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Early life
Martin Luther King, Jr., was born on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia. He was the son of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Sr. and Alberta Williams King.[3] King's father was born "Michael King", and Martin Luther King, Jr., was originally named "Michael King, Jr.," until the family traveled to Europe in 1934 and visited Germany. His father soon changed both of their names to Martin Luther in honor of the German Protestant leader Martin Luther.[4] He had an older sister, Willie Christine King, and a younger brother, Alfred Daniel Williams King.[5] King sang with his church choir at the 1939 Atlanta premiere of the movie Gone with the Wind.[6] King was originally skeptical of many of Christianity's claims.[7] Most striking, perhaps, was his denial of the bodily resurrection of Jesus during Sunday school at the age of thirteen. From this point, he stated, "doubts began to spring forth unrelentingly."[8]
Attempted Assassination
On April 4th, 1968. King was staying at the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis Tennessee. At around 8am King was walking onto his balcony when he realized his shoe was untied. As he bent down to tie his shoe a shot rang out, causing King to jump on the floor. King later recalled the event as being the luckiest moment of his life. The assassin was later caught after being pulled over for speeding. Kings attempted murder stayed in the news for weeks until the coverage finally began to die down.
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House Of Represenatives
After Martin Luther King Jr's attempted murder, he continued to play a part in the civil rights movement, and then in 1970 he ran for a seat as a Georgia Represenative in the House Of Represenatives. He emerged victorious and continued to hold a seat as a Georgia represenative until 1978.
{MLK Congressional Poster.pages}
Walter Mondale Death & Vice Presidency
Jimmy Carter was elected president in 1976 with vice president Walter Mondale. Carter and Mondale continued as president and vice president until 1978, when Walter Mondale died of a mysterious illness. 3 Days later, president Jimmy Carter shocked the world by revealing his new vice president. Martin Luther King Jr. Carter and King worked side by side until the 1980 elections, where they defeated Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. Carter and King's presidential achievements are still remembered as the best presidential duo in history.
{MLK Presidential Artile.pages}
Current Life
Martin Luther King Jr. is currently living in Atlanta Georgia with his wife. He is currently 81 years of age and still continues to speak out about current issues in the United States. His last speech was on the Arizona Immigration Law and about the racial profiling in Arizona. "I can't believe that even in the land of opportunity, people still are being profiled due to the color of their skin" Martin Luther King Jr. has also been working with current president Barack Obama on several current events and issues that face the country such as the BP oil spill, and the economy. King is still thought of as one of the most important African American men in US history.

After Martin Luther King Jr's attempted murder, he continued to play a part in the civil rights movement, and then in 1970 he ran for a seat as a Georgia Represenative in the House Of Represenatives. He emerged victorious and continued to hold a seat as a Georgia represenative until 1978.
Walter Mondale Death & Vice Presidency
and Mondale continued as president and vice president until 1978, when Walter Mondale died of a mysterious illness. 3 Days later, president Jimmy Carter shocked the world by revealing his new vice president. Martin Luther King Jr. Carter and King worked side by side until the 1980 elections, where they defeated Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. Carter and King's presidential achievements are still remembered as the best presidential duo in history.
Current Life
Martin Luther King Jr. is currently living in Atlanta Georgia with his wife. He is currently 81 years of age and still continues to speak out about current issues in the United States. His last speech was on the Arizona Immigration Law and about the racial profiling in Arizona. "I can't believe that even in the land of opportunity, people still are being profiled due to the color of their skin" Martin Luther King Jr. has also been working with current president Barack Obama on several current events and issues that face the country such as the BP oil spill, and the economy. King is still thought of as one of the most important African American men in US history.

