Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr. was born in Atlanta, Georgia, the son and grandson of Baptist preachers. He entered college at fifteen, studied theology, and earned a doctorate from Boston University. In 1954 he became pastor of a church in Montgomery, Alabama. The next year, after Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her bus seat, he led a year-long bus boycott that ended with segregated buses being ruled unconstitutional. Drawing on the Bible and on Gandhi's example, King taught that unjust laws should be resisted openly and without violence, accepting the penalty. He helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, was jailed many times, and wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail in 1963. That August he gave his I Have a Dream speech at the March on Washington. His work helped bring the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and in 1964 he received the Nobel Peace Prize. On 4 April 1968 he was shot and killed in Memphis, Tennessee.

Martin Luther King Jr. is also an author in the library: author page and works.

Faith: A Baptist minister, the son and grandson of Baptist pastors. Source: Wikipedia