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Early life
Martin Luther King, Jr., or Michael King, Jr. was born. He came from a middle-
class family where his father and grandmother were Baptist preachers. He lived fairly well and
got a good education. Even though he had a good upbringing he still, of course, experienced
prejudice. -
The Parade
King was at a parade that he had gone to see without permission from his parents. There
he learned that his grandmother had passed away from a heart attack. She was very important
to him and it impacted him a lot. He reacted by trying to commit suicide by jumping out of a
second story-window. -
Morehouse
Under a special program King went to Morehouse College at age 15. The summer before
this, however, he was in Connecticut working at a tobacco farm. Here he saw how people
behaved in the North. The sight of how the races mixed made him despise racial segregation
even more. -
Bachelor of Divinity Degree
King obtained a bachelor of divinity degree in this year at Crozer Theological Seminary.
After graduating from Morehouse he spent 3 years in Chester, Pennsylvania at Crozer’s. There
he learned of Gandhi’s idea of nonviolence. While he was there he also the student body
president. It was a big deal since it was mostly white student -
Marriage
He married Coretta Scott and later had four children. They met in Boston where Coretta
was studying at the New England Conservatory of Music. -
The Montgomery Bus Boycott
After being a pastor at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church for a year, King was picked to
be the leader of the Montgomery Improvement Association that the activists made. They
boycotted the transit system. This was after an incident which involved an African American
woman named Rosa Parks. She was arrested after not giving up her bus seat to a white
passenger. -
"I Have a Dream" speech
King’s efforts got a lot of attention when demonstrators got sprayed with fire hoses and
had dogs attack them. He was thrown in jail with a lot of his supporters. Some of those included
schoolchildren. The black and white clergies of Birmingham were not supporters. On August 28
over 200,000 people stood in the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial. This is where people
witnessed his “I Have a Dream” speech. -
Death
After telling a crowd of people that he might not see the end result of his efforts while
others will the day before, he was killed on a second-story balcony of the Lorraine Motel. His
death caused over 100 cities to experience disorder and riots. A year later, James Earl Rat
pleaded guilty to murder.