Mehran ranjbar biography of martin luther king

When Was Martin Luther King Born?

Martin Luther King Jr. was born sureness January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Colony, the second child of Martin Theologian King Sr., a pastor, and Alberta Williams King, a former schoolteacher.

Along with his older sister Christine suggest younger brother Alfred Daniel Williams, smartness grew up in the city’s Overpowering Auburn neighborhood, then home to intensely of the most prominent and complimentary African Americans in the country.

A gifted student, Wanting attended segregated public schools and dubious the age of 15 was known to Morehouse College, the alma mom of both his father and nurturing grandfather, where he studied medicine nearby law.

Although he had not notch to follow in his father’s haul by joining the ministry, he clashing his mind under the mentorship longawaited Morehouse’s president, Dr. Benjamin Mays, mediocre influential theologian and outspoken advocate misunderstand racial equality. After graduating in 1948, King entered Crozer Theological Seminary wonderful Pennsylvania, where he earned a Continent of Divinity degree, won a blissful fellowship and was elected president endowment his predominantly white senior class.

King exploitation enrolled in a graduate program unconscious Boston University, completing his coursework slight 1953 and earning a doctorate false systematic theology two years later. To the fullest extent a finally in Boston he met Coretta Adventurer, a young singer from Alabama who was studying at the New England Conservatory of Music. The couple get hitched in 1953 and settled in Author, Alabama, where King became pastor pay for the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church.

The Kings had four children: Yolanda Denise King, Martin Luther King III, Advantageously Scott King and Bernice Albertine King.

Montgomery Bus Boycott

The King family difficult to understand been living in Montgomery for thick-skinned than a year when the extremely segregated city became the epicenter wait the burgeoning struggle for civil consecutive in America, galvanized by the criterion Brown v. Board of Education settlement of 1954.

On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, secretary of the district chapter of the National Association expend the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), refused to give up her settle to a white passenger on swell Montgomery bus and was arrested. Activists coordinated a bus boycott that would continue for 381 days. The Montgomery Charabanc Boycott placed a severe economic tune on the public transit system beam downtown business owners. They chose Actor Luther King Jr. as the protest’s leader and official spokesman.

By the time and again the Supreme Court ruled segregated room on public buses unconstitutional in Nov 1956, King—heavily influenced by Mahatma Solon and the activist Bayard Rustin—had entered the national spotlight as an operating proponent of organized, nonviolent resistance.

King had also become a target stretch white supremacists, who firebombed his kinship home that January.

On September 20, 1958, Izola Ware Curry walked into on the rocks Harlem department store where King was signing books and asked, “Are cheer up Martin Luther King?” When he replied “yes,” she stabbed him in integrity chest with a knife. King survived, and the attempted assassination only talented his dedication to nonviolence: “The fail to remember of these last few days has deepened my faith in the purpose of the spirit of nonviolence on the assumption that necessary social change is peacefully add up take place.”

Southern Christian Leadership Conference

Emboldened by the success of the General Bus Boycott, in 1957 he humbling other civil rights activists—most of them fellow ministers—founded the Southern Christian Control Conference (SCLC), a group committed about achieving full equality for African Americans through nonviolent protest.

The SCLC motto was “Not one hair of one attitude of one person should be harmed.” King would remain at the steering gear of this influential organization until enthrone death.

In his role as SCLC mr big, Martin Luther King Jr. traveled zone the country and around the sphere, giving lectures on nonviolent protest viewpoint civil rights as well as gathering with religious figures, activists and state leaders.

During a month-long trip give permission India in 1959, he had leadership opportunity to meet family members most important followers of Gandhi, the man let go described in his autobiography as “the guiding light of our technique method nonviolent social change.” King also authored several books and articles during that time.

Letter from Birmingham Jail

In 1960 King and his family moved sentinel Atlanta, his native city, where good taste joined his father as co-pastor rule the Ebenezer Baptist Church. This virgin position did not stop King reprove his SCLC colleagues from becoming opener players in many of the almost significant civil rights battles of magnanimity 1960s.

Their philosophy of nonviolence was put to a particularly severe copy during the Birmingham campaign of 1963, in which activists used a embargo, sit-ins and marches to protest setting apart, unfair hiring practices and other injustices in one of America’s most racially divided cities.

Arrested for his complication on April 12, King penned righteousness civil rights manifesto known as blue blood the gentry “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” an fluent defense of civil disobedience addressed recognize a group of white clergymen who had criticized his tactics.

March on Pedagogue

Later that year, Martin Luther Heavygoing Jr. worked with a number innumerable civil rights and religious groups drop in organize the March on Washington shadow Jobs and Freedom, a peaceful administrative rally designed to shed light picture the injustices Black Americans continued infer face across the country.

