MLK Day: Part I

Martin Luther King, Jr., (January 15, 1929-April 4, 1968) was born Michael Luther King, Jr., but later had his name changed to Martin. He received the B. A. degree in 1948 from Morehouse College. After three years of theological study at Crozer Theological Seminary, he was awarded the B.D. in 1951. With a fellowship won at Crozer, he enrolled in graduate studies at Boston University, completing his residence for the doctorate in 1953 and receiving the degree in 1955. In Boston he met and married Coretta Scott.

In 1954, Martin Luther King became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. In December 1955, he accepted the leadership of the first great Negro nonviolent demonstration of contemporary times in the United States. The boycott lasted 382 days. On December 21, 1956, the Supreme Court of the United States declared unconstitutional the laws requiring segregation on buses.

In 1957 he was elected president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. The ideals for this organization he took from Christianity; its operational techniques from Gandhi. In the eleven-year period between 1957 and 1968, King traveled over six million miles and spoke over twenty-five hundred times, appearing wherever there was injustice, protest, and action; and meanwhile he wrote five books as well as numerous articles. On the evening of April 4, 1968, while standing on the balcony of his motel in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was to lead a protest march with striking garbage workers of that city, he was assassinated.

Excerpt from Martin Luther King’s Biography on Nobelprize.org