The life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Michael Luther King, Jr. was born on January 15, 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia. In 1935, his father, Reverend Michael Luther King, Sr., changed both their names in Martin to honor the German Protestant.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was born into a family of pastors. Both his grandfather and his father were ministers of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. King went to a segregated public school in Georgia where graduated at the age of fifteen. In 1948, he received a BA (Bachelor of Arts)degree in sociology from Morehouse College, a distinguished Negro Institution in Atlanta. In 1951, after 3 years of theological study at Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania, King received a BD (Bachelor of Divinity) degree. During his study, he was elected senior class president of a predominantly white class. In September 1951, King started doctoral studies in systematic theology at Boston University, from which he received his Doctor of Philosophy in 1955.

In 1953, he accepted a job as pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery Alabama at the age of 24. The same year, he married Coretta Scott, with whom he had two sons and two daughters.

Martin Luther King, Jr. had always been very committed to civil rights he became member of the executive committee of the NAACP (National Association for the advancement of Colored People). In December of 1955, King was approached by E.D. Nixon, head of the Montgomery NAACP, to lead the bus boycott in Montgomery after Rosa Parks, an African American woman, was arrested for not giving up her seat in a bus to a white man.

During the days of the boycott, which lasted 381 days, King was arrested, his family was threatened, and his house was bombed. Despite this clear opposition, he became a leader of the civil rights movement.

In 1957, King and other southern black ministers founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) of which he was elected president. Their goal was to carry out nonviolent resistance to unjust laws. The ideals of this organization came from Christianity; the operational methods from Gandhi. “Let nobody pull you so low as to hate them”,  was the important message that King gave to his followers.

In 1959, King visited Gandhi and his family in India to further explore the nonviolent protest strategies. This visit deeply affected him and made him more strongly committed to the civil rights movement.

Later that year, Martin Luther King, Jr. resigned from Dexter Church and became co-pastor at the church of his father in Atlanta. During that time he concentrated on demonstrations in cities like Birmingham, Alabama (1963), St. Augustine, Florida (1964), and Selma, Alabama (1965) for basic civil rights, right to vote labor rights and desegregation. The non violent protest actions attracted the attention of the media and reached newspaper headlines throughout the world. They evoked public sympathy and civil rights became the most important political issue in the 1960’s.

The march on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, in 1963, is the place where King held his famous “I have a dream” speech in front of 250.000 protestors.

 In 1963, King was elected ‘Man of the Year’ by Time magazine and in 1964, he received the Nobel prize for peace at only 35 years old, which made him the youngest man to receive a Nobel prize. The prize money of $50,123 went to the civil rights movement.

However, besides success, Martin Luther King, Jr. also encountered a lot of opposition. The civil rights movement became more radicalized and King’s message of peaceful protest was not shared by many young African Americans, who tended to follow Malcolm X, a member of Nation of Islam, or the Black Muslims. Also, the FBI tried to undermine his leadership because of  his criticism on the Vietnam War. King called the U.S. government "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today” which led to tensions between him and the Lyndon Johnson administration.

In 1967, King decided to start a campaign, the Poor People’s Campaign, to confront economical issues that had not yet been addressed during the civil rights movement. The organization demanded aid for the poorest communities in the United States and a bill that obliged the government to provide job programs to reconstruct society.

On April 3, 1968, King showed support to a protest march of African American garbage workers in Memphis Tennessee who were striking for higher wages and better treatment.

On the evening of April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated on the balcony of his motel at the age of 39. His death caused riots nationwide and President Johnson called for a national day of grieve on April 7.

Today, Martin Luther King is, for some, an example of great leadership and an inspiration for nonviolent protests, for others he is a militant who tried to bring about political and social change with his rebel views.