Martin Luther King, Jr., was a civil rights leader best known for his work in advancing racial equality for African Americans. A clergyman and inspirational speaker, King instituted Gandhi’s philosophy of nonviolence during the turbulent period of racial segregation in the United States. He has become an icon for equality and a symbol of nonviolent resistance.
Martin Luther King, Jr., was born on January 15, 1929, in his grandparents’ home on Auburn Avenue in Atlanta, Georgia. He was the second child and the first son of Reverend Martin Luther King, Sr., and Alberta Williams King.
King had an older sister, Willie Christine, and a younger brother, Alfred Daniel.
Everyone in King’s family had a nickname. King’s was “M.L.”; Willie Christine was “Christine”; and Alfred Daniel was “A.D.” King and his siblings called their parents “Daddy King” and “Mother Dear.” Daddy King and Mother Dear were strong, proud people who instilled these same virtues in their children.
King family (Martin in front row, right)
Growing up, King, his brother, and his sister lived under segregation laws known as “Jim Crow laws,” which required that black people and white people be separated in public places such as restaurants, buses, libraries, and swimming pools. King experienced segregation firsthand when Daddy King took him to buy a new pair of shoes at a white-owned store. The clerk would not wait on them unless King and his father moved to the back of the store. Daddy King refused to endure such prejudice. He left the store immediately. This type of discrimination happened many times during King’s childhood.
Martin Luther King, Sr., was the pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church. King’s mother was the church musical director and played hymns on the church pipe organ.
Reverend King was a powerful speaker who moved the congregation with his sermons. King learned many things from watching his father. By listening to his father preach, King came to understand how an effective speaker can move an audience. Mother Dear’s organ music and the hymns the choir sang brought King and his family great comfort and strength. By the time King was five years old, he was singing at church socials and was also imitating his father’s sermon delivery.
By the time he entered Booker T. Washington High School, it was clear to everyone that he was gifted in many ways. King skipped both the ninth and twelfth grades. When King was fourteen, he was in the eleventh grade and already thinking about college. At this time, he entered a statewide oratorical contest, sponsored by the Negro Elks, a civics organization. The event took place in Dublin, Georgia, several hours from King’s home in Atlanta. King’s teacher, Mrs. Bradley, traveled with him to Dublin.
For his contest speech, King spoke on the topic of “The Negro and the Constitution.” His remarks were strong, and he won the grand prize. King and Mrs. Bradley were eager to get back to Atlanta to share the good news. But their victory soon turned sour. To get back to Atlanta from Dublin, the two rode a bus. As soon as a group of white passengers got onto the bus, the driver told King and his teacher to get up out of their seats. He insisted that they move to let the white passengers sit down. All the other seats were taken. King and Mrs. Bradley were forced to stand for the rest of the ride of more than one hundred miles.
Segregation at a bus station in Tennessee, 1943
King was reminded that even the brightest and the best had to suffer under the weight of segregation. He was determined to get away from segregation’s humiliation.
When he completed his senior year of high school at the age of fifteen, King took a summer job working on a tobacco farm in Connecticut. Connecticut, a northern state, did not have Jim Crow laws. King and his fellow black field hands did not suffer the quick sting of segregation. There were no “Whites Only” signs or discrimination on buses.
On the train ride back to Georgia, King was forced to return to a “For Coloreds” existence. When he boarded the train in the Northeast, he was permitted to sit in any seat he chose, but as soon as the train crossed over into Washington, D.C., things changed. When King went to the dining car, he had to sit at the back of the cabin and eat behind a curtain so that white passengers would not have to witness a black person eating.
In 1944, King entered Morehouse College, an all-male, all-black institution in Atlanta. He was the youngest student in the freshman class. Daddy King had also attended Morehouse. He expected King to follow in his footsteps by graduating from his alma mater and then becoming his successor as the pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church.
But King had other plans. At Morehouse, he took courses in philosophy, history, and literature. These classes opened King’s eyes to pursuing many types of careers. He imagined becoming a lawyer or a doctor. King respected his father, but he began to question religion.
Students at Morehouse
Dr. Benjamin Mays, the president of Morehouse, became King’s mentor. At the Morehouse chapel, Dr. Mays presented his views for social change. His sermons related biblical stories to the plight of African Americans. Dr. Mays’s sermons showed King that the values of Christianity could be applied to the struggle for racial equality. Dr. Mays’s lessons also taught King that a good leader must remain open-minded. King soon realized that he was ready to become a minister at Ebenezer. On February 25, 1948, King was ordained as a minister and became the assistant pastor at Ebenezer.
When King graduated from Morehouse, he applied to Crozer Theological Seminary, a theology school in Chester, Pennsylvania. He was nineteen years old. Daddy King objected to his son attending Crozer. Daddy King believed that King was too young to attend seminary school. But in time, Daddy King gave King his blessing.
