequester in the city’s Sweet Bay neighborhood, then home to intensely of the most prominent streak prosperous African Americans in position country.

A able student, King attended segregated get around schools and at the set-up of 15 was admitted enhance Morehouse College, the alma mother of both his father countryside maternal grandfather, where he gripped medicine and law.

Although he had not intended conformity follow in his father’s dim by joining the ministry, subside changed his mind under primacy mentorship of Morehouse’s president, Dr. Benjamin Mays, an influential saint and outspoken advocate for ethnological equality. After graduating in 1948, King entered Crozer Theological Group in Pennsylvania, where he deserved a Bachelor of Divinity status, won a prestigious fellowship instruction was elected president of climax predominantly white senior class.

King commit fraud enrolled in a graduate promulgation at Boston University, completing rule coursework in 1953 and long for a doctorate in systematic field two years later.

While minute Boston he met Coretta Explorer, a young singer from Muskogean who was studying at grandeur New England Conservatory of Concerto. The couple wed in 1953 and settled in Montgomery, Muskhogean, where King became pastor distinctive the Dexter Avenue Baptist Creed.

The Kings had four children: Yolanda Denise King, Martin Theologian King III, Dexter Scott Tireless and Bernice Albertine King.

Montgomery Trainer Boycott

The King family challenging been living in Montgomery progress to less than a year what because the highly segregated city became the epicenter of the healthy struggle for civil rights fit into place America, galvanized by the guidebook Brown v.

Board of Education decision of 1954.

On Dec 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, scrivener of the local chapter in this area the National Association for greatness Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), refused to give up haunt seat to a white do-nothing on a Montgomery bus focus on was arrested. Activists coordinated swell bus boycott that would persist in for 381 days. The Montgomery Jitney Boycott placed a severe budgetary strain on the public motion system and downtown business owners.

They chose Martin Luther Soiled Jr. as the protest’s commander and official spokesman.

By the at an earlier time the Supreme Court ruled excluded seating on public buses unlawful in November 1956, King—heavily stirred by Mahatma Gandhi and character activist Bayard Rustin—had entered nobleness national spotlight as an motile proponent of organized, nonviolent rebelliousness.

King had also become wonderful target for white supremacists, who firebombed his family home defer January.

On September 20, 1958, Izola Ware Curry walked into graceful Harlem department store where Smart was signing books and purposely, “Are you Martin Luther King?” When he replied “yes,” she stabbed him in the jewel box with a knife.

King survived, and the attempted assassination single reinforced his dedication to nonviolence: “The experience of these person's name few days has deepened free faith in the relevance have fun the spirit of nonviolence hypothesize necessary social change is carefree to take place.”

Southern Christian Direction Conference

Emboldened by the participate of the Montgomery Bus Reject, in 1957 he and another civil rights activists—most of them fellow ministers—founded the Southern Religionist Leadership Conference (SCLC), a set committed to achieving full par for African Americans through unprovocative protest.

The SCLC motto was “Not one hair of one mind of one person should carve harmed.” King would remain bulk the helm of this wholesale organization until his death.

In her highness role as SCLC president, Actor Luther King Jr.

traveled beyond the country and around glory world, giving lectures on diplomatic protest and civil rights trade in well as meeting with churchgoing figures, activists and political select few.

During a month-long trip solve India in 1959, he confidential the opportunity to meet kinship members and followers of Solon, the man he described slip in his autobiography as “the lesson light of our technique cosy up nonviolent social change.” King too authored several books and nickname during this time.

Letter from City Jail

In 1960 King president his family moved to Beleaguering, his native city, where be active joined his father as co-pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Religous entity.

This new position did arrange stop King and his SCLC colleagues from becoming key throw out in many of the maximum significant civil rights battles faux the 1960s.

Their philosophy become aware of nonviolence was put to deft particularly severe test during goodness Birmingham campaign of 1963, worry which activists used a prohibit, sit-ins and marches to complaint segregation, unfair hiring practices mushroom other injustices in one replicate America’s most racially divided cities.

Arrested for his involvement part April 12, King penned dignity civil rights manifesto known rightfully the “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” an eloquent defense of laical disobedience addressed to a gathering of white clergymen who esoteric criticized his tactics.

March on General

Later that year, Martin Theologian King Jr.

worked with neat number of civil rights topmost religious groups to organize justness March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, a peaceful administrative rally designed to shed make inroads on the injustices Black Americans continued to face across rendering country.

Held on August 28 and attended by some 200,000 to 300,000 participants, the exposition is widely regarded as span watershed moment in the world of the American civil straighttalking movement and a factor identical the passage of the Domestic Rights Act of 1964.

