About Martin Luther King Jr. |
Martin Luther King, Jr., (January 15, 1929-April 4, 1968) was born Michael Luther King, Jr., but later had his name changed to Martin. His grandfather began the family's long tenure as pastors of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, serving from 1914 to 1931; his father has served from then until the present, and from 1960 until his death Martin Luther acted as co-pastor. Martin Luther attended segregated public schools in Georgia, graduating from high school at the age of fifteen; he received the B. A. degree in 1948 from Morehouse College, a distinguished Negro institution of Atlanta from which both his father and grandfather had graduated.
In 1957 he was elected president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization formed to provide new leadership for the now growing civil rights movement. 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 unfair treatment, protest, and action; and meanwhile he wrote five books as well as many articles. In these years, he led a huge protest in Birmingham, Alabama, that caught the attention of the whole world. He directed the peaceful march on Washington, D.C., of 250,000 people to whom he delivered his address, "l Have a Dream", he was arrested upwards of twenty times and attacked at least four times; he was awarded five honorary degrees; was named Man of the Year by Time magazine in 1963; and became not only the symbolic leader of American blacks but also a world figure. At the age of thirty-five, Martin Luther King, Jr., was the youngest man to have received the Nobel Peace Prize. When told of his selection, he announced that he would turn over the prize money of $54,123 to the further the civil rights movement.
On the evening of April 4, 1968, while standing on the small platform near his motel room in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was to lead a protest march in sympathy with striking garbage workers of that city, he was killed.
In 1957 he was elected president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization formed to provide new leadership for the now growing civil rights movement. 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 unfair treatment, protest, and action; and meanwhile he wrote five books as well as many articles. In these years, he led a huge protest in Birmingham, Alabama, that caught the attention of the whole world. He directed the peaceful march on Washington, D.C., of 250,000 people to whom he delivered his address, "l Have a Dream", he was arrested upwards of twenty times and attacked at least four times; he was awarded five honorary degrees; was named Man of the Year by Time magazine in 1963; and became not only the symbolic leader of American blacks but also a world figure. At the age of thirty-five, Martin Luther King, Jr., was the youngest man to have received the Nobel Peace Prize. When told of his selection, he announced that he would turn over the prize money of $54,123 to the further the civil rights movement.
On the evening of April 4, 1968, while standing on the small platform near his motel room in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was to lead a protest march in sympathy with striking garbage workers of that city, he was killed.