Crozer was an integrated school. The white students at Crozer were not prejudiced. To them, King was like any other student, and they treated him fairly.
At Crozer, King was introduced to the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi, whose belief in the concept satyagraha — resolving conflicts through nonviolent actions — made a big impression on him. King studied Gandhi’s ideas carefully. He thought about ways to apply satyagraha to the sting of segregation.
King received his bachelor’s degree in theology from Crozer in 1951. He was the valedictorian of his class and was awarded a scholarship to continue his education at a graduate school. King chose to pursue a PhD at Boston University’s School of Theology.
In Boston, King met Coretta Scott, a vocal student at the New England Conservatory of Music. Scott was from Alabama. She was educated, well spoken, and had a beautiful singing voice. King and Scott married on June 18, 1953.
King and Scott on their wedding day
The following year, King was invited to deliver a sermon at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. When King preached, he inspired his listeners with his dignified delivery. In his sermon, he drew on the lessons he’d learned at Crozer and Boston University. The parishioners at Dexter were so impressed that they immediately offered him a job as their new pastor. King accepted and moved to Alabama with Scott. While serving as a pastor, King also worked on his PhD dissertation, and received his doctorate in 1955.
Montgomery, Alabama, was a heavily segregated town. One of King’s first priorities was to convince those in Dexter’s congregation to join the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), one of America’s leading civil rights organizations. King also made sure Dexter’s members registered to vote. Black citizens were reluctant to register to vote because discrimination by white officials made the process very difficult for them. The men and women who supervised voting stations forced black people to take “exams” that were supposed to “test” their ability to register.
For example, a white polling representative would pull out a jar filled with peanuts. They would then ask the black person to tell them exactly how many goobers there were in the jar. This “guess the goober” game was meant to determine a black person’s aptitude. This was illegal. The primary requirements for registering to vote were that the individual be a U.S. citizen and could write his or her name on the voter registration form. King encouraged his congregants to face the ridiculous indignity they’d suffered at polling stations with peace. But it was hard to be peaceful when someone was asking you to count peanuts in a jar because you were black! Many people wanted to lash out. But King encouraged them to behave peacefully and to refrain from violent behavior, which they did.
King at the Freedom Pilgrimage rally with Roy Wilkins and A. Philip Randolph, 1957
On December 1, 1955, King was forced to put his theological experience to the test. When the sun set on that day, Rosa Parks, a black seamstress and active member of the NAACP, boarded a Montgomery city bus and settled into a seat a few rows behind the driver. A white passenger boarded the bus. The man gestured toward Parks, indicating that she should move to a seat farther back. He believed the seat she occupied was his. Parks shook her head and didn’t move. The white man and the bus driver yelled at Parks. This kind of confrontation was nothing new.
A policeman came to arrest Parks. She was put in jail and later underwent a courtroom trial. She was found guilty of breaking the law but was fined and released. The incident sent a public outcry through Montgomery’s black community. The black residents of the town were fed up with the unfair treatment they’d endured on city buses. Ignited by the events that had taken place with Parks, the townspeople rallied together. They made a collective decision that they would no longer ride the buses. Parks’s bravery had sparked a movement known as the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Parks’s courageous act was also the result of her commitment to NAACP ideals, including nonviolent resistance.
The boycott began that same day. As president of the NAACP’s Montgomery Improvement Association, King told a large crowd that “love must be our regulating ideal” when it came to proceeding peacefully with the boycott. The people of Montgomery walked everywhere and refused to ride any buses until segregation laws changed. The boycott stayed strong for many months, and bus companies began to lose money. The determination of Montgomery’s black residents made some of the town’s white citizens very angry. In January 1956, the Kings’ home was bombed. King and his family were not harmed, but the bombing made black people want to strike back violently. They did not always agree with King’s peaceful approach.
King urged the boycotters to focus on “using the weapon of love” to win their fight for justice. More than a year had passed since the boycott began. During the entire time, King encouraged his followers to stay strong.
Finally, on November 13, 1956, things changed. The United States Supreme Court ruled that laws requiring segregation on Montgomery’s city buses were unconstitutional. Black patrons were permitted to sit in any seats they wished.
King and others involved in the boycott sit on a bus after the Supreme Court’s order went into effect, 1956
This was only a beginning, though. Montgomery, and many other Southern towns in the United States, still clung to Jim Crow laws. There was more work to be done.
In January 1957, King and several notable civil rights leaders formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). The SCLC’s ideal was to apply Christian beliefs to the struggle for civil rights. The SCLC and the NAACP conducted training sessions in nonviolence. They instructed protesters to cover their faces and heads during violent attacks by the police and angry racists. It was suggested that women refrain from wearing shoes with pointed heels for fear that the shoes could be used as weapons. Men were advised to only wear clip-on neckties, as a full-length tie positioned around the neck could be used as a choking device. But the most important aspect of the nonviolence training that was underscored by Dr. King was the importance of never retaliating.
