-
King was born on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia.
-
In September 1935, when he was about six years old, he started school. King had to attend a school for black children, Younge Street Elementary School, while his close playmate went to a separate school for white children only.
-
In 1942, when King was 13 years old, he became the youngest assistant manager of a newspaper delivery station for the Atlanta Journal.
-
In 1947, the 18-year-old King chose to enter the ministry at the Morehouse College.and in 1948 graduated at the age of 19 from Morehouse with a B.A. in sociology.
-
King married Coretta Scott on June 18, 1953
-
King began doctoral studies in systematic theology at Boston University and at the age of 25 in 1954, King was called as pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama.
-
They became the parents of four children: Yolanda King (1955–2007), Martin Luther King III (b. 1957), Dexter Scott King (b. 1961), and Bernice King (b. 1963).
-
In 1957 he was elected president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization formed to provide new leadership for the now burgeoning civil rights movement.
-
In April 1963, the SCLC began a campaign against racial segregation and economic injustice in Birmingham, Alabama and hewas arrested in 1963 for protesting the treatment of blacks in Birmingham.
-
in 1963 when he made a histroical speechof 250,000 people to whom he delivered his address, “l Have a Dream”, he conferred with President John F. Kennedy and campaigned for President Lyndon B. Johnson and became not only the symbolic leader of American blacks but also a world figure.
-
At the age of thirty-five, Martin Luther King, Jr., was the youngest man to have received the Nobel Peace Prize. When notified of his selection, he announced that he would turn over the prize money of $54,123 to the furtherance of the civil rights movement.
-
The first attempt to march on March 7, 1965, was aborted because of mob and police violence against the demonstrators. This day has become known as Bloody Sunday and was a major turning point in the effort to gain public support for the civil rights movement.
-
On the evening of April 4, 1968, while standing on the balcony of his motel room in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was to lead a protest march in sympathy with striking garbage workers of that city, he was assassinated.