Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was born on 15 January, 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia. An interesting historical note has Dr. King's father discovering that his son's name had mistakenly been recorded as "Michael" on his birth certificate. He found this out when he was applying for a passport for his son in 1934.
At fifteen, Dr. King entered Morehouse College and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in sociology. After receiving a Bachelor's of Divinity in 1951 from the Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania, he went on to study at Boston College. In June 1955, Dr. King received his Doctor of Philosophy. Like his father and grandfather before him, Dr. King became a pastor. His grandfather began his work in 1914 at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. Dr. King's family was quite established in the area.
In 1953, Dr. King took advantage of the opportunity to work as the pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. He was twenty-four. It would offer him a date with destiny. In December 1955, when Rosa Parks was arrested for failing to give her seat up for a white man, the Montgomery Bus Boycott was organized with Dr. King's involvement. The bus boycott put Dr. King on the national and international stage. It lasted over 381 days. Dr. King was arrested during the boycott, but eventually it ended with the Supreme Court banning segregation on all public transportation.
Dr. King embraced the non violent civil disobedient philosophies employed by Mahatma Gandhi. He organized marches with the specific intent to empower the African-American right to vote, desegregation, labor and civil rights.
His most famous march was in 1963 when he went to Washington, D.C. and gave his "I Have A Dream," speech in front of the Lincoln memorial. President Lyndon B. Johnson later passed the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act in 1965. Dr. King's dream was now law.
One of Dr. King's most notable awards was receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. He was thirty-five years old and the Nobel's youngest recipient. Dr. King was also outspoken on his doubts regarding the Vietnam War.
In March 1968 while in Memphis, Tennessee to support the African-American sanitary workers on strike, he was assassinated as he stood on the balcony of his hotel room. Posthumously, rumors surrounded him that he had plagiarized his doctorate's thesis and that he was a womanizer, but that doesn't diminish what he accomplished - civil rights for all, especially for African-Americans.
Dr. King left behind a rich legacy of work and accomplishments. He was the recipient of twenty honorary degrees, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and even a Grammy award for Best Spoken Word Recording. In 1983, Ronald Regan signed legislation creating a Federal holiday honoring Dr. King. In 2000, all fifty states officially observed Martin Luther King Day. It is currently held on the third Monday of January each year.
StephB is an author who can be found at http://sgcardin.tripod.com In her spare time she likes to read many books and a variety of different genres. StephB is an author at http://www.Writing.Com/ which is a site for Creative Writing.
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