Martin Luther King, Jr., was born on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia to the Reverend Martin Luther King, Sr. and Alberta Williams King. King's father, born Michael and Martin Luther King, Jr., were both initially named Michael King, Jr., until Martin Sr. changed both of their names to Martin to honor the German Protestant leader Martin Luther. King attended Booker T. Washington High School, where he skipped both the ninth and the twelfth grade and entered Morehouse College at age fifteen without formally graduating from high school. In 1948, he graduated from Morehouse with a Bachelor of Arts degree in sociology, and enrolled in Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania, from which he graduated with a Bachelor of Divinity degree in 1951. King was an ambitious young man who cared about the rights, lives and equality of the black community of which he was part of. After leaving Crozer, King got married to Coretta Scott. He became a Baptist pastor at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. He was in Montgomery at the start of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. He was appointed the president of the Montgomery Improvement Association which was created during the boycott and he became a prominent leader of the boycott. King was arrested for starting a boycott and fined $500 with $500 costs for starting a bus boycott. . His house was fire-bombed, along with other members of the MIA but by the end of 1956, segregation had been lifted in Montgomery and bus integration had begun.
In 1957 the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) was formed, and King was named its leader. This organization was committed to the use of non-violence and its motto was "Not one hair of one head of one person should be harmed." Its goal was to provide leadership and organization in the fight for civil rights. By combining the power of the black churches in the South the SCLC hoped to use this power to effect change and empower blacks both economically and...