Police dogs attacking a seventeen-year-old civil rights protester in 1963
King was still serving as the pastor at Montgomery’s Dexter Avenue Baptist Church.
He and Scott were now the parents of two children — Yolanda, a daughter, and Martin III, a son.
In January 1960, King and his family returned to Atlanta to be closer to King’s parents. Ebenezer Baptist Church welcomed King back as co-pastor. He served in this role with his father. In 1961, the Kings’ third child was born, a boy they named Dexter.
King, Scott, and three of their children in 1963
King continued his work with the SCLC. The organization was gaining in its popularity, attracting many new members. This served as a threat to many white people who did not want segregation to end. Throughout the South, there soon was an increase in violent acts against black people, including bombings and lynchings.
It seemed the worst hate crimes happened in the deeper parts of the South, especially in Birmingham, Alabama, which many believed to be the most racist town in the South. King was called upon often to ameliorate tempers and violent protests that erupted there. His presence always managed to restore peace, even in the most brutal of situations.
In March 1963, Bernice, King’s fourth child, was born. As the father of young children, King wanted to ensure a bright future for his sons and daughters.
On April 3, 1963, King wrote a document called the “Birmingham Manifesto.” This decree demanded that public places in Birmingham become integrated. To rally support for his manifesto, King and SCLC members staged several marches. The demonstrations grew bigger and became more powerful in their presence. This did not sit well with government officials, who issued an injunction, which forbade any more marching. But King and his followers wondered, how could a group be prevented from simply walking through city streets?
On April 12, 1963, King led a group of demonstrators to Birmingham’s city hall. It was a small group of about fifty marchers. They were not loud and proceeded quietly, calmly. Still they, along with King, were arrested and jailed. King was forced to stay in the Birmingham jail for about a week. While in his jail cell alone, King wrote one of the most defining documents of his career, his “Letter from Birmingham Jail.”
In his letter, King wrote, “segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality.” The “Letter from Birmingham Jail” was circulated as a pamphlet. It also appeared as a magazine article, which reached nearly a million people throughout America.
The March on Washington, in D.C.
King’s letter inspired people to join his movement. On August 28, 1963, nearly two hundred and fifty thousand people gathered in Washington, D.C., to participate in the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. People of all races and religions traveled from many states to hear King speak. The organizers of the march had specific goals. Their list included voting rights, a civil rights bill that would prevent segregated public housing, and an extensive federal works program that would train workers and prevent employment discrimination.
The march began at the Washington Monument and worked its way to the Lincoln Memorial. Here, King gave the most famous speech of his career, and one of the most notable orations of all time. The speech was entitled “I Have a Dream.”
King giving his renowned speech
King’s words rang throughout Washington, D.C., and the world. They also went straight to the ear of President Lyndon B. Johnson, who was inspired to take important action on behalf of equality. On July 2, 1964, the president signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law. This act banned racial segregation in schools and other public places.
That same year, Martin Luther King, Jr., received the Nobel Peace Prize. He was thirty-five years old, and the youngest man to have received the esteemed prize.
Even though King had become a world-famous crusader, he understood that social change could only continue if he stayed focused on all kinds of causes — big and small, local and national.
On April 3, 1968, King had traveled to Memphis, Tennessee, to participate in a march in support of fair wages and improved work conditions for the local garbage collectors. After his speech at a local Masonic temple, he returned to the Lorraine Motel, where he was staying. Ralph Abernathy and Andrew Young, fellow members of the SCLC, were also guests at the motel. Jesse Jackson, King’s aide, and student activist Bernard Lee were part of the group, too.
At six o’clock that evening, King and his friends prepared to leave the motel to attend a dinner at the home of Samuel Kyles, a local minister. When they stepped onto the balcony of the motel, there was a loud noise. King fell to the concrete. He had been shot by an assassin’s bullet. The killer’s name was James Earl Ray, a white man. King died immediately.
James Earl Ray
On April 7, 1968, President Johnson called for a national day of mourning. King’s body was sent to Atlanta. His funeral was held at Ebenezer Baptist Church on April 9, 1968. More than a hundred thousand mourners surrounded the church to say good-bye to one of the greatest civil rights leaders in the history of the world.
In 1983, President Ronald Reagan declared Martin Luther King, Jr. Day an official holiday, to be celebrated the third Monday in January of each year. On October 16, 2011, the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial was dedicated on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. It is the first national monument created in honor of an African American leader. The majestic statue pays tribute to King’s prevailing commitment to nonviolence in the face of violence and oppression.