Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr.
King in 1964
Martin Luther King Jr.
Born	Michael King Jr. 15 1, 1929
Birthplace	Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.
Died	Template:Death date and age Memphis, Tennessee, U.S.
Nationality	American
Occupation	Baptist minister, civil rights activist
Title	1st President of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference
Known for	Leader of the American civil rights movement; "I Have a Dream" speech; nonviolent resistance
Spouse(s)	Coretta Scott King
Children	4
Awards	Nobel Peace Prize (1964), Presidential Medal of Freedom (1977, posthumous), Congressional Gold Medal (2003, posthumous)

Martin Luther King Jr. (born Michael King Jr.; January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American Baptist minister and civil rights activist who became the most prominent leader of the civil rights movement in the United States from 1955 until his assassination in 1968. Born into a family of Baptist preachers in Atlanta, Georgia, King rose to national prominence during the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955–1956 and went on to lead a series of campaigns that reshaped the legal and social landscape of the nation. Through his philosophy of nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience, inspired by Mahatma Gandhi and the teachings of the Social Gospel, King challenged Jim Crow laws and other forms of legalized racial discrimination that disenfranchised and oppressed African Americans across the South and throughout the country. He served as the first president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) from 1957 until his death, organized and participated in marches for voting rights, desegregation, and labor rights, and delivered one of the most consequential speeches in American history—"I Have a Dream"—before a quarter of a million people at the 1963 March on Washington. His efforts were instrumental in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968. King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, making him, at age 35, one of the youngest recipients of the honor. He was assassinated on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee, at the age of 39.

Early Life

Martin Luther King Jr. was born Michael King Jr. on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia, the second of three children born to the Reverend Michael King Sr. and Alberta Williams King. His father was pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church, a prominent Black congregation in Atlanta's Sweet Auburn neighborhood, and his mother was the daughter of the church's previous pastor, the Reverend Adam Daniel Williams. In 1934, Michael King Sr. traveled to Germany and, inspired by the legacy of the Protestant reformer Martin Luther, changed both his own name and that of his five-year-old son to Martin Luther King.

King grew up in a middle-class African American family during an era of strict racial segregation in the American South. Despite the relative economic stability of his household, he experienced the indignities of Jim Crow from an early age, encountering segregated public facilities, racially separated schools, and the social hierarchy that relegated Black citizens to second-class status. His upbringing in the Black church tradition profoundly shaped his worldview, imbuing him with a deep sense of social justice rooted in Christian theology. The rhythms and oratory of the Black Baptist pulpit would later become central to his public rhetoric and leadership style.

King was a precocious student who skipped both the ninth and twelfth grades. He enrolled at Morehouse College in Atlanta at the age of 15, entering in 1944. At Morehouse, he came under the influence of college president Benjamin Mays, a noted theologian and advocate for racial equality, who served as a spiritual mentor to King and reinforced his emerging commitment to social activism through the ministry. King was ordained as a Baptist minister at the age of 18, before completing his undergraduate degree, and was appointed as assistant pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church, serving alongside his father.

Education

King earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in sociology from Morehouse College in 1948. He then enrolled at Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania, where he studied the theological and philosophical foundations that would later underpin his activism. At Crozer, King was exposed to the writings of Walter Rauschenbusch, a leading proponent of the Social Gospel movement, and to the philosophy of nonviolent resistance articulated by Mahatma Gandhi. He graduated from Crozer in 1951 with a Bachelor of Divinity degree and was awarded a fellowship for graduate study.

King subsequently pursued doctoral studies in systematic theology at Boston University, where he completed his PhD in 1955. His doctoral dissertation was titled "A Comparison of the Conceptions of God in the Thinking of Paul Tillich and Henry Nelson Wieman." While in Boston, King met Coretta Scott, a music student from Alabama who was attending the New England Conservatory of Music. The couple married on June 18, 1953.

Career

Montgomery Bus Boycott and Early Activism

In 1954, at the age of 25, King accepted the pastorate of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. His arrival in the city coincided with a period of heightened tensions over racial segregation in public transportation. On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, a Black seamstress and secretary of the local NAACP chapter, was arrested for refusing to yield her bus seat to a white passenger in accordance with Montgomery's segregation ordinance. The arrest galvanized the city's Black community, and local leaders organized a boycott of the municipal bus system.

