Martin+Luther+King+Jr

Martin Luther King, Jr. who’s real name was Michael was born on January 15, 1929. His grandfather was a pastor at Ebemezer Baptist Church and his father Martin Luther also served there as a co-pastor until his death. Martin Luther segregated public schools in Georgia, graduating high school at 15 years of age and received the B.A. degree from Morehouse College in 1948 a negro institution of Atlanta that both his father and grandfather graduated in. After 3 years of theological study he was elected president of a white senior class and was awarded the B.D. in 1951. He joined a graduate study class at Boston University, and received a degree in 1955. In Boston he met a woman named Coretta Scott who loves art and married her. Then later on he had 2 sons and 2 daughters.

In 1954, Martin Luther King became a pastor. He was always a strong worker for civil rights for people of his race. At the time he was a member of the executive committee of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. He was the first African American to be the leader for a nonviolent bus boycott and the boycott lasted 382 days. On December 21, 1956 negroes and whites rode the buses as equals and during the last days of boycott, King was arrested and his come was bombed. He was subjected to personal abuse, but he emerged as a Negro Leader of the 1st rank.

In 1957 the Southern Christian Leadership Conference elected him to provide new leadership for the civil rights movement. In 1968, King traveled over 6 million miles to wherever there was injustice, protest and action and said the same words twenty five hundred times and wrote 5 books and numerous articles. He led a massive protest in Birmingham, Alabama, that the whole world heard providing a coalition of conscience. He delivered a peaceful address “I Have a Dream” in Washington, D.C. to 250,000 people. He was arrested twenty times and was assaulted about 4 times. He was awarded 5 degrees and was Man of the Year for the Time magazine in 1963 and became the symbolic leader of American blacks and a world figure.

When he 35, he was the youngest man to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. After getting this prize he gave the prize of $54,123 to the furtherance of the civil rights movement.

But then on April 4, 1968, while standing on his balcony in his motel room in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was protesting in sympathy with striking garbage workers, he was killed.