Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr. was born Michael King Jr. on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia, into a family of Baptist ministers; his father later changed their names to Martin Luther King in honor of the Protestant reformer during a 1934 trip to Germany. He excelled academically, skipping grades and entering Morehouse College at age 15, later earning degrees from Crozer Theological Seminary and Boston University, where he completed a Ph.D. in 1955. Influenced by theologians like Reinhold Niebuhr and Mahatma Gandhi's philosophy of nonviolence, King became pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1954, while already active in the NAACP. King rose to national prominence during the 1955–1956 Montgomery Bus Boycott, sparked by Rosa Parks' arrest, where he led the 381-day protest that integrated the city's public transit system. In 1957, he co-founded and was elected president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), using it as a base to organize nonviolent campaigns across the South, including voter registration drives and protests against Jim Crow laws. Key efforts included the 1960 Greensboro Sit-Ins, the 1961–1962 Albany Movement (though less successful), and the 1963 Birmingham Campaign, where police brutality against protesters drew national outrage and accelerated federal action. In 1963, King delivered his 'I Have a Dream' speech at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, attended by over 250,000 people, which pressured passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 banning segregation in public places. He then focused on voting rights, organizing the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery marches, where violent clashes led to the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Later, King expanded his activism to economic justice with the Poor People's Campaign and opposed the Vietnam War, broadening his vision to poverty and peace. On April 4, 1968, he was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, while supporting striking sanitation workers, sparking riots but cementing his legacy.