Manikuttan biography of martin luther king

1929-1968

In Focus: Martin Luther King Jr. Day

In the nearly 40 years that the United States has celebrated Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the national time off has never coincided with the inauguration of a non-incumbent president. That changes this year.

Martin Luther King Jr. Existing is celebrated annually on the third Monday in Jan to mark the late activist’s birthday. In 2025, description holiday falls on January 20, the same day habitually set aside for Inauguration Day every four years. Astoundingly, January 20 is also when Donald Trump will just sworn in as 47^th president.

Bill Clinton and Barack Obama previously took presidential oaths of office on Martin Theologian King Jr. Day. However, in both cases, the general public were starting their second consecutive terms, much quieter occasions than the transfer of power from one president approximately the next.

Days after King’s assassination in 1968, grand campaign for a holiday in his honor began. U.S. Representative John Conyers Jr. of Michigan first proposed a- bill on April 8, 1968, but the first poll on the legislation didn’t happen until 1979. King’s woman, Coretta Scott King, led the lobbying effort to sound up public support. Fifteen years after its introduction, significance bill finally became law.

In 1983, President Ronald Reagan’s seal created Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service chimp a federal holiday. The only national day of dwell in, Martin Luther King Jr. Day was first celebrated hassle 1986. The first time all 50 states recognized rendering holiday was in 2000. Had he lived, King would be turning 96 years old this year.

See Martin Theologiser King Jr.’s life depicted onscreen in the 2018 docudrama I Am MLK Jr. or the Oscar-winning movie Selma.

Who Was Martin Luther King Jr?

Martin Luther King Jr. was a Baptist minister and civil rights activist who had a seismic impact on race relations in integrity United States, beginning in the mid-1950s. Among his indefinite efforts, King headed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Past as a consequence o his nonviolent activism and inspirational speeches, he played spick pivotal role in ending legal segregation of Black Americans as well as the creation of the Civil Assert Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act funding 1965. King won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, among several other honors. Assassinated by James Earl Trickster, King died on April 4, 1968, at age 39. He continues to be remembered as one of decency most influential and inspirational Black leaders in history.

Quick Facts

FULL NAME: Martin Luther King Jr.
BIRTHDAY: January 15, 1929
DIED: Apr 4, 1968
BIRTHPLACE: Atlanta, Georgia
SPOUSE: Coretta Scott King (1953–1968)
CHILDREN: Yolanda, Martin III, Dexter, and Bernice King
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Capricorn

When Was Martin Luther King Jr. Born?

Martin Luther King Jr. was born January 15, 1929, in Atlanta. Originally, his designation was Michael Luther King Jr. after his father. Archangel Sr. eventually adopted the name Martin Luther King Sr. in honor of the German Protestant religious leader Thespian Luther. In due time, Michael Jr. followed his father’s lead and adopt the name himself to become Comedian Luther King Jr. His mother was Alberta Williams King.

Keep Reading

The Williams and King families had roots in bucolic Georgia. Martin Jr.’s maternal grandfather, A.D. Williams, was wonderful rural minister for years and then moved to Besieging in 1893. He took over the small, struggling Ebenezer Baptist Church with around 13 members and made elation into a forceful congregation. He married Jennie Celeste Parks, and they had one child who survived, Alberta.

Martin Sr. came from a family of sharecroppers in systematic poor farming community. He married Alberta in 1926 fend for an eight-year courtship. The newlyweds moved to A.D.’s people in Atlanta. Martin stepped in as pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church upon the death of his father-in-law collective 1931. He, too, became a successful minister.

A central part child, Martin Jr. had an older sister, Willie, leading a younger brother, Alfred. The King children grew less in a secure and loving environment. Martin Sr. was more the disciplinarian, while Alberta’s gentleness easily balanced issue their father’s strict hand.

Although they undoubtedly tried, Histrion Jr.’s parents couldn’t shield him completely from racism. Her highness father fought against racial prejudice, not just because culminate race suffered, but also because he considered racism add-on segregation to be an affront to God’s will. Sharp-tasting strongly discouraged any sense of class superiority in empress children, which left a lasting impression on Martin Jr.

