Guide Note
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., was the preeminent American civil rights leader of the 20th century, heading a movement that began in the 1950s by confronting and dismantling racial segregation in the South. The movement expanded in the 1960s to grapple with an array of issues including the Vietnam War and systemic poverty in America. An adherent of Mahatma Gandhi's philosophy of nonviolence, King was assassinated in 1968.
Fast Facts
- Born on January 15, 1929
- Awarded Nobel Peace Prize in 1964
- Spouse: Coretta Scott King
- Son: Martin Luther King III
- Son: Dexter Scott King
- Sister: Christine King Farris
- Assassinated at 6:01 p.m., April 4, 1968
- 6th on Time's Person of the Century poll
- Buried on the grounds of the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site, in Atlanta, GA
- Martin Luther King Day celebrated annually on his birthday
Personal biography
Born on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia, King held bachelor's degrees from Morehouse College and Crozer Theological Seminary, and a Ph.D. in theology from Boston University. While finishing his dissertation in 1954, King became the pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama.
Early work
In 1955, after Rosa Parks refused to yield her seat on a Montgomery bus to a white man, King, in collaboration with the NAACP, led a boycott of the Montgomery bus system. Amid the ensuing hostility, snipers fired at demonstrators and King's house was bombed. The boycott, however, led to a 1956 Supreme Court decision outlawing racial segregation on public transportation, sparking the civil rights movement.
The civil rights movement
In 1957, King co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the organization that would serve as his base for actions such as the 1963 March on Washington, and for local and national campaigns against Jim Crow laws and toward equal voting rights.
King's activism in the late Fifties and early Sixties was instrumental in the creation and passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as well as the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The FBI, under director J. Edgar Hoover, began an extended campaign of surveillance against King in 1961.
Later work
His work in the mid- to late-1960s focused increasingly on ending the unpopular war in Vietnam, and on extending the principles of the Civil Rights Movement to a colorblind campaign for the rights of low-income citizens.
Assassination
On April 4, 1968, King was in Memphis, Tennessee, supporting a strike by municipal employees, when he was shot by a sniper on the balcony of his motel room. James Earl Ray was later captured in a London airport and charged with the murder. Ray confessed to the crime in a plea bargain and was sentenced to a life term, but later claimed to have been part of a conspiracy and recanted his confession. King's surviving family have been among those who credit the claim.
Related Pages on Mahalo
DNC MLK Tribute | Martin Luther King Day | I Have a Dream | Coretta Scott King | Yolanda King | Malcolm X | Civil Rights Movement | Robert F. Kennedy | Martin Luther King III | Rosa Parks
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