Martin Luther King Jr.

By asuchkov2
  • 1 BCE

    Introduction

    Introduction
    Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968) was a Baptist minister and social activist who played a key role in the American civil rights movement from the mid 1950s until his assassination in 1968. Some cool things about Martin Luther King Jr. is that his birth name was Michael, not Martin, entered college at the age of 15, received his doctorate in systematic theology, and “I Have a Dream” speech was not his first at the Lincoln Memorial.

  • Martin Luther King is born

    Martin Luther King is born
    King’s birth name was Michael, not Martin.
    The civil rights leader was born Michael King Jr. on January 15, 1929. In 1934, however, his father, a pastor at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, traveled to Germany and became inspired by the Protestant Reformation leader Martin Luther. As a result, King Sr. changed his own name as well as that of his 5-year-old son.

  • Martin Luther King goes off to college

    Martin Luther King goes off to college
    After earning a divinity degree from Pennsylvania’s Crozer Theological Seminary, King attended graduate school at Boston University, where he received his Ph.D. degree in 1955. The title of his dissertation was “A Comparison of the Conceptions of God in the Thinking of Paul Tillich and Henry Nelson Wieman.”

  • Martin Luther King gets married

    Martin Luther King gets married
    He married Coretta Scott, the younger daughter of Obadiah and Bernice McMurry Scott of Marion, Alabama, on June 18, 1953. The marriage ceremony took place on the lawn of the Scott’s home in Marion, Alabama. The Rev. King, Sr. performed the service, with Mrs. Edythe Bagley, the sister of Coretta Scott King as maid of honor, and the Rev. A.D. King, the brother of Martin Luther King, Jr., as best man.

  • Martin Luther King Jr starts the Montgomery Bus Boycott

    Martin Luther King Jr starts the Montgomery Bus Boycott
    Although he considered pursuing an academic career, King decided in 1954 to accept an offer to become the pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. In December 1955, when Montgomery’s black leaders, including Jo Ann Robinson, E.D. Nixon, and Ralph Abernathy formed the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) to protest the arrest of NAACP official Rosa Park for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man, they selected King to head the new group.

  • Martin Luther King Jr met up with other activists to discuss his Boycott success

    Martin Luther King Jr met up with other activists to discuss his Boycott success
    On January 5, 90 percent of Montgomery’s black citizens stayed off the buses. That afternoon, the city’s ministers and leaders met to discuss the possibility of extending the boycott into a long-term campaign. During this meeting the MIA was formed, and King was elected president. Parks recalled: ‘‘The advantage of having Dr. King as president was that he was so new to Montgomery and to civil rights work that he hadn’t been there long enough to make any strong friends or enemies’’.

  • Martin Luther King Jrs. "I have a dream speech"

    Martin Luther King Jrs. "I have a dream speech"
    "I Have a Dream" is a public speech delivered by American civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. during the march on Washington for jobs and freedom on August 28, 1963, in which he calls for an end to racism in the United States and called for civil and economic rights. Delivered to over 250,000 civil rights supporters from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., the speech was a defining moment of the American Civil Rights Movement.

  • Martin Luther King Jr met with Malcolm X

    Martin Luther King Jr met with Malcolm X
    On March 26th, 1964, Martin Luther King and
    Malcolm X met at the United States Capital to hear deliberations on the Civil Rights Bill being debated by the United States Senate. I was born on March 9, 1964, so I would have been a mere 17 days old when these two men, whose shoulders I stand upon, came face to face with one another.

  • Martin Luther King is assassinated

    Martin Luther King is assassinated
    In early April 1968, shock waves reverberated around the world with the news that U.S. civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. A Baptist minister and founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, King had led the civil rights movement since the mid-1950s, using a combination of powerful words and non-violent tactics, boycotts and protest marches to fight segregation and achieve civil and voting rights advances for African Americans.