Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr.

King was born Michael Luther King in Atlanta, Georgia on January 15, 1929. He was one of the three children of Martin Luther King Sr., pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church, and Alberta (Williams) King, a former schoolteacher. He was renamed "Martin" when he was about 6 years old.

After going to local grammar and high schools, at the age of 15, he entered Morehouse College located in Atlanta, under a special program for gifted students in 1944. He wasn't planning to enter the ministry, but then he met Dr. Benjamin Mays, a scholar whose manner and behavior convinced him that a religious career could be academically satisfying as well. After receiving his bachelor's degree in 1948, King attended Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania, winning the Plafker Award as the outstanding student of the graduating class, and the J. Lewis Crozer Fellowship as well. He completed the coursework for his doctorate in 1953, and was granted the degree two years later upon achievement of his study. While in Boston, King met Coretta Scott, from Marion, Alabama, who was studying at the New England Conservatory of Music. They were married in 1953 and had four children. King then became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery in 1954. He had been pastor slightly more than a year when the city's small group of civil-rights advocates decided to contest racial segregation on that city's public bus system. On Dec. 1, 1955, a black woman named Rosa Parks had refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger and as a result had been arrested for disobeying the city's segregation law. Black activists formed the Montgomery Improvement Association to boycott the transit system and chose King as their leader. He had the advantage of being a young, well-trained man who was too new in town to have made enemies; he was normally respected, and his family links and professional standing would allow him to find another pastorate should the boycott not do well. In his first speech to the group as its president, King stated:

"We have no alternative but to protest. For many years we have shown an amazing patience. We have sometimes given our white brothers the feeling that we liked the way we were being treated. But we come here tonight to be saved from that patience that makes us patient with anything less than freedom and justice."

These words introduced to the nation a bright voice, a skillful public speaking, an inspirational personality, and in time a forceful new principle of civil struggle. Although King's home was destroyed and his family's safety threatened, he continued to lead the boycott until, one year and a few weeks later, the blacks of Montgomery achieved their goal of desegregation of the city's buses.

King then began

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