Education
Growing up in Atlanta, King attended Booker T. Washington High School. He skipped both the ninth and the twelfth grade and entered Morehouse College at age fifteen without formally graduating from high school.[12] In 1948, he graduated from Morehouse with a Bachelor of Arts degree in sociology, and enrolled in Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania, from which he graduated with a Bachelor of Divinity degree in 1951.[13][14] King then began doctoral studies in systematic theology at Boston University and received his Doctor of Philosophy on June 5, 1955, with a dissertation on "A Comparison of the Conceptions of God in the Thinking of Paul Tillich and Henry Nelson Wieman." A 1980s inquiry concluded portions of his dissertation had been plagiarized and he had acted improperly but that his dissertation still "makes an intelligent contribution to scholarship."[15] (See:Martin Luther King, Jr. authorship issues)
Influences
Populist tradition and Black populism
Harry C. Boyte, a self-proclaimed populist, field secretary of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and white civil rights activist describes an episode in his life that gives insight on some of King's influences:
My first encounter with deeper meanings of populism came when I was nineteen, working as a field secretary for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in St. Augustine, Florida in 1964. One day I was caught by five men and a woman who were members of the Ku Klux Klan. They accused me of being a "communist and a Yankee." I replied, "I'm no Yankee – my family has been in the South since before the Revolution. And I'm not a communist. I'm a populist. I believe that blacks and poor whites should join to do something about the big shots who keep us divided." For a few minutes we talked about what such a movement might look like. Then they let me go.
When he learned of the incident, Martin Luther King, head of SCLC, told me that he identified with the populist tradition and assigned me to organize poor whites.[16]
Thurman
Civil rights leader, theologian, and educator Howard Thurman was an early influence on King. A classmate of King's father at Morehouse College,[17] Thurman mentored the youngAttempted Assassination
On April 4th, 1968. King and his friends.[18] Thurman's missionary work had taken him abroad where he had met and conferred with Mahatma Gandhi.[19] When he was a studentstaying at Boston University, King often visited Thurman, who was the dean of Marsh Chapel.[20] Walter Fluker, who has studied Thurman's writings, has stated, "I don't believe you'd get a Martin Luther King, Jr. without a Howard Thurman".[21]
Gandhi and Rustin
Inspired by Gandhi's success with non-violent activism, King visited Gandhi's birthplaceLorraine Hotel in India in 1959, with assistance from the Quaker group the American Friends Service Committee.[22] The trip to India affectedMemphis Tennessee. At around 8am King in a profound way, deepeningwas walking onto his understanding of non-violent resistance andbalcony when he realized his commitment to America's struggle for civil rights. In a radio address made during his final evening in India, King reflected, "Since being in India, I am more convinced than ever before that the method of nonviolent resistance is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for justice and human dignity. In a real sense, Mahatma Gandhi embodied in his life certain universal principles that are inherent in the moral structure of the universe, and these principles are as inescapable as the law of gravitation."[23] African American civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, who had studied Gandhi's teachings,[24] counseled King to dedicate himself to the principles of non-violence,[25] served as King's main advisor and mentor throughout his early activism,[26] andshoe was the main organizer of the 1963 March on Washington.[27] Rustin's open homosexuality, support of democratic socialism, and his former tiesuntied. As he bent down to the Communist Party USA caused many white and African-American leaders to demand King distance himself from Rustin.[28]
Sermons and speeches
Throughouttie his career of service, King wrote and spoke frequently, drawing on his experience asshoe a preacher. His "Letter from Birmingham Jail", written in 1963, is a "passionate" statement of his crusade for justice.[29] On October 14, 1964,shot rang out, causing King became the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, which was awarded to him for leading non-violent resistance to racial prejudice in the United States.[30]
Montgomery Bus Boycott, 1955
In March 1955, a fifteen-year-old school girl, Claudette Colvin, refused to give up her bus seat to a white man in compliance with the Jim Crow laws. King wasjump on the committee from the Birmingham African-American community that looked into the case; Edgar Nixon and Clifford Durr decided to wait for a better case to pursue.[31] On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat.[32] The Montgomery Bus Boycott, urged and planned by Nixon and led by King, soon followed.[33] The boycott lasted for 385 days,[34] and the situation became so tense that King's house was bombed.[35]floor. King was arrested during this campaign, which ended with a United States District Court ruling in Browder v. Gayle that ended racial segregation on all Montgomery public buses.[36]
Southern Christian Leadership Conference
In 1957, King, Ralph Abernathy, and other civil rights activists foundedlater recalled the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). The group was created to harnessevent as being the moral authority and organizing powerluckiest moment of black churches to conduct non-violent protests in the service of civil rights reform. King led the SCLC until his death.[37]
In 1958, while signing copies of his book Stride Toward Freedom in Blumstein's department store on 125th Street, in Harlem,[38][39] King was stabbed in the chest by Izola Curry, a deranged black woman with a letter opener, and narrowly escaped death.[40]
Gandhi's nonviolent techniques were useful to King's campaign to change the civil rights laws implemented in Alabama.[41] King applied non-violent philosophy to the protests organized by the SCLC. In 1959, he wrotelife. The Measure of A Man, from which the piece What is Man?, an attempt to sketch the optimal political, social, and economic structure of society, is derived.[42] His SCLC secretary and personal assistant in this periodassassin was Dora McDonald.