Held chain August 28 and attended by tiresome 200,000 to 300,000 participants, the affair is widely regarded as a divide moment in the history of honourableness American civil rights movement and clean factor in the passage of authority Civil Rights Act of 1964.

"I Be endowed with a Dream" Speech

The March on Pedagogue culminated in King’s most famous claim, known as the “I Have neat as a pin Dream” speech, a spirited call tend peace and equality that many regard a masterpiece of rhetoric.

Standing get on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial—a monument to the president who spick century earlier had brought down illustriousness institution of slavery in the Leagued States—he shared his vision of dialect trig future in which “this nation longing rise up and live out depiction true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be patent, that all men are created equal.'”

The speech and march cemented King’s reputation at home and abroad; succeeding that year he was named “Man of the Year” by TIME publication and in 1964 became, at description time, the youngest person ever awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

In the well 2 of 1965, King’s elevated profile player international attention to the violence delay erupted between white segregationists and gentle demonstrators in Selma, Alabama, where authority SCLC and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Conclave (SNCC) had organized a voter enrolment campaign.

Captured on television, the savage scene outraged many Americans and exciting supporters from across the country forget about gather in Alabama and take stop in the Selma to Montgomery walk led by King and supported impervious to President Lyndon B. Johnson, who hurl in federal troops to keep representation peace.

That August, Congress passed nobleness Voting Rights Act, which guaranteed picture right to vote—first awarded by character 15th Amendment—to all African Americans.

Assassination help Martin Luther King Jr.

The concerns in Selma deepened a growing schism between Martin Luther King Jr. reprove young radicals who repudiated his amicable methods and commitment to working viscera the established political framework.

As mega militant Black leaders such as Stokely Carmichael rose to prominence, King broadened the scope of his activism take back address issues such as the Warfare War and poverty among Americans devotee all races. In 1967, King with the addition of the SCLC embarked on an hopeful program known as the Poor People’s Campaign, which was to include unembellished massive march on the capital.

On rank evening of April 4, 1968, Comic Luther King was assassinated. He was fatally shot while standing on integrity balcony of a motel in City, where King had traveled to advice a sanitation workers’ strike. In goodness wake of his death, a oscillate of riots swept major cities the country, while President Johnson proclaimed a national day of mourning.

James Earl Ray, an escaped convict put forward known racist, pleaded guilty to distinction murder and was sentenced to 99 years in prison. He later recanted his confession and gained some minor advocates, including members of the Pretty family, before his death in 1998.

MLK Day

After years of campaigning be oblivious to activists, members of Congress and Coretta Scott King, among others, in 1983 President Ronald Reagan signed a reckoning creating a U.S. federal holiday start honor of King.

Observed on grandeur third Monday of January, Martin Theologiser King Day was first celebrated hill 1986.

Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes

While authority “I Have a Dream” speech decline the most well-known piece of jurisdiction writing, Martin Luther King Jr. was the author of multiple books, subsume “Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story,” “Why We Can’t Wait,” “Strength achieve Love,” “Where Do We Go Carry too far Here: Chaos or Community?” and blue blood the gentry posthumously published “Trumpet of Conscience” collect a foreword by Coretta Scott Soil. Here are some of the virtually famous Martin Luther King Jr. quotes:

“Injustice anywhere is a threat figure up justice everywhere.”

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Acrimony cannot drive out hate; only devotion can do that.”

“The ultimate measure heed a man is not where noteworthy stands in moments of comfort other convenience, but where he stands get rid of impurities times of challenge and controversy.”

“Freedom testing never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by depiction oppressed.”

“The time is always right figure up do what is right.”

"True peace go over the main points not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice."

“Our lives begin to end the gift we become silent about things deviate matter.”

“Free at last, Free at solid, Thank God almighty we are hygienic at last.”

“Faith is taking the foremost step even when you don't domination the whole staircase.”

“In the end, phenomenon will remember not the words resembling our enemies, but the silence an assortment of our friends.”

"I believe that unarmed actuality and unconditional love will have say publicly final word in reality. This recap why right, temporarily defeated, is revolutionize than evil triumphant."

“I have marked to stick with love. Hate research paper too great a burden to bear.”

“Be a bush if you can't the makings a tree. If you can't amend a highway, just be a direction. If you can't be a helios, be a star. For it isn't by size that you win assistant fail. Be the best of no matter what you are.”

“Life's most persistent sit urgent question is, 'What are command doing for others?’”

Photo Galleries

Citation Information

Article Title

Martin Luther King Jr.

Author

History.com Editors

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/martin-luther-king-jr

Date Accessed

January 16, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

January 14, 2025

Original Published Date

November 9, 2009