Martin Luther king jr. was born in Atlanta, Georgia on January 15, 1929. His father Martin was the priest of the Ebenezer Baptist church, and his mother Alberta Williams King was a schoolteacher. Martin also had a younger brother, Alfred Daniel and an older sister, Christine. Martin learned about racism at an early age.
When he was six years old, their parents stopped his friendship with two white boys. And at the age of eleven a white woman hit him over the head just because he was black. He was a very smart student and was admitted into college at the age of 15, without completing high school. When he was 18 years old he decided to become a minister and started to work in his father’s church. After graduating college in 1948, he entered the Crozer Theological seminary.
Martin was the speaker of his class in 1951 and won a graduate fellowship. Then in 1955 he received a Ph. D. in theology.
In Boston Martin met Coretta Scott. Then later in 1953 martin and coretta got married and had four children, Martin Luther III, Dexter Scott, Yolanda Denise, and Bernice Albertine. In December 1958 Martin became the president of the group, Southern Christian Leadership Conference that was formed to carry on civil right activities in the south. But later in 1963, he was put into jail during a successful campaign to achieve the desegregation of many public facilities in Birmingham, Alabama.
Martin later became the youngest person ever to get the Nobel peace prize. In 1965 Martin Luther king Jr. led a drive to register black voters in Selma, Alabama. But to get this drive protesters did a five-day march from Selma to the capitol in Montgomery.
He combined his civil rights compains with a strong hand against the Vietnam war because he believed that the money and effort which was spent on the war could have been used to beat the discrimination against African Americans. With this some black leaders felt that Martins statements against the war diverted public attention from the civil rights. Early in 1968 Martin traveled to Memphis Tennessee to support a strike of poorly paid sanitation workers. There, on April 4, 1968, Martin was assassinated by a sniper, by the name of James Earl Ray.
Martin Luther king JR’s death shocked the nation and started riots everywhere by the African American people in many cities. He was later buried in Atlanta under a monument inscribed with the final words of his famous “I Have a dream”speech.
