IDr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Michael Luther King was born in Atlanta on January 15, 1929. He was one of three children born to Martin Luther King, Sr. and Alberta Williams King. Michael was renamed Martin when he was 6 years old. Martin Luther King, Sr. was the pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church and Alberta was a schoolteacher. Martin grew up in the Sweet Auburn District.
In 1948 Martin Luther King, Jr. graduated from Morehouse College in Atlanta, GA. After that he went to Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, PA and graduated in 1951. He married Coretta Scott and they had four children named Yolanda Denise, Martin Luther King, III, Dexter and Bernice Albertine. One of his childhood dreams was fulfilled when he began preaching at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. A year after King graduated with his Ph.D. the law caught up to him. King was arrested for going 30 mph in a 25 mph zone and 4 days later his house was bombed. That began his civil rights movement.
Martin Luther King’s first book named “Stride Toward Freedom” was published. It was a book about the Montgomery bus boycott that King organized. The black community had a 382 day boycott of the city’s bus lines. The U.S. Supreme Court decided that bus segregation was unconstitutional. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference was organized by King and he was their first president. This organization helped other communities organize their own protests against discrimination.
King was a speaker at the March on Washington where he gave his famous speech. A few months later he won the Nobel Peace Prize. Martin Luther King, Jr. was working very hard to help end discrimination up until his death. He was shot in the neck on April 4, 1968 on the balcony of a black owned hotel. There was a lot of violence in major cities across the country. Martin Luther King, Jr. was one of the main people that helped to end discrimination. January 15th, his birthday, is a...