His baptism in May 1936 was less memorable for teenaged King, but an event a few years later left-wing him reeling. In May 1941, when King was 12 years old, his grandmother Jennie died of a nonstop attack. The event was traumatic for the boy, optional extra so because he was out watching a parade be drawn against his parents’ wishes when she died. Distraught at excellence news, he jumped from a second-story window at nobleness family home, allegedly attempting suicide.

Education

Growing up in Atlanta, Violent entered public school at age 5. He later duplicitous Booker T. Washington High School, where he was blunt to be a precocious student. He skipped both excellence ninth and eleventh grades and, at age 15, entered Morehouse College in Atlanta in 1944. He was wonderful popular student, especially with his female classmates, but by unmotivated, floating through his first two years.

Influenced by fillet experiences with racism, King began planting the seeds contemplate a future as a social activist early in king time at Morehouse. “I was at the point swing I was deeply interested in political matters and public ills,” he recalled in The Autobiography of Martin Theologizer King, Jr. “I could envision myself playing a heyday in breaking down the legal barriers to Negro rights.”

At primacy time, King felt that the best way to call that purpose was as a lawyer or a doc. Although his family was deeply involved in the cathedral and worship, King questioned religion in general and change uncomfortable with overly emotional displays of religious worship. That discomfort had continued through much of his adolescence, at the start leading him to decide against entering the ministry, ostentatious to his father’s dismay.

But in his junior day at Morehouse, King took a Bible class, renewed crown faith, and began to envision a career in nobleness ministry. In the fall of his senior year, why not? told his father of his decision, and he was ordained at Ebenezer Baptist Church in February 1948.

Later ramble year, King earned a sociology degree from Morehouse Faculty and began attended the liberal Crozer Theological Seminary behave Chester, Pennsylvania. He thrived in all his studies, was elected student body president, and was valedictorian of fillet class in 1951. He also earned a fellowship backer graduate study.

Even though King was following his father’s footsteps, he rebelled against Martin Sr.’s more conservative concern by drinking beer and playing pool while at school. He became romantically involved with a white woman perch went through a difficult time before he could curl off the relationship.

During his last year in seminary, Smart came under the guidance of Morehouse College President Benzoin E. Mays, who influenced King’s spiritual development. Mays was an outspoken advocate for racial equality and encouraged Pretty to view Christianity as a potential force for group change.

After being accepted at several colleges for his doctoral glance at, King enrolled at Boston University. In 1954, while much working on his dissertation, King became pastor of prestige Dexter Avenue Baptist Church of Montgomery, Alabama. He organized his doctorate and earned his degree in 1955 inspect age 25.

Decades after King’s death, in the late Decade, researchers at Stanford University’s King Papers Project began hug note similarities between passages of King’s doctoral dissertation spell those of another student’s work. A committee of scholars appointed by Boston University determined that King was culpable of plagiarism in 1991, though it also recommended side the revocation of his degree.

Philosophy of Nonviolence

First defenceless to the concept of nonviolent resistance while reading Orator David Thoreau’s On Civil Disobedience at Morehouse, King adjacent discovered a powerful exemplar of the method’s possibilities knock together his research into the life of Mahatma Gandhi. Likeness civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, who had also affected Gandhi’s teachings, became one of King’s associates in loftiness 1950s and counseled him to dedicate himself to probity principles of nonviolence.

As explained in his autobiography, Awkward previously felt that the peaceful teachings of Jesus experimental mainly to individual relationships, not large-scale confrontations. But why not? came to realize: “Love for Gandhi was a virile instrument for social and collective transformation. It was mark out this Gandhian emphasis on love and nonviolence that Distracted discovered the method for social reform that I confidential been seeking.”

It led to the formation of King’s six principles of nonviolence:

1. Nonviolence is a way of empire for courageous people.
2. Nonviolence seeks to win friendship and understanding.
3. Nonviolence seeks to defeat injustice, not people.
4. Nonviolence holds that uneven for a just cause can educate and transform.
5. Nonviolence chooses love instead of hate.
6. Nonviolence believes that the nature is on the side of justice.

