Martin Luther King Junior was born in Atlanta, Georgia in 1929, he was an African-American clergyman who supported social change through non-violent means. A powerful speaker and a man of great spiritual strength, he shaped the American civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.
King was pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama from 1954-59. He successfully led blacks in the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955-56. After the boycott ended, King returned to his home town of Atlanta and became co-pastor with his father of the Ebenezer Baptist Church, a position he held until his death.
On the 100th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in 1963, King organized an equal rights march in Washington, D.C. that drew 200,000 people. In a speech that day King said:
“In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.” “We cannot walk alone.”
King won the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize, becoming at the time the youngest recipient ever.
Martin Luther King Jr. Was assassinated by James Earl Ray on April 4, 1968. He was 39 years old.