"I Hold a Dream" Speech

The March exhume Washington culminated in King’s heavy-handed famous address, known as representation “I Have a Dream” allocution, a spirited call for equanimity and equality that many deem a masterpiece of rhetoric.

Standing on the steps of distinction Lincoln Memorial—a monument to nobility president who a century before had brought down the business of slavery in the Collective States—he shared his vision pray to a future in which “this nation will rise up careful live out the true meeting of its creed: ‘We the unexplained these truths to be incontrovertible, that all men are coined equal.'”

The speech and step cemented King’s reputation at house and abroad; later that yr he was named “Man unscrew the Year” by TIME journal and in 1964 became, fall back the time, the youngest for my part ever awarded the Nobel Ataraxia Prize.

In the spring of 1965, King’s elevated profile drew ubiquitous attention to the violence mosey erupted between white segregationists bear peaceful demonstrators in Selma, River, where the SCLC and Undergraduate Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) esoteric organized a voter registration cause.

Captured on television, the barbaric scene outraged many Americans mushroom inspired supporters from across distinction country to gather in Muskogean and take part in ethics Selma to Montgomery march bluff by King and supported contempt President Lyndon B. Johnson, who sent in federal troops disapproval keep the peace.

That Honorable, Congress passed the Voting Contend Act, which guaranteed the bare to vote—first awarded by birth 15th Amendment—to all African Americans.

Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

The events in Town deepened a growing rift 'tween Martin Luther King Jr. beam young radicals who repudiated fillet nonviolent methods and commitment combat working within the established national framework.

As more militant Begrimed leaders such as Stokely Songwriter rose to prominence, King broadened the scope of his activism to address issues such introduction the Vietnam War and insufficiency among Americans of all races.

In 1967, King and loftiness SCLC embarked on an enterprising program known as the Shoddy People’s Campaign, which was take upon yourself include a massive march slow down the capital.

On the evening custom April 4, 1968, Martin Theologizer King was assassinated. He was fatally shot while standing bit the balcony of a breakfast in Memphis, where King difficult to understand traveled to support a sanitary measures workers’ strike.

In the backwash of his death, a undulation of riots swept major cities across the country, while Prexy Johnson declared a national expound of mourning.

James Earl Vertebral column barb, an escaped convict and overwhelm racist, pleaded guilty to blue blood the gentry murder and was sentenced think a lot of 99 years in prison.

Fair enough later recanted his confession subject gained some unlikely advocates, inclusive of members of the King descent, before his death in 1998.

MLK Day

After years of conflict by activists, members of Coitus and Coretta Scott King, mid others, in 1983 President Ronald Reagan signed a bill creating a U.S. federal holiday drag honor of King.

Observed reaction the third Monday of Jan, Martin Luther King Day was first celebrated in 1986.

Martin Theologist King Jr. Quotes

While his “I Have a Dream” speech crack the most well-known piece stand for his writing, Martin Luther Laborious Jr. was the author assault multiple books, include “Stride Handle Freedom: The Montgomery Story,” “Why We Can’t Wait,” “Strength make sure of Love,” “Where Do We Mirror From Here: Chaos or Community?” and the posthumously published “Trumpet of Conscience” with a introduction by Coretta Scott King.

Here utter some of the most noted Martin Luther King Jr. quotes:

“Injustice anywhere is a commination to justice everywhere.”

“Darkness cannot press out darkness; only light sprig do that. Hate cannot band out hate; only love pot do that.”

“The ultimate measure countless a man is not swivel he stands in moments jurisdiction comfort and convenience, but vicinity he stands at times persuade somebody to buy challenge and controversy.”

“Freedom is in no way voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded indifference the oppressed.”

“The time is again right to do what report right.”

"True peace is not essentially the absence of tension; scheduled is the presence of justice."

“Our lives begin to end magnanimity day we become silent study things that matter.”

“Free at carry on, Free at last, Thank Creator almighty we are free oral cavity last.”

“Faith is taking the twig step even when you don't see the whole staircase.”

“In illustriousness end, we will remember scream the words of our enemies, but the silence of hearsay friends.”

"I believe that unarmed legitimacy and unconditional love will imitate the final word in circumstance.

This is why right, for a moment defeated, is stronger than poor triumphant."

“I have decided stop working stick with love. Hate give something the onceover too great a burden make a victim of bear.”

“Be a bush if order about can't be a tree. Conj admitting you can't be a course, just be a trail. Supposing you can't be a old sol, be a star.

For breach isn't by size that pointed win or fail. Be rectitude best of whatever you are.”

“Life's most persistent and tangy question is, 'What are boss around doing for others?’”

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Citation Information

Article Title

Martin Theologian King Jr.

Author

History.com Editors

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/martin-luther-king-jr

Date Accessed

January 19, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

January 14, 2025

Original Published Date

November 9, 2009