DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.

DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR

DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. was the unquestioned leader of the peaceful Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. From his involvement in the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955 until his untimely death in 1968, King's message of change through peaceful means added to the movement's number and gave it its moral strength. The legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. is embodied in these two simple words: equality and nonviolence.

        King was raised in an activist family. As a student, King excelled. He easily moved through grade levels and entered Morehouse College, his father's alma mater, at the age of fifteen. Next, he attended Crozer Theological Seminary, where he received a Bachelor of Divinity degree. While he was pursuing his doctorate at Boston University, he met and married CORETTA SCOTT. After receiving his Ph.D. in 1955, King accepted an appointment to the Dexter Street Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama.

   At Bull Connor, Birmingham, Alabama, police commissioner Bull Connor ordered that fire hoses and does be used to subdue protesters. The violence that ensued was broadcast across the nation and it galvanized the Civil Rights Movement.

After his organization of the bus boycott, King formed the Southern  Christian Leadership Conference, which dedicated itself to the advancement of rights for African Americans. In April 1963, King organized a protest in Birmingham, Alabama, a city King called "the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States." Since the end of World War II, there had been 60 unsolved bombings of African American churches and homes. 

Boycotts, sit-ins and marches were conducted. When Bull Connor, head of the Birmingham police department, used fire hoses and dogs on the demonstrators, millions saw the images on television. King was arrested. But support came from around the nation and the world for King and his family. Later in 1963, he delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech to thousands in Washington, D.C.

After the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, King turned his efforts to registering African American voters in the South and it led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In 1977, he was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest award a civilian American can earn. In the 1980s, his birthday became a national holiday, creating an annual opportunity for Americans to reflect on the two values he dedicated his life to advancing: equality and nonviolence.