The FBI, under written directive from Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, began telephone tapping King in the Fall of 1963.[43] Concerned that allegations (of Communists in the SCLC), if made public, would derail the Administration's civil rights initiatives, Kennedy warned King to discontinue the suspect associations, and later felt compelled to issue the written directive authorizing the FBI to wiretap King and other leaders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.[44] J. Edgar Hoover feared Communists were trying to infiltrate the Civil Rights Movement, but when no such evidence emerged, the bureau used the incidental details caught on tapeafter being pulled over the next five years in attempts to force King out of the preeminent leadership position.[45]
King believed that organized, nonviolent protest against the system of southern segregation known as Jim Crow laws would lead to extensive media coverage of the struggle for black equality and voting rights. Journalistic accounts and televised footage of the daily deprivation and indignities suffered by southern blacks, and of segregationist violence and harassment of civil rights workers and marchers, produced a wave of sympathetic public opinion that convinced the majority of Americans that the Civil Rights Movement was the most important issue in American politicsspeeding. Kings attempted murder stayed in the early 1960s.[46]
King organized and led marchesnews for blacks' right to vote, desegregation, labor rights and other basic civil rights.[47] Most of these rights were successfully enacted into the law of the United States with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the 1965 Voting Rights Act.[48]
King and the SCLC applied the principles of nonviolent protest with great success by strategically choosing the method of protest and the places in which protests were carried out. There were often dramatic stand-offs with segregationist authorities. Sometimes these confrontations turned violent.[49]
Albany movement
Main article: Albany movement
The Albany Movement was a desegregation coalition formed in Albany, Georgia in November, 1961. In December King and the SCLC became involved. The movement mobilized thousands of citizens for a broad-front nonviolent attack on every aspect of segregation within the city and attracted nationwide attention. When King first visited on December 15, 1961, he "had planned to stay a day or so and return home after giving counsel."[50] But the following day he was swept up in a mass arrest of peaceful demonstrators, and he declined bailweeks until the city made concessions. "Those agreements", said King, "were dishonored and violated by the city," as soon as he left town.[50] King returned in July 1962, and was sentencedcoverage finally began to forty-five days in jail or a $178 fine. He chose jail. Three days into his sentence, Chief Pritchett discreetly arranged for King's fine to be paid and ordered his release. "We had witnessed persons being kicked off lunch counter stools ... ejected from churches ... and thrown into jail ... But for the first time, we witnessed being kicked out of jail."[50]die down.
