King Jr., Martin Luther

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AMERICAN CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVIST AND MINISTER
1929–1968

Martin Luther King Jr., was born on January 15, 1929, the eldest son of a family deeply rooted in the African-American social gospel tradition. His father and maternal grandfather, both of whom were prominent Baptist ministers in Atlanta, Georgia, viewed religious beliefs, social values, and political action as the core of day-to-day living. Born Michael King Jr., King became known as Martin Luther when his father, inspired by the Lutheran movement in Germany, took that name. Early in life Martin struggled with his religious beliefs, and he entered the ministry only after his exposure to a combination of theology and social action while a student at Morehouse College. King attended Crozier Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania and received a Ph.D. from Boston University in 1955. In Boston, he met Coretta Scott (b. 1927), a student at the New England Conservatory of Music, and they married on June 18, 1953.

King became pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. There, following Rosa Parks's well-publicized refusal to relinquish her seat on a city bus, King began to translate his religious beliefs into social action. Heading the Montgomery Improvement Association, King mobilized black churches in support of Parks. Parishioners boycotted buses and protested in public, using nonviolent civil disobedience, a tactic King had adopted from India's nationalist leader Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948). The success of the boycott catapulted King to prominence. In 1957 he assumed a national role in the movement for black equality, serving as the founding president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Through this group, King would become the inspirational focal point of the civil rights movement.

Early in 1960 King moved his young and growing family—eventually he and his wife would have four children—to Atlanta to manage the SCLC and become co-pastor, with his father, of the Ebenezer Baptist Church. As the civil rights movement evolved, King continued to put his leadership and dedication to civil disobedience to the test. He was arrested at a protest during the summer of 1960, and his release following the intervention of then-presidential candidate John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) became national news. In the 1963 Birmingham, Alabama campaign, King led the largest civil rights protest in American history. Televised coverage showing the use of guard dogs to quell the demonstrations caused national outrage. On the heels of this coverage, President Kennedy proposed a broad civil rights act that Congress later passed during the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson.

The height of King's influence came with his famous pronouncement at the historic 1963 March on Washington: "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." He proclaimed that true equality would allow all Americans to sing, in the words of an old African-American spiritual, "Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, we are free at last." King was named Time Magazine's Man of the Year in 1963, and he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. Shortly thereafter, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965; King earned recognition throughout the world as the principal civil rights leader in the United States.

Throughout the 1960s King worked to alleviate the plight of impoverished African Americans in northern ghettos and opposed U.S involvement in the

Vietnam War (1964–1975). At times King found himself opposed by militant black leaders who eschewed nonviolent action and by moderates who objected to his melding of civil rights with the war issue. On April 4, 1968, King was assassinated by James Earl Ray in Memphis, Tennessee, where he had traveled to lead a sanitation workers' protest march.

King's legacy as leader of the modern civil rights movement resulted in, among other honors, the creation of a Martin Luther King Jr. Center in Atlanta and the establishment of a national holiday in his honor in 1986.

Civil Rights Movement in the United States; Racism.

Garrow, David. Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. New York: Harper Collins, 1986.

Schulke, Flip. He Had a Dream: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement. New York: W. W. Norton, 1995.

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