King was selected to lead the newly formed Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), which coordinated the boycott. The choice of the young, recently arrived pastor was partly strategic—as a relative newcomer, he had fewer entanglements with the city's white power structure and fewer enemies among rival Black leaders. The Montgomery bus boycott lasted 381 days, during which the city's Black residents—who constituted the majority of bus riders—refused to use public transportation, organizing carpools and walking long distances instead. The boycott attracted national and international media attention, and King emerged as a powerful spokesman for the cause.

During the boycott, King's home was firebombed, and he was arrested on charges of conspiracy. Despite these dangers and legal pressures, King maintained his commitment to nonviolent protest. The boycott concluded successfully on December 20, 1956, after the United States Supreme Court affirmed a lower court ruling that Montgomery's bus segregation laws were unconstitutional. The victory in Montgomery established King as a national figure and demonstrated the power of organized, nonviolent mass protest as a tool for social change.

Southern Christian Leadership Conference

In January 1957, King joined with other Black ministers and civil rights leaders—including the Reverend Ralph Abernathy, Bayard Rustin, and Fred Shuttlesworth—to form the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). King was elected as the organization's first president, a position he held until his death in 1968. The SCLC was established to coordinate and support nonviolent direct action across the South, building on the success of the Montgomery boycott to challenge segregation and voter disenfranchisement on a broader scale.

Under King's leadership, the SCLC organized voter registration drives, workshops on nonviolent protest, and direct-action campaigns in communities throughout the South. The organization drew its leadership primarily from the network of Black Baptist churches, which provided institutional support, meeting spaces, and a ready audience for King's moral appeals. The SCLC distinguished itself from other civil rights organizations such as the NAACP, which favored litigation, and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which emphasized grassroots organizing, by focusing on charismatic leadership and nationally visible protest campaigns.

Albany Movement

In 1961 and 1962, King and the SCLC became involved in the Albany Movement, a desegregation campaign in Albany, Georgia. The movement represented one of the first attempts by King and the SCLC to apply the lessons of Montgomery to a broader community-wide campaign against all forms of racial segregation. King was arrested during protests in Albany in December 1961 and again in July 1962.

However, the Albany campaign is generally regarded as a strategic setback. The city's police chief, Laurie Pritchett, avoided the kind of violent, televised confrontations that had drawn national sympathy to the movement in Montgomery. Pritchett ordered his officers to arrest protesters without overt brutality and arranged for jail space in surrounding counties to prevent overcrowding that might create a crisis. The city's authorities refused to negotiate, and the movement ended without achieving its desegregation goals. King and his associates drew important lessons from Albany, particularly the need to target specific, achievable goals and to select venues where the opposition's response was likely to generate national outrage.

Birmingham Campaign and "Letter from Birmingham Jail"

In April 1963, King and the SCLC launched a major campaign against segregation in Birmingham, Alabama, one of the most rigidly segregated cities in the South. The Birmingham campaign, known as "Project C" (for confrontation), was designed to provoke a crisis that would compel the federal government to intervene. Protesters conducted sit-ins at lunch counters, marches on City Hall, and boycotts of downtown businesses.

King was arrested on April 12, 1963, for violating an injunction against protests. While confined in the Birmingham city jail, he composed his famous "Letter from Birmingham Jail," a detailed and eloquent defense of civil disobedience addressed to a group of white clergymen who had criticized the protests as untimely and counterproductive. In the letter, King argued that individuals have a moral obligation to disobey unjust laws and that the urgency of racial injustice could not be deferred to a more convenient moment. The letter became one of the defining documents of the civil rights movement and a foundational text in the literature of nonviolent protest.

The Birmingham campaign escalated in early May 1963, when the city's Commissioner of Public Safety, Bull Connor, ordered the use of fire hoses and police dogs against peaceful demonstrators, including children and teenagers. Images of the violence were broadcast on national television and published in newspapers around the world, provoking widespread outrage and bringing intense pressure on the administration of President John F. Kennedy to act on civil rights. The crisis in Birmingham contributed directly to Kennedy's decision to propose comprehensive civil rights legislation to Congress.

