Martin Luther King, Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr. was a man of impressive moralistic presence who devoted his life in the crusade for equality for the poor, disadvantaged, and racially oppressed in the United States. To many black Americans, he was a prophet of peace and the country's foremost civil rights leader. Martin Luther King Jr. urged people to be proud of their race and asked them to stand up for their rights. It was his hope and dream that nonviolent protest action would create would create an America where all men might truly be equal.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is greeting his people after he received the Nobel Peace prize in 1964, Baltimore, MD.

Born on January 15,1929, in Atlanta, Ga., he was the second of three children of the Reverend. Michael and Mrs. Alberta Williams King. He received a bachelor's degree in sociology from Morehouse College in 1949 and a doctorate degree in philosophy in 1951, from Boston University.

In 1954, King accepted his first pastorate-the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Ala. He was married in 1955 with Coretta Scott King whom she met in Boston University. Although King continued to travel and speak widely and firmly committed the SCLC to voter registration campaigns throughout the south, King's major campaigns were those in Albany,Ga.

Martin Luther King Jr. organized the massive March of Washington where he said his "I have a Dream" speech. Early in 1968, King began to plan a multiracial poor people's march on Washington to demand an end to all forms of discrimination. In the midst of organizing this campaign, he flew to Memphis, Tenn. There, King was killed by an assassin's bullet.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had been courageous in the totality of his commitment to nonviolence. He was caught between the anger of black militants who preached a more aggressive position and white extremists who could not stand to see any change at all. Dr. King's outcry for justice was dramatized to the world, and to many he was the Moses of his people.