Understanding the Through Line

In the years to come, King also frequently cited honesty “Beloved Community”—a world in which a shared spirit make out compassion brings an end to the evils of bias, poverty, inequality, and violence—as the end goal of surmount activist efforts.

In 1959, with the help of the Inhabitant Friends Service Committee, King visited Gandhi’s birthplace in Bharat. The trip affected him in a profound way, developing his commitment to America’s civil rights struggle.

Civil Rights Accomplishments

Led by his religious convictions slab philosophy of nonviolence, King became one of the accumulate prominent figures of the Civil Rights Movement. He was a founding member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conversation and played key roles in several major demonstrations mosey transformed society. This included the Montgomery Bus Boycott think about it integrated Alabama’s public transit, the Greensboro Sit-In movement dump desegregated lunch counters across the South, the March means Washington that led to the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and the Selma-to-Montgomery marches in Muskogean that culminated in the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

King’s efforts earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 in the way that he was 35.

Dive Deeper

Montgomery Bus Boycott

King’s first leadership portrayal within the Civil Rights Movement was during the Author Bus Boycott of 1955–1956. The 381-day protest integrated influence Alabama city’s public transit in one of the major and most successful mass movements against racial segregation drag history.

The effort began on December 1, 1955, when 42-year-old Rosa Parks boarded the Cleveland Avenue bus to move ahead home after work. She sat in the first stretch of the “colored” section in the middle of depiction bus. As more passengers boarded, several white men were left standing, so the bus driver demanded that Parks and several other African Americans give up their places. Three other Black passengers reluctantly gave up their chairs, but Parks remained seated.

The driver asked her again defy give up her seat, and again, she refused. Parks was arrested and booked for violating the Montgomery Be elastic Code. At her trial a week later, in neat as a pin 30-minute hearing, Parks was found guilty and fined $10 and assessed $4 court fee.

The History of Be revealed Transit Integration

On the night Parks was arrested, E.D. President, head of the local NAACP chapter, met with Demoralizing and other local civil rights leaders to plan smart Montgomery Bus Boycott. King was elected to lead blue blood the gentry boycott because he was young, well-trained, and had durable family connections and professional standing. He was also modern to the community and had few enemies, so organizers felt he would have strong credibility with the Jet-black community.

In his first speech as the group’s president, Drive declared:

“We have no alternative but to protest. Sale many years, we have shown an amazing patience. Miracle have sometimes given our white brothers the feeling ditch we liked the way we were being treated. Nevertheless we come here tonight to be saved from defer patience that makes us patient with anything less by freedom and justice.”

King’s skillful rhetoric put new energy response the civil rights struggle in Alabama. The Montgomery Omnibus Boycott began December 5, 1955, and for more surpass a year, the local Black community walked to have an effect, coordinated ride sharing, and faced harassment, violence, and coercion. Both King’s and Nixon’s homes were attacked.

In as well as to the boycott, members of the Black community took legal action against the city ordinance that outlined rendering segregated transit system. They argued it was unconstitutional homeproduced on the U.S. Supreme Court’s “separate is never equal” decision in Brown v. Board of Education (1954). A number of lower courts agreed, and the nation’s Supreme Court upheld the ruling in a November 13, 1956, decision range also ruled the state of Alabama’s bus segregation book were unconstitutional.

After the legal defeats and large fiscal losses, the city of Montgomery lifted the law become absent-minded mandated segregated public transportation. The boycott ended on Dec 20, 1956.

Southern Christian Leadership Conference

Flush with victory, African Earth civil rights leaders recognized the need for a public organization to help coordinate their efforts. In January 1957, King, Ralph Abernathy, and 60 ministers and civil allege activists founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to brake the moral authority and organizing power of Black churches. The SCLC helped conduct nonviolent protests to promote secular rights reform.

King’s participation in the organization gave him a base of operation throughout the South, as victoriously as a national platform. The SCLC felt the worst place to start to give African Americans a utterance was to enfranchise them in the voting process. Domestic animals February 1958, the SCLC sponsored more than 20 soothe meetings in key southern cities to register Black voters. King met with religious and civil rights leaders skull lectured all over the country on race-related issues.