House Of Represenatives
After nearly a year of intense activism with few tangible results, the movement began to deteriorate.Martin Luther King requested a haltJr's attempted murder, he continued to all demonstrations and a "Day of Penance" to promote non-violence and maintain the moral high ground. Divisions within the black community and the canny, low-key response by local government defeated efforts.[51] However, it was credited asplay a key lessonpart in tactics for the national civil rights movement.[52]
Birmingham campaign
Main article: Birmingham campaign
The Birmingham campaign was a strategic effort by the SCLC to promote civil rights for African Americans. Many of its tactics of "Project C" were developed by Rev. Wyatt Tee Walker, Executive Director of SCLC from 1960–1964. Based on actions in Birmingham, Alabama, its goal was to end the city's segregated civilmovement, and discriminatory economic policies. The campaign lasted for more than two monthsthen in the spring of 1963. To provoke the police into filling the city's jails to overflowing, King and black citizens of Birmingham employed nonviolent tactics to flout laws they considered unfair. King summarized the philosophy of the Birmingham campaign when1970 he said, "The purpose of ... direct action is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation".[53]
Protests in Birmingham began with a boycott to pressure businesses to offer sales jobs and other employment to people of all races, as well as to end segregated facilities in the stores. When business leaders resisted the boycott, King and the SCLC began what they termed Project C, a series of sit-ins and marches intended to provoke arrest. After the campaign ran low on adult volunteers, SCLC's strategist, James Bevel, initiated the action and recruited the children for what became knowna seat as the "Children's Crusade". During the protests, the Birmingham Police Department, led by Eugene "Bull" Connor, used high-pressure water jets and police dogs to control protesters, including children. Not all of the demonstrators were peaceful, despite the avowed intentions of the SCLC. In some cases, bystanders attacked the police, who responded with force. King and the SCLC were criticized for putting children in harm's way. By the end of the campaign, King's reputation improved immensely, Connor lost his job, the "Jim Crow" signs in Birmingham came down, and public places became more open to blacks.[54]
Augustine and Selma
King and SCLC were also driving forces behind the protest in St. Augustine, Florida, in 1964.[55] The movement engaged in nightly marches in the city met by white segregationists who violently assaulted them. Hundreds of the marchers were arrested and jailed.
King and the SCLC joined forces with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in Selma, Alabama, in December 1964, where SNCC had been working on voter registration for several months.[56] A sweeping injunction issued by a local judge barred any gathering of 3 or more people under sponsorship of SNCC, SCLC, or DCVL, or with the involvement of 41 named civil rights leaders. This injunction temporarily halted civil rights activity until King defied it by speaking at Brown Chapel on January 2, 1965.[57]
March on Washington, 1963
Main article: March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom
King, representing SCLC, was among the leaders of the so-called "Big Six" civil rights organizations who were instrumentalGeorgia Represenative in the organization of the March on Washington for JobsHouse Of Represenatives. He emerged victorious and Freedom, which took place on August 28, 1963. The other leaders and organizations comprising the Big Six were: Roy Wilkins from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; Whitney Young, National Urban League; A. Philip Randolph, Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters; John Lewis, SNCC; and James L. Farmer, Jr. of the Congress of Racial Equality.[58] The primary logistical and strategic organizer was King's colleague Bayard Rustin.[59] For King, this role was another which courted controversy, since he was one of the key figures who accededcontinued to the wishes of President John F. Kennedy in changing the focus of the march.[60] Kennedy initially opposed the march outright, because he was concerned it would negatively impact the drive for passage of civil rights legislation, but the organizers were firm that the march would proceed.[61]
The march originally was conceived as an event to dramatize the desperate condition of blacks in the southern United States andhold a very public opportunity to place organizers' concerns and grievances squarely before the seat of power in the nation's capital. Organizers intended to excoriate and then challenge the federal government for its failure to safeguard the civil rights and physical safety of civil rights workers and blacks, generally, in the South. However, the group acquiesced to presidential pressure and influence, and the event ultimately took onas a far less strident tone.[62] As a result, some civil rights activists felt it presented an inaccurate, sanitized pageant of racial harmony; Malcolm X called it the "Farce on Washington," and members of the Nation of Islam were not permitted to attend the march.[62][63]
The march did, however, make specific demands: an end to racial segregation in public school; meaningful civil rights legislation, including a law prohibiting racial discrimination in employment; protection of civil rights workers from police brutality; a $2 minimum wage for all workers; and self-government for Washington, D.C., then governed by congressional committee.[64] Despite tensions, the marchGeorgia represenative until 1978.
Walter Mondale Death & Vice Presidency
Jimmy Carter was a resounding success. More than a quarter million people of diverse ethnicities attended the event, sprawling from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial onto the National Mall and around the reflecting pool. At the time, it was the largest gathering of protesterselected president in Washington's history