MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.

January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968

FAMILY

MARTIN LUTHER KING,Jr. appears(front row, right) in an early photo with his family. From Left to Right: Alberta Williams King (mother), Martin Luther King, Sr. (father), Jennie Williams (grandmother), brother Alfred Daniel, and sister Christine. Year unknown.

Martin Luther II

HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATION

MARRIAGE

In between his college years, he met and married Coretta Scott on June 18, 1953.

KING IS APPOINTED PASTOR

He became the minister of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, on September 1, 1954.

KING GETS HIS PHD

King undertook the final stage of his formal education at Boston University and received his PhD in 1955.

CHILDREN

Martin and Coretta had four children named Yolanda Denise (Nov 17, 1955),Martin Luther King III (Oct 23, 1957), Dexter Scott (Jan 30, 1961), and Bernice (Mar 28, 1963).

ROSA PARKS IS ARRESTED

On 1 December 1955 a black woman named Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a full Montgomery bus.

Bus company policy dictated that black passengers fill seats from the back and white passengers fill seats from the front.

Where the sections met, blacks were expected to yield to whites.

The 'Montgomery Improvement Association' (MIA) created a list of demands to propose to the city, and selected Reverend King to lead the petition movement. These were the demands for the bus company: 1)that seating be available on a strictly

first-come, first-served basis; 2)that drivers conduct themselves with

greater civility to black passengers; and

3)that black drivers be hired for predominately black routes.

To secure these demands, no African Americans would ride the buses on Monday, December 5.

The boycott lasted a year, and changed the character of both King's life and the city of Montgomery.

To survive the boycott, the black community formed a network of carpools and informal taxi services.

Some white employers were forced to transport their black employees themselves. Many blacks walked long distances to work each day.

The boycott quickly began to hurt the businesses of city storeowners, not to mention that of the bus company itself, which was losing 65% of its income.

SUPREME COURT MAKES BUS SEGREGATION ILLEGAL

On December 21 1956, over a year after Parks had refused to relinquish her seat, King joined Ralph Abernathy and other boycott leaders for a ride on the first desegregated bus.

KING GETS NOBEL PRIZE

On December 10, 1964 the Nobel Committee honored him at a ceremony in Oslo, Norway. King announced that he accepted the honor on behalf of the Civil Rights Movement, to which he would give all $54,000 of the prize money.

“I HAVE A DREAM” SPEECH

Delivered August 28, 1963 at the Lincoln Memorial, Washington D.C.

“I HAVE A DREAM” SPEECH

“I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.”

“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’”

“And when this happens, when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:                Free at last! Free at last!                Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

KING IS ARRESTED

King and others were arrested several times. One occasion, for attempting to eat at a whites-only restaurant in St. Augustine, Florida.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. sits in a jail cell in the Jefferson County Courthouse in Birmingham, Ala. on November 3, 1967.

WITNESSES SIGNING OF CIVIL RIGHTS LAW IN 1964

ASSASSINATION

On the evening of 4 April, after a pre-dinner organizational meeting, King stepped onto the balcony of his second floor motel room. He talked with friends on the ground below.

After a few moments, a loud sound, like that of a firecracker, was heard, and King slammed against the wall behind him.

From the house across the way, a sniper had shot King in the neck and head, and King died within the hour at St. Joseph's Hospital in Memphis.

FUNERAL

Funeral services were held at Ebenezer Church in Atlanta. 150,000 people appeared to pay their last respects.

Robert, Ethel, and Jacqueline Kennedy visited Atlanta, as did Richard Nixon.

Alberta Williams King

With father and son in 1963

CONCLUSIONS

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. saw himself as a servant of humanity and he wanted his life to be remembered as a life of service to others.