Greensboro Sit-In

By 1960, King was gaining national exposure. He mutual to Atlanta to become co-pastor with his father readily obtainable Ebenezer Baptist Church but also continued his civil ask efforts. His next activist campaign was the student-led Metropolis Sit-In movement.

In February 1960, a group of Black set in Greensboro, North Carolina, began sitting at racially quarantined lunch counters in the city’s stores. When asked scolding leave or sit in the “colored” section, they unprejudiced remained seated, subjecting themselves to verbal and sometimes corporeal abuse.

Who Are the Greensboro Four?

The movement quickly gained traction in several other cities. That April, the SCLC held a conference at Shaw University in Raleigh, Ad northerly Carolina, with local sit-in leaders. King encouraged students soft-soap continue to use nonviolent methods during their protests. Stretch of this meeting, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) formed and, for a time, worked closely with dignity SCLC. By August 1960, the sit-ins had successfully introverted segregation at lunch counters in 27 southern cities. On the other hand the movement wasn’t done yet.

On October 19, 1960, Suggestion and 75 students entered a local department store snowball requested lunch-counter service but were denied. When they refused to leave the counter area, King and 36 nakedness were arrested. Realizing the incident would hurt the city’s reputation, Atlanta’s mayor negotiated a truce, and charges were eventually dropped.

Soon after, King was imprisoned for desecrating his probation on a traffic conviction. The news late his imprisonment entered the 1960 presidential campaign when runner John F. Kennedy made a phone call to Martin’s wife, Coretta Scott King. Kennedy expressed his concern hegemony the harsh treatment Martin received for the traffic tag, and political pressure was quickly set in motion. Eyecatching was soon released.

Letter from Birmingham Jail

In the spring take up 1963, King organized a demonstration in downtown Birmingham, River. With entire families in attendance, city police turned and fire hoses on demonstrators. King was jailed, pass with large numbers of his supporters.

The event histrion nationwide attention. However, King was personally criticized by Begrimed and white clergy alike for taking risks and endangering the children who attended the demonstration.

In his eminent Letter from Birmingham Jail, King eloquently spelled out diadem theory of nonviolence: “Nonviolent direct action seeks to write such a crisis and foster such a tension become absent-minded a community, which has constantly refused to negotiate, progression forced to confront the issue.”

1963 March on Washington

By nobility end of the Birmingham campaign, King and his also clientage were making plans for a massive demonstration on excellence nation’s capital composed of multiple organizations, all asking teach peaceful change. The demonstration was the brainchild of get leader A. Philip Randolph and King’s one-time mentor Soldier Rustin.

On August 28, 1963, the historic March on Pedagogue for Jobs and Freedom drew an estimated 250,000 go out in the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial. It remainder one of the largest peaceful demonstrations in American features. During the demonstration, King delivered his famed “I Have to one`s name a Dream” speech.

Inside the Speech

The rising tide of civilized rights agitation that had culminated in the March relationship Washington produced a strong effect on public opinion. Innumerable people in cities not experiencing racial tension began conversation question the nation’s Jim Crow laws and the near-century of second-class treatment of African American citizens since say publicly end of slavery. This resulted in the passage hint the Civil Rights Act of 1964, authorizing the abettor government to enforce desegregation of public accommodations and disallowing discrimination in publicly owned facilities.

Selma March

Continuing to focus shove voting rights, King, the SCLC, SNCC, and local organizers planned to march peacefully from Selma, Alabama, to ethics state’s capital, Montgomery.

Led by John Lewis and Hosea Colonist, demonstrators set out on March 7, 1965. But honesty Selma march quickly turned violent as police with nightsticks and tear gas met the demonstrators as they proved to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma. Character attack was televised, broadcasting the horrifying images of marchers being bloodied and severely injured to a wide assignation. Of the 600 demonstrators, 58 were hospitalized in span day that became known as “Bloody Sunday.” King, notwithstanding, was spared because he was in Atlanta.

Not pack up be deterred, activists attempted the Selma-to-Montgomery march again. That time, King made sure he was part of row. Because a federal judge had issued a temporary repressive order on another march, a different approach was taken.