March on Washington and "I Have a Dream"

On August 28, 1963, King participated in and served as one of the principal leaders of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, one of the largest political rallies in American history. An estimated 250,000 people gathered on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., to demand civil and economic rights for African Americans. The march was organized by a coalition of civil rights, labor, and religious organizations, with A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin serving as the primary organizers.

King delivered the final speech of the day from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. His address, known as the "I Have a Dream" speech, called for an end to racism and envisioned a future in which people would be judged by their character rather than the color of their skin. The speech drew on biblical imagery, the rhetoric of the American founding documents, and the traditions of the Black church. It became one of the most recognized and quoted speeches in American history and cemented King's standing as the foremost leader of the civil rights movement.

The March on Washington helped build public support for the civil rights legislation then pending in Congress. President Kennedy, who had initially been cautious about the march, endorsed its outcome. After Kennedy's assassination in November 1963, President Lyndon B. Johnson championed the legislation, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed into law on July 2, 1964. The act prohibited discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin in employment and public accommodations.

Selma and the Voting Rights Act

In early 1965, King and the SCLC turned their attention to voting rights, launching a campaign centered in Selma, Alabama, where discriminatory registration practices had kept the vast majority of Black residents off the voting rolls. The Selma campaign sought to dramatize the systematic denial of voting rights to African Americans across the South.

On March 7, 1965, a day that became known as "Bloody Sunday," a planned march from Selma to the state capital of Montgomery was violently broken up by Alabama state troopers at the Edmund Pettus Bridge. The troopers used tear gas and clubs against the marchers, and the nationally televised footage of the assault shocked the nation. King helped organize subsequent marches, and the third attempt, conducted under federal court protection, successfully completed the 54-mile route to Montgomery on March 25, 1965, with thousands of participants.

The events in Selma accelerated congressional action on voting rights. President Johnson addressed a joint session of Congress on March 15, 1965, invoking the language of the civil rights movement by declaring "We shall overcome." The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was signed into law on August 6, 1965, prohibiting discriminatory voting practices and providing for federal oversight of elections in jurisdictions with a history of discrimination.

Later Campaigns: Poverty and the Vietnam War

In the final years of his life, King expanded the scope of his activism beyond racial desegregation and voting rights to address issues of economic justice and American foreign policy. He became increasingly vocal in his opposition to the Vietnam War, delivering a major address at Riverside Church in New York City on April 4, 1967, in which he called the United States government "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today." The speech drew criticism from some civil rights allies who feared that linking the antiwar and civil rights causes would alienate the Johnson administration and moderate white supporters.

King also turned his attention to the issue of poverty, arguing that the civil rights movement had achieved legal equality but had not addressed the underlying economic inequalities that perpetuated racial injustice. In late 1967, he announced plans for the Poor People's Campaign, a multiracial initiative that would bring thousands of impoverished Americans to Washington, D.C., to demand federal action on jobs, housing, and income. The campaign sought to build a broad coalition that transcended racial lines, uniting Black, white, Latino, and Native American activists in a common struggle against poverty.

King's positions on Vietnam and economic justice placed him at odds with some elements of the political establishment and within the civil rights movement itself. His critique of the war and his calls for a radical redistribution of economic power were more controversial than his earlier campaigns against Southern segregation.

FBI Surveillance and Harassment

From 1963 onward, King was the subject of extensive surveillance by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) under the direction of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. Hoover regarded King as a radical threat and authorized the Bureau's COINTELPRO operations to monitor, discredit, and neutralize him. FBI agents wiretapped King's phones, bugged his hotel rooms, and gathered information about his personal life.

The FBI's stated rationale for the surveillance was concern over alleged communist influence on King and the civil rights movement, particularly King's association with Stanley Levison, a New York attorney who had previous ties to the Communist Party USA. However, the surveillance extended far beyond the question of communist influence. In 1964, the FBI compiled recordings from its surveillance and mailed them to King along with an anonymous letter that threatened to expose his personal life and was widely interpreted as an attempt to induce him to commit suicide.

The FBI's campaign against King represented one of the most extensive programs of domestic surveillance and harassment directed at a private citizen in American history. The full extent of the Bureau's activities became public knowledge only after Hoover's death in 1972 and subsequent congressional investigations, including the Church Committee hearings of 1975–1976.

