Dr Martin Luther King Jr's Kevo

Martin Luther King, Jr., (January 15, 1929-April 4, 1968) was born Michael Luther King, Jr., but later had his name changed to Martin. His grandfather began the family's long tenure as pastors of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, serving from 1914 to 1931; his father has served from then until the present, and from 1960 until his death Martin Luther acted as co-pastor. Martin Luther attended segregated public schools in Georgia, graduating from high school at the age of fifteen; he received the B. A. degree in 1948 from Morehouse College, a distinguished Negro institution of Atlanta from which both his father and grandfather had graduated. After three years of theological study at Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania where he was elected president of a predominantly white senior class, he was awarded the B.D. in 1951. With a fellowship won at Crozer, he enrolled in graduate studies at Boston University, completing his residence for the doctorate in 1953 and receiving the degree in 1955. In Boston he met and married Coretta Scott, a young woman of uncommon intellectual and artistic attainments. Two sons and two daughters were born into the family.

In 1954, Martin Luther King accepted the pastorale of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. Always a strong worker for civil rights for members of his race, King was, by this time, a member of the executive committee of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the leading organization of its kind in the nation. He was ready, then, early in December, 1955, to accept the leadership of the first great Negro nonviolent demonstration of contemporary times in the United States, the bus boycott described by Gunnar Jahn in his presentation speech in honor of the laureate. The boycott lasted 382 days. On December 21, 1956, after the Supreme Court of the United States had declared unconstitutional the laws requiring segregation on buses, Negroes and whites rode the buses as equals. During these days of boycott, King was arrested, his home was bombed, he was subjected to personal abuse, but at the same time he emerged as a Negro leader of the first rank.

In 1957 he was elected president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization formed to provide new leadership for the now burgeoning civil rights movement. The ideals for this organization he took from Christianity; its operational techniques from Gandhi. In the eleven-year period between 1957 and 1968, King traveled over six million miles and spoke over twenty-five hundred times, appearing wherever there was injustice, protest, and action; and meanwhile he wrote five books as well as numerous articles. In these years, he led a massive protest in Birmingham, Alabama, that caught the attention of the entire world, providing what he called a coalition of conscience. and inspiring his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail", a manifesto of the Negro revolution; he planned the drives in Alabama for the registration of Negroes as voters; he directed the peaceful march on Washington, D.C., of 250,000 people to whom he delivered his address, "l Have a Dream", he conferred with President John F. Kennedy and campaigned for President Lyndon B. Johnson; he was arrested upwards of twenty times and assaulted at least four times; he was awarded five honorary degrees; was named Man of the Year by Time magazine in 1963; and became not only the symbolic leader of American blacks but also a world figure.

At the age of thirty-five, Martin Luther King, Jr., was the youngest man to have received the Nobel Peace Prize. When notified of his selection, he announced that he would turn over the prize money of $54,123 to the furtherance of the civil rights movement.

On the evening of April 4, 1968, while standing on the balcony of his motel room in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was to lead a protest march in sympathy with striking garbage workers of that city, he was assassinated.

American civil rights icon Michael Luther King Jr., was born on January 15, 1929 in the family home at 501 Auburn Avenue in Atlanta, Georgia. (The site is now classified as a national historic landmark.) King is raised in a regimented and religious home, but lived a comfortable existence as a child. As a young boy he was particularly loud or noticeable, but was a very gifted student. In fact, he did so well on the college entrance exams in his junior year of high school that he was allowed to bypass the remainder of high school and enroll in Morehouse College at the age of 15. Later had his name changed to Martin

While in school, King married Coretta Scott in 1953, and graduated two years later with a Ph.D. in divinity studies from Boston University. Although King could have easily settled for a comfortable life as a middle-class Baptist Minister, he instead sacrificed the promise of contentment and dedicated his life to the struggle for justice and equality for blacks, enduring endless arrests, harassment, and death threats. In the end, however, King?s belief in the civil rights struggle cost him his life as on April 4, 1968; when he was assassinated by James Earl Ray in Memphis, Tennessee. Martin Luther King Junior was laid to rest in a tomb at the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta, Georgia.
Work History
"1947 Receives license to preach and assists father who is a pastor at the Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta, Georgia. 1948 Ordained as a Baptist minister. 1954 Pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Montgomery, Alabama. 1955 The Montgomery Improvement, MIA, Association is formed with King nominated as president. The MIA was formed to support Rosa Parks who was protesting the segregation policy of the Montgomery Transit Service. 1957 Southern Christian Leadership Conference is formed and King was elected President. 1959 King flies to India as the guest of Prime Minister Nehru to study with Ghandi in the techniques of non-violent resistance; Later in the year King joins his father as co-pastor at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. 1961 King begins The Freedom Riders, a group of activists that will travel eastern America protesting segregation. 1962 Martin Luther King is invited to meet President John F. Kennedy to discuss racial issues. 1963 King leads the largest and most remembered civil rights march in American history where he addressed the crowd at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial with the immortalized ""I have a dream"" speech. 1964 Martin Luther King witnesses Lyndon Johnson signing the Civil Rights Act. 1966 Martin Luther King and his family move to Chicago to start the Chicago Project, the northern civil rights movement. 1967 King initiates the Poor People's Campaign which focuses on jobs and a decent standard of living for poor people of all racial backgrounds."
Affiliations
Montgomery Improvement Association. Southern Christian Leadership Conference. National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
Awards
Dr Martin Luther King Jr has also won numerous Awards