Martin Luther King

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Martin Luther King

Martin Luther King, Jr. (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American political activist, the most famous leader of the American civil rights movement, and a Baptist minister. Considered a peacemaker throughout the world for his promotion of nonviolence and equality treatment for different races, he received the Nobel Peace Prize before he was assassinated in 1968. He was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Jimmy Carter in 1977, the Congressional Gold Medal in 2004, and in 1986, Martin Luther King Day was established in his honor. King's most influential and well-known speech is "I Have A Dream."

King was born in Atlanta, Georgia (on 105 Auburn Avenue) to the Rev. Martin Luther King, Sr. and Alberta Williams King. (Birth records for Martin Luther King, Jr. list his name as Michael.) After high school he attended Morehouse College, where he was mentored by the school's president, civil rights leader Benjamin Mays; he graduated in 1948 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in sociology. Later he graduated as valedictorian from Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania with a Bachelor of Divinity degree in 1951. In 1955, he received a Ph.D. in Systematic theology from Boston University.

King married Coretta Scott on June 18, 1953. King's father performed the wedding ceremony in Scott's parents' house in Marion, Alabama.

King and Scott had four children:

  • Yolanda Denise (November 17, 1955, Montgomery, Alabama)
  • Martin Luther III (October 23, 1957, Montgomery, Alabama)
  • Dexter Scott (January 30, 1961, Atlanta, Georgia)
  • Bernice Albertine (March 28, 1963, Atlanta, Georgia)

All four children have followed their father's footsteps as civil rights activists, although their own issues and some opinions differ. Coretta Scott King died on January 30, 2006.

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Civil rights activism

In 1953, at the age of twenty-four, King became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church—the most distinguished black church in Montgomery, Alabama. On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to comply with the Jim Crow law that required her to give up her seat to a white man. The Montgomery Bus Boycott, led by King, soon followed. It lasted for 382 days, the situation becoming so tense that King's house was bombed. King was arrested during this campaign, which ended with a United States Supreme Court decision outlawing racial segregation on intrastate buses ...

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