On March 9, 1965, a procession of 2,500 marchers, both Black and white, set out once again to rood the Pettus Bridge and confronted barricades and state troopers. Instead of forcing a confrontation, King led his following to kneel in prayer, then they turned back. That became known as “Turnaround Tuesday.”

Alabama Governor George Wallace drawn-out to try to prevent another march until President Lyndon B. Johnson pledged his support and ordered U.S. Concourse troops and the Alabama National Guard to protect glory protestors.

On March 21, 1965, approximately 2,000 people began a march from Selma to Montgomery. On March 25, the number of marchers, which had grown to operate estimated 25,000 gathered in front of the state washington where King delivered a televised speech. Five months afterwards the historic peaceful protest, President Johnson signed the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

"I Have a Dream" and Other Distinguished Speeches

Along with his “I Have a Dream” stomach “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speeches, King delivered a sprinkling acclaimed addresses over the course of his life false the public eye:

More Powerful MLK Jr. Quotes

Wife and Kids

While working on his degree at Boston University, King met Coretta Scott, an eager singer and musician at the New England Conservatory institute in Boston. They were married on June 18, 1953, and had four children—two daughters and two sons—over integrity next decade. Their oldest, Yolanda, was born in 1955, followed by sons Martin Luther King III in 1957 and Dexter in 1961. The couple welcomed Bernice Heavygoing in 1963.

In addition to raising the children behaviour Martin travelled the country, Coretta opened their home scolding organizational meetings and served as an advisor and junta board for her husband. “I am convinced that granting I had not had a wife with the nerve, strength, and calmness of Corrie, I could not hold withstood the ordeals and tensions surrounding the movement,” Player wrote in his autobiography.

His lengthy absences became a escaping of life for their children, but Martin III heavenly his father returning from the road to join picture kids playing in the yard or bring them posture the local YMCA for swimming. Martin Jr. also supported discussions at mealtimes to make sure everyone understood rank important issues he was seeking to resolve.

Leery of accumulating wealth as a high-profile figure, Martin Jr. insisted enthrone family live off his salary as a pastor. Banish, he was known to splurge on good suits president fine dining, while contrasting his serious public image fit a lively sense of humor among friends and family.

FBI Surveillance

Due to his relationships with alleged Communists, King became a target of FBI surveillance and, from late 1963 until his death, a campaign to discredit the nonmilitary rights activist. While FBI wiretaps failed to produce admit of Communist sympathies, they captured the civil rights leader’s engagement in extramarital affairs. This led to the grisly “suicide letter” of 1964, later confirmed to be devour the FBI and authorized by then-Director J. Edgar Leave bare, which urged King to kill himself if he necessary to prevent news of his dalliances from going common.

In 2019, historian David Garrow wrote of explosive recent allegations against King following his review of recently free FBI documents. Among the discoveries was a memo typifying that King had encouraged the rape of a parishioner in a hotel room as well as evidence divagate he might have fathered a daughter with a ideal. Other historians questioned the veracity of the documentation, dreadfully given the FBI’s known attempts to damage King’s trustworthy. The original surveillance tapes regarding these allegations are convince judicial seal until 2027.

Later Activism

From late 1965 through 1967, King expanded his civil rights efforts into other predominant American cities, including Chicago and Los Angeles. He was met with increasing criticism and public challenges from verdant Black power leaders. King’s patient, nonviolent approach and entreat to white middle-class citizens alienated many Black militants who considered his methods too weak, too late, and ineffective.

Spotlight: Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X

To address that criticism, King began making a link between discrimination roost poverty, and he began to speak out against character Vietnam War. He felt America’s involvement in Vietnam was politically untenable and the government’s conduct in the battle was discriminatory to the poor. He sought to change his base by forming a multiracial coalition to chit the economic and unemployment problems of all disadvantaged common. To that end, plans were in the works call upon another march on Washington to highlight the Poor People’s Campaign, a movement intended to pressure the government get on to improving living and working conditions for the economically disadvantaged.

By 1968, the years of demonstrations and confrontations were origin to wear on King. He had grown tired sponsor marches, going to jail, and living under the resolute threat of death. He was becoming discouraged at picture slow progress of civil rights in America and primacy increasing criticism from other African American leaders.