Personal Life

King married Coretta Scott on June 18, 1953, at the Scott family home near Marion, Alabama. The couple had four children: Yolanda Denise (1955–2007), Martin Luther III (born 1957), Dexter Scott (born 1961), and Bernice Albertine (born 1963). Coretta Scott King became a prominent civil rights activist in her own right and, after her husband's death, dedicated herself to preserving his legacy, founding the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta.

King was jailed numerous times over the course of his career, and he and his family received frequent death threats. His home in Montgomery was bombed during the bus boycott in 1956. Despite the constant danger, King maintained his commitment to nonviolent principles, drawing strength from his Christian faith and the example of Gandhi's movement in India.

On April 4, 1968, King was assassinated while standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, where he had traveled to support a strike by the city's African American sanitation workers. He was struck by a single rifle bullet and was pronounced dead at St. Joseph's Hospital at 7:05 p.m. He was 39 years old. James Earl Ray, a fugitive and small-time criminal, was arrested two months later in London and pleaded guilty to the murder in March 1969, receiving a 99-year prison sentence. Ray later recanted his guilty plea and sought a trial, but his appeals were unsuccessful, and he died in prison in 1998. The circumstances of King's assassination have been the subject of ongoing debate and conspiracy theories.

King's assassination set off a wave of riots in more than 100 American cities. President Johnson declared a national day of mourning on April 7, 1968.

Recognition

King received numerous honors and awards during his lifetime and posthumously. In 1964, at the age of 35, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his leadership of the nonviolent struggle against racial inequality in the United States. He donated the prize money of $54,123 to the civil rights movement.

In 1977, King was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Jimmy Carter, who cited King's contribution to advancing human rights and social justice in the United States. In 2003, King was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian award bestowed by the United States Congress.

The movement to establish a federal holiday honoring King began shortly after his assassination. Cities and states across the country designated observances in his honor beginning in 1971. After a prolonged legislative campaign, led in significant part by Coretta Scott King and supported by a petition bearing six million signatures, Congress passed legislation in 1983 establishing the third Monday of January as Martin Luther King Jr. Day. The federal holiday was first observed on January 20, 1986. By 2000, all 50 states recognized the holiday. The annual observance remains a significant national occasion, with communities across the country marking the day with commemorative events and service activities.

The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., was dedicated on October 16, 2011. The memorial features a 30-foot granite statue of King emerging from a stone, inspired by a line from his "I Have a Dream" speech: "Out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope." Hundreds of streets, schools, parks, and public buildings across the United States and around the world bear his name.

Legacy

Martin Luther King Jr.'s influence on American society and global movements for justice extends far beyond the specific legislative victories of the civil rights era. His articulation of a philosophy of nonviolent resistance, grounded in Christian ethics and adapted from the Gandhian tradition, provided a framework for social change that has been adopted by movements around the world. His speeches and writings—including "I Have a Dream," "Letter from Birmingham Jail," and his Nobel Prize acceptance address—remain among the most studied and quoted texts in the English language.

The legislative achievements of the movement King led—the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968—transformed the legal framework of American society, dismantling the system of de jure racial segregation that had prevailed since the post-Reconstruction era. These laws did not eliminate racial inequality, as King himself recognized in his later campaigns against poverty and economic injustice, but they established the legal foundation for the ongoing struggle for equality.

King's vision extended beyond racial justice to encompass broader questions of economic equity and peace. His advocacy for the Poor People's Campaign and his opposition to the Vietnam War anticipated later debates about the intersection of race, class, and militarism in American public life. His call for universal access to health care, housing, and economic opportunity continues to resonate in contemporary policy discussions.

The legacy of King has also been the subject of political contest. His words and image are invoked by advocates across the political spectrum, and debates over how to teach his life and the history of the civil rights movement remain active in American public life. His associates and protégés, including the Reverend Jesse Jackson and Congressman John Lewis, carried forward his work in subsequent decades, extending his influence into new areas of American public life.

King remains one of the most recognized and referenced figures in American history. His life and work are commemorated annually on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and his message of nonviolent struggle for justice and human dignity continues to serve as a touchstone for social movements in the United States and around the world.