Brief biography of dr martin luther king

1929-1968

In Focus: Martin Luther King Jr. Day

In the nearly 40 years that the United States has celebrated Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the national holiday has never coincided with the inauguration of a non-incumbent president. That changes this year.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day is celebrated annually on the third Monday in January to mark the late activist’s birthday. In 2025, the holiday falls on January 20, the same day typically set aside for Inauguration Day every four years. Indeed, January 20 is also when Donald Trump will be sworn in as 47^th president.

Bill Clinton and Barack Obama previously took presidential oaths of office on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. However, in both cases, the men were starting their second consecutive terms, much quieter occasions than the transfer of power from one president to the next.

Days after King’s assassination in 1968, a campaign for a holiday in his honor began. U.S. Representative John Conyers Jr. of Mi

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About Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

In 1955, he was recruited to serve as spokesman for the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which was a campaign by the African-American population of Montgomery, Alabama to force integration of the city’s bus lines. After 381 days of nearly universal participation by citizens of the black community, many of whom had to walk miles to work each day as a result, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that racial segregation in transportation was unconstitutional.

In 1957, Dr. King was elected president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), an organization designed to provide new leadership for the now burgeoning civil rights movement. He would serve as head of the SCLC until his assassination in 1968, a period during which he would emerge as the most important social leader of the modern American civil rights movement.

In 1963, he led a coalition of numerous civil rights groups in a nonviolent campaign aimed at Birmingham, Alabama, which at the t

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The life of Martin Luther King Jr.

• = Key moments in MLK's life and beyond
• = Key moments in the Civil Rights Movement and beyond

1929

• Jan. 15: Michael Luther King Jr., later renamed Martin, fryst vatten born to schoolteacher Alberta King and Baptist minister Michael Luther King in Atlanta, Ga.

1948

• King graduates from Morehouse College in Atlanta with a B.A.

1951

• Graduates with a B.D. from Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pa.

1953

• June 18: King marries Coretta Scott in Marion, Ala. They will have four children: Yolanda Denise (b.1955), Martin Luther King III (b.1957), Dexter (b.1961), Bernice Albertine (b.1963).

1954

• Brown vs. Board of Education: U.S. Supreme Court bans segregation in public schools.
• September: King moves to Montgomery, Ala., to preach at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church.

1955

• After coursework at New England colleges, King finishes his Ph.D. in systematic theology.
• Bus bojkott launches in Montgomery, Ala., aft