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Martin Luther King Jr. born to schoolteacher Alberta King and Baptist minister Martin Luther King Sr. in Sweet Auburn district in Atlanta, Georgia
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A brief collection of some of the most important moments in the life of Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement
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Dr. King is ordained to the Baptist ministry and appointed associate pastor at Ebenezer, at the young age of 19.
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Dr. King marries Coretta Scott in Marion, Alabama
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The Supreme Court of the United States rules unanimously in Brown vs. Board of Education that racial segregation in public schools is unconstitutional.
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The Kings’ first child, Yolanda Denise, is born in Montgomery, Alabama.
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Bus boycott launched in Montgomery, Ala., after an African-American woman, Rosa Parks, is arrested December 1 for refusing to give up her seat to a white person. A meeting of movement leaders is held. Dr. King is unanimously elected president of the Montgomery Improvement Association
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The United States Supreme Court affirms the decision of the three-judge district court in declaring Alabama’s state and local laws requiring segregation on buses unconstitutional, ensuring victory for the boycott
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Black ministers form what became known as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. King is named first president one month later. In this typical year of demonstrations, King traveled 780,000 miles and made 208 speeches.
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Martin Luther King Jr. is featured on the cover of Time Magazine
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The first Civil Rights Act since Reconstruction is passed by Congress, creating the Civil Rights Commission and the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice.
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A second child, Martin Luther III, is born to Dr. and Mrs. King.
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Dr. King is arrested on a charge of loitering (later changed to “failure to obey an officer”) in the vicinity of the Montgomery Recorder’s Court. He is released on $100.00 bond.
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King's first book is published, "Stride Toward Freedom" (Harper), which containts his recollections of the Montgomery bus boycott.
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Dr. and Mrs. King spend a month in India studying Gandhi’s March techniques of nonviolence as guests of Prime Minister Jawaharal Nehru. King had a lifelong admiration for Mohandas K. Gandhi, and credited Gandhi's passive resistance techniques for his civil-rights successes.
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The first lunch counter sit-in to desegregate eating facilities is held by students in Greensboro, North Carolina, and soon after spreads across the nation. In Atlanta, King is arrested during a sit-in waiting to be served at a restaurant. He is sentenced to four months in jail, but after intervention by John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy, he is released.
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Dr. King meets with John F. Kennedy (candidate for President of the United States) about racial matters.
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A third child, Dexter Scott, is born to Dr. and Mrs. King in Atlanta, Georgia.
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The first group of Freedom Riders, with the intent of integrating interstate buses, leaves Washington, D.C. by Greyhound bus. The group, organized by the Congress for Racial Equality (CORE), leaves shortly after the Supreme Court has outlawed segregation in interstate transportation terminals. The bus is burned outside of Anniston, Alabama on May 14. A mob beats the Freedom Riders upon their arrival in Birmingham, Alabama. They are arrested in Jackson, Mississippi.
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The King’s fourth child, Bernice Albertine, is born.
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Arrested after demonstrating in defiance of a court order, King writes "Letter From Birmingham Jail." This eloquent letter, later widely circulated, became a classic of the civil-rights movement.
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The March on Washington, the first large-scale integrated protest march, is held in Washington, D.C. Dr. King delivers his famous “I Have A Dream” speech in front of 250,000 civil-rights supporters on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Afterwards he and other Civil Rights leaders meet with President John F. Kennedy in the White House.
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King appears on the cover of Time magazine again, this time as its Man of the Year.
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Dr. King attends the signing of the Public Accommodations Bill, (Part of the Civil Rights Act of 1964) by President Lyndon B. Johnson in the White House.
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Dr. King has an audience with Pope Paul VI at the Vatican.
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Dr. King receives the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway. He is the youngest person to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for Peace at age 35.
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Over three thousand protest marchers leave Selma for a march to Montgomery, Alabama protected by federal troops. They are joined along the way by a total of twenty-five thousand marchers. Upon reaching the capitol, they hear an address by Dr. King.
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President Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The act, which King sought, authorized federal examiners to register qualified voters and suspended devices such as literacy tests that aimed to prevent African Americans from voting.
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Dr. King leads six thousand protesters on a march through downtown Memphis in support of striking sanitation workers. Disorder breaks out during which black youths loot stores. One sixteen-year-old is killed and fifty people are injured. This was the first time one of his events had turned violent.
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Dr. King’s last speech titled “I’ve Been to the Mountain Top” is delivered at Mason Temple in Memphis, Tennessee.
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Dr. King is assassinated by James Earl Ray as he stands talking on the balcony of his second-floor room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. He dies in St. Joseph’s Hospital from a gunshot wound in the neck.