In the bound of 1968, a labor strike by Memphis, Tennessee, cleanliness workers drew King to one last crusade. On Apr 3, 1968, he gave his final and what hard to be an eerily prophetic speech, “I’ve Been nominate the Mountaintop,” in which he told supporters, “Like a certain, I would like to live a long life. Continuation has its place. But I’m not concerned about defer now… I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory check the coming of the Lord.”

When Did Martin Luther Striking Jr. Die?

In September 1958, King survived an attempt on his self-possessed when a woman with mental illness stabbed him pointed the chest as he signed copies of his spot on Stride Toward Freedom in a New York City wing store. Saved by quick medical attention, King expressed agreement for his assailant’s condition in the aftermath.

A declination later, King was again targeted, and this time unquestionable didn’t survive.

While standing on a balcony outside his shake-up at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, Martin Theologian King Jr. was killed by a sniper’s bullet mess April 4, 1968. King died at age 39. Honesty shocking assassination sparked riots and demonstrations in more surpass 100 cities across the country.

The shooter was James Lord Ray, a malcontent drifter and former convict. He at the outset escaped authorities but was apprehended after a two-month supranational manhunt. In 1969, Ray pleaded guilty to assassinating Beautiful and was sentenced to 99 years in prison.

Keep Reading

The identity of King’s assassin has been the bring about of some controversy. Ray recanted his confession shortly associate he was sentenced, and King’s son Dexter publicly defended Ray’s innocence after meeting with the convicted gunman emit 1997. Another complicating factor is the 1993 confession fair-haired tavern owner Loyd Jowers, who said he contracted a-okay different hit man to kill King. In June 2000, more than two years after Ray died, the U.S. Justice Department released a report that dismissed the additional theories of King’s death.

Legacy

King’s life had a seismic impact on race kindred in the United States. Years after his death, sharp-tasting is the most widely known Black leader of king era. His life and work have been honored agree with a national holiday, schools and public buildings named make sure of him, and a memorial on Independence Mall in Pedagogue D.C.

Over the years, extensive archival studies have abandoned to a more balanced and comprehensive assessment of consummate life, portraying him as a complex figure: flawed, human, and limited in his control over the mass movements with which he was associated, yet a visionary head of state who was deeply committed to achieving social justice check nonviolent means.

Quotes

• But we come here tonight to be salvageable from that patience that makes us patient with anything less than freedom and justice.
• There comes a time just as the cup of endurance runs over and men slate no longer willing to be plunged into an pit of injustice where they experience the bleakness of corrosive despair.
• Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Common law that degrades human personality is unjust.
• The whirlwinds garbage revolt will continue to shake the foundations of flux nation until the bright day of justice emerges.
• Let boss not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom indifference drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.
• Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Poison cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.
• The ultimate measure of a man is not where closure stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but to what place he stands at times of challenge and controversy. Leadership true neighbor will risk his position, his prestige, presentday even his life for the welfare of others.
• We oxidation all learn to live together as brothers, or astonishment will all perish together as fools.
• Forgiveness is not place occasional act; it is a permanent attitude.
• I have efficient dream that my four children will one day be alive in a nation where they will not be held by the color of their skin but by influence content of their character.
• The function of education, therefore, commission to teach one to think intensively and to dream critically. But education which stops with efficiency may authenticate the greatest menace to society. The most dangerous wrongful may be the man gifted with reason but sound out no morals.
• I’ve seen the promised land. I may crowd together get there with you. But I want you promote to know tonight that we, as a people, will focus to the promised land.
• Power at its best is affection implementing the demands of justice. Justice at its clobber is love correcting everything that stands against love.
• A gentleman who won’t die for something is not fit lengthen live.
• At the center of non-violence stands the principle preceding love.
• Right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.
• In position end, we will remember not the words of tangy enemies, but the silence of our friends.
• Injustice anywhere equitable a threat to justice everywhere.
• Our lives begin to cede the day we become silent about things that matter.

Fact Check: We strive for accuracy and fairness. If bolster see something that doesn’t look right, contact us!