Martin Luther King Jr. - original name Michael King, Jr.
Birth - January 15, 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.
Death - April 4, 1968, Memphis, Tennessee.
Intro
He was a Baptist minister and social activist who led the civil rights movement in the United States from the mid-1950s until his death by assassination in 1968. His leadership was fundamental to that movement’s success in ending the legal segregation of African Americans in the South and other parts of the United States. King rose to national prominence as head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which promoted nonviolent tactics, such as the massive March on Washington (1963), to achieve civil rights. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.
Early Life
He came from a happy and comfortable middle class family influenced and built in the tradition of the Southern Black ministry. Both his father and maternal grandfather were Baptist preachers. His parents were college-educated, and King’s father had succeeded his father-in-law as pastor of the prestigious Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. Kings grandmother was very dear to him, whose death in 1941 left him shaken and unstable. Upset because he had learned of her fatal heart attack while attending a parade without his parents’ permission, the 12 year old King attempted suicide by jumping from a second-story window.
Middle Years
At age 15, in 1944, King entered Morehouse College in Atlanta under a special wartime program intended to boost enrollment by admitting promising high-school students like King. Before beginning college, however, King spent the summer on a tobacco farm in Connecticut; it was his first extended stay away from home and his first substantial experience of race relations outside the segregated South. He was shocked by how peacefully the races mixed in the North. At Morehouse, King's favorite studies were in medicine and law, but these were eclipsed in his senior year by a decision to enter the ministry, as his father had wanted. King went to Boston University, where, in seeking a firm foundation for his own theological and ethical inclinations, leading him to study man’s relationship to God and received a doctorate.
Later Days
King Achieved many things in his later life such as the Montgomery Boycott, the famous "I have a Dream Speech", and the Civil Rights Act. To learn more go to "His Greatest Works" and then Impact & Legacy.
Birth - January 15, 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.
Death - April 4, 1968, Memphis, Tennessee.
Intro
He was a Baptist minister and social activist who led the civil rights movement in the United States from the mid-1950s until his death by assassination in 1968. His leadership was fundamental to that movement’s success in ending the legal segregation of African Americans in the South and other parts of the United States. King rose to national prominence as head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which promoted nonviolent tactics, such as the massive March on Washington (1963), to achieve civil rights. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.
Early Life
He came from a happy and comfortable middle class family influenced and built in the tradition of the Southern Black ministry. Both his father and maternal grandfather were Baptist preachers. His parents were college-educated, and King’s father had succeeded his father-in-law as pastor of the prestigious Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. Kings grandmother was very dear to him, whose death in 1941 left him shaken and unstable. Upset because he had learned of her fatal heart attack while attending a parade without his parents’ permission, the 12 year old King attempted suicide by jumping from a second-story window.
Middle Years
At age 15, in 1944, King entered Morehouse College in Atlanta under a special wartime program intended to boost enrollment by admitting promising high-school students like King. Before beginning college, however, King spent the summer on a tobacco farm in Connecticut; it was his first extended stay away from home and his first substantial experience of race relations outside the segregated South. He was shocked by how peacefully the races mixed in the North. At Morehouse, King's favorite studies were in medicine and law, but these were eclipsed in his senior year by a decision to enter the ministry, as his father had wanted. King went to Boston University, where, in seeking a firm foundation for his own theological and ethical inclinations, leading him to study man’s relationship to God and received a doctorate.
Later Days
King Achieved many things in his later life such as the Montgomery Boycott, the famous "I have a Dream Speech", and the Civil Rights Act. To learn more go to "His Greatest Works" and then Impact & Legacy.