Martin Luther King, Jr. “Martin Luther King” and “MLK” redirect here. For 1 Early life and education other uses, see Martin Luther King (disambiguation) and MLK (disambiguation). Martin Luther King, Jr. (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American Baptist minister, activist, humanitarian, and leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. He is best known for his role in the advancement of civil rights using nonviolent civil disobe- dience based on his Christian beliefs. King became a civil rights activist early in his career. He led the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott and helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957, serving as its first president. With the SCLC, King led an unsuccessful 1962 struggle against segregation in Albany, Georgia (the Albany Movement), and helped organize the 1963 nonviolent protests in King’s high school alma mater was named after African- Birmingham, Alabama. King also helped to organize the American scholar Booker T. Washington. 1963 March on Washington, where he delivered his fa- mous "I Have a Dream" speech. There, he established King was born on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Geor- his reputation as one of the greatest orators in American gia, to Reverend Martin Luther King, Sr., and Alberta history. Williams King.[1] King’s legal name at birth was Michael On October 14, 1964, King received the Nobel Peace King,[2] and his father was also born Michael King, but Prize for combating racial inequality through nonvio- the elder King changed his and his son’s names following lence. In 1965, he helped to organize the Selma to Mont- a 1934 trip to Germany to attend the Fifth Baptist World gomery marches, and the following year he and SCLC Alliance Congress in Berlin. It was during this time he took the movement north to Chicago to work on segre- chose to be called Martin Luther King in honor of the gated housing. In the final years of his life, King ex- German reformer Martin Luther.[3][4] King had Irish an- panded his focus to include poverty and speak against the cestry through his paternal great-grandfather.[5][6] Vietnam War, alienating many of his liberal allies with a King was a middle child, between an older sister, Willie 1967 speech titled "Beyond Vietnam". Christine King, and a younger brother, Alfred Daniel In 1968, King was planning a national occupation of Williams King.[7] King sang with his church choir at Washington, D.C., to be called the Poor People’s Cam- the 1939 Atlanta premiere of the movie Gone with the paign, when he was assassinated on April 4 in Memphis, Wind.[8] King liked singing and music. King’s mother, an Tennessee. His death was followed by riots in many U.S. accomplished organist and choir leader, took him to var- cities. ious churches to sing. He received attention for singing “I Want to Be More and More Like Jesus.” King later King was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal [9] of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal. Martin became a member of the junior choir in his church. Luther King, Jr. Day was established as a holiday in King said his father regularly whipped him until he was numerous cities and states beginning in 1971, and as a fifteen and a neighbor reported hearing the elder King U.S. federal holiday in 1986. Hundreds of streets in the telling his son “he would make something of him even if U.S. have been renamed in his honor, and a county in he had to beat him to death.” King saw his father’s proud Washington State was also renamed for him. The Martin and unafraid protests in relation to segregation, such as Luther King, Jr. Memorial on the National Mall in Wash- Martin, Sr., refusing to listen to a traffic policeman after ington, D.C., was dedicated in 2011. being referred to as “boy” or stalking out of a store with his son when being told by a shoe clerk that they would have to move to the rear to be served.[10] When King was a child, he befriended a white boy whose 1 2 1 EARLY LIFE AND EDUCATION father owned a business near his family’s home. When the King was elected president of the student body.[23] The boys were 6, they attended different schools, with King African-American students of Crozer for the most part attending a segregated school for African-Americans. conducted their social activity on Edwards Street. King King then lost his friend because the child’s father no was endeared to the street due to a classmate having an longer wanted them to play together.[11] aunt that prepared the two collard greens, which they both [24] King suffered from depression throughout much of his relished. King once called out a student for keeping life. In his adolescent years, he initially felt some re- beer in his room because of their shared responsibility sentment against whites due to the “racial humiliation” as African-Americans to bear “the burdens of the Negro race.” For a time, he was interested in Walter Rauschen- that he, his family, and his neighbors often had to en- [23] dure in the segregated South.[12] At age 12, shortly after busch's “social gospel”. In his third year there, he be- came romantically involved with the daughter of an im- his maternal grandmother died, King blamed himself and jumped out of a second story window, but survived.[13] migrant German woman working as a cook in the cafe- teria. The daughter had been involved with a professor King was originally skeptical of many of Christianity’s prior to her relationship with King. King had plans of claims.[14] At the age of thirteen, he denied the bodily res- marrying her, but was advised not to by friends due to the urrection of Jesus during Sunday school. From this point, reaction an interracial relationship would spark from both he stated, “doubts began to spring forth unrelentingly”.[15] blacks and whites, as well as the chances of it destroy- However, he later concluded that the Bible has “many ing his chances of ever pastoring a church in the South. profound truths which one cannot escape” and decided King tearfully told a friend that he could not endure his to enter the seminary.[14] mother’s pain over the marriage and broke the relation- Growing up in Atlanta, King attended Booker T. Wash- ship off around six months later. He would continue to ington High School. He became known for his pub- have lingering feelings, with one friend being quoted as [23] lic speaking ability and was part of the school’s debate saying, “He never recovered.” team.[16] King became the youngest assistant manager of King married Coretta Scott, on June 18, 1953, on the a newspaper delivery station for the Atlanta Journal in lawn of her parents’ house in her hometown of Heiberger, 1942 at age 13.[17] During his junior year, he won first Alabama.[25] They became the parents of four children: prize in an oratorical contest sponsored by the Negro Elks Yolanda King (b. 1955), Martin Luther King III (b. Club in Dublin, Georgia. Returning home to Atlanta by 1957), Dexter Scott King (b. 1961), and Bernice King (b. bus, he and his teacher were ordered by the driver to stand 1963).[26] During their marriage, King limited Coretta’s so white passengers could sit down. King refused ini- role in the Civil Rights Movement, expecting her to be a tially, but complied after his teacher informed him that housewife and mother.[27] he would be breaking the law if he did not go along with the order. He later characterized this incident as “the an- griest I have ever been in my life”.[16] A precocious stu- dent, he skipped both the ninth and the twelfth grades of high school.[18] It was during King’s junior year that Morehouse College announced it would accept any high school juniors who could pass its entrance exam. At that 1.1 Doctoral studies time, most of the students had abandoned their studies to participate in World War II. Due to this, the school became desperate to fill in classrooms. At age 15, King See also: Martin Luther King, Jr. authorship issues passed the exam and entered Morehouse.[16] The summer before his last year at Morehouse, in 1947, an eighteen- King then began doctoral studies in systematic theology year-old King made the choice to enter the ministry after at Boston University and received his Ph.D. degree on he concluded the church offered the most assuring way to June 5, 1955, with a dissertation on “A Comparison of answer “an inner urge to serve humanity”. King’s “inner the Conceptions of God in the Thinking of Paul Tillich urge” had begun developing and he made peace with the and Henry Nelson Wieman". An academic inquiry con- Baptist Church, as he believed he would be a “rational” cluded in October 1991 that portions of his dissertation minister with sermons that were “a respectful force for had been plagiarized and he had acted improperly. How- [19] ideas, even social protest.” ever, "[d]espite its finding, the committee said that 'no In 1948, he graduated from Morehouse with a B.A. de- thought should be given to the revocation of Dr. King’s gree in sociology, and enrolled in Crozer Theological doctoral degree,' an action that the panel said would serve Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania, from which he grad- no purpose.”[28][29][30] The committee also found that uated with a B.Div.