Martin Luther King Jr.: Key facts

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Martin Luther King Jr.: The Early Years

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Information: An overview of the life and achievements of the celebrated civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr. is a noted and celebrated black activist. He is most widely known for his leading role in the American Civil Rights Movement, during the 1950s and 1960s.

Martin Luther King Jr. was named 'Man of the Year' by Time magazine in 1963. In 2000, he was voted #6 in Time's Person of the Century poll.

Martin was originally named Michael. He was born in Atlanta (Georgia) on January 15th, 1929.

Martin Luther King Jr. was born just over one hundred years after the death of the third US president, Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826). It was Thomas Jefferson who drafted the Declaration of Independence (1776), which begins, 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.'

An experience of racial segregation when Martin was six years old, had a profound and lasting effect on him:

'From the age of three I had a white playmate who was about my age. We always felt free to play our childhood games together. He did not live in our community, but he was usually around every day; his father owned a store across the street from our home. At the age of six we both entered school - separate schools, of course. I remember how our friendship began to break as soon as we entered school; this was not my desire but his. The climax came when he told me one day that his father had demanded that he would play with me no more. I never will forget what a great shock this was to me. I immediately asked my parents about the motive behind such a statement. We were at the dinner table when the situation was discussed, and here for the first time I was made aware of the existence of a race problem' (The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr: Chapter 1, Early Years)

When he was fifteen years old, Martin worked for a railway and a mattress company. At both of these jobs he learnt first-hand what the needs of black people were, and how they were being discriminated against by white employers.

In 1948, he graduated with a B. A. degree from Morehouse College (Atlanta), was awarded a B. D. in 1951 after three years theological study at Crozer Theological Seminary (Pennsylvania), and gained his doctorate degree from Boston University in 1955.

An inquiry in the 1980s found that portions of his doctoral thesis A Comparison of the Conceptions of God in the Thinking of Paul Tillich and Henry Nelson Wieman, were plagiarised from a dissertation written by a student at the University three years earlier.

Whilst at Crozer Theological Seminary, Martin Luther King Jr. became interested in, and influenced by, the teachings of Mahatmas Gandhi. He believed Gandhi's non-violent civil-disobedience campaign against the British, was the means by which blacks in America could agitate for civil rights.

In 1959, Martin visited the Gandhi family in India; a trip which had a profound and lasting influence on him.

'Since being in India, I am more convinced than ever before that the method of nonviolent resistance is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for justice and human dignity.'

Whilst in Boston Martin met Coretta Scott. They married in 1953, and had four children.

Martin followed his father, grandfather and great-grandfather into the Christian ministry. He became pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Montgomery (Alabama) in 1954, aged 25.

The author in front of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church (December 2004)

The author in front of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church (December 2004) - Copyright Stephen A Richards

Martin was instrumental in organising the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which was a protest against the unfair treatment of blacks on buses. The boycott went on for 382 days, and was largely inspired by experience of Rosa Parks, a black woman, who was arrested on December 1st 1955 for not giving up her seat to a white passenger.

On December 21st 1956, the US Supreme Court made it unlawful to require blacks and whites to be seated seperately on buses.

Martin was elected president of the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), in December 1955. Due to his work with the MIA, Martin received threatening phone calls, hate mail, and even had his home bombed. At a book signing in Harlem in September 1958, Martin was stabbed and nearly died.

In 1957 he helped found, and was elected as its first president, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), The chief aim of the SCLC was to provide leadership and direction for the fledgling Civil Rights Movement. Their motto was, 'Not one hair of one head of one person should be harmed.'

In 1960 Martin Luther King Jr. gave up his work as a minister, in order to devote more time to the Civil Rights Movement. He was jailed three times during 1960 and 1961, and over the course of his lifetime incarcerated around 25 times.

In August 1963 Martin led over 200,000 people to Washington DC, as part of the 'Freedom and Jobs' march. It was there on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, that he gave his famous "I have a dream speech".

"I have a dream" speech (excerpt)

Photograph of Martin Luther King Jr. 'I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal... I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character... when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"'

(Watch the whole speech)

Martin Luther King Jr.: From Montgomery to Washington DC

A review of the author's visit to Montgomery and Washington DC

In 1963, President John F. Kennedy brought a Civil Rights Bill before Congress. In November 1963, Kennedy was assassinated. Some people believe Kennedy's assassination was due to his active and sympathetic response to the Civil Rights Movement.

In 1964 (aged 35), Martin Luther King Jr. became the youngest person to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Between 1957 and 1968, Martin traveled over six million miles around the world, spoke over twenty-five hundred times, and made numerous appearances at 'civil rights' rallies. He also wrote five books and many articles.

On the evening of April 4th 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed by James Earl Ray at the Lorraine Motel (Memphis, Tennessee). The motel is now the site of the National Civil Rights Museum.

In 1997, Martin's eldest son Dexter met with James Earl Ray, after which he claimed the man was innocent of his father's death. Some conspiracy theorists believe the FBI may have been involved with his death, due to anti-war speeches Martin had made about the Vietnam War in 1967. However, after an 18 month investigation these claims were rejected by the US Justice Department in 2000.

In 1983, president Ronald Reagan signed into law the national holiday Martin Luther King Jr. Day. The first official observance this day was January 20th, 1986. Although not all states initially agreed with and supported the holiday (E.g. Arizona, New Hampshire, South Carolina), from 2000 onwards all 50 US States have been observing it.

Martin Luther King Jr. always believed that one day the United States would elect a black president:

'I think we may be able to get a Negro president in less than 40 years. I would think that this could come in 25 years or less.' (Martin Luther King Jr., BBC interview, 1964)

On January 20th 2009, Martin Luther King's 'dream' was realised as Barack Obama was sworn in to become the 44th president of the United States.

Barack Hussein Obama II, 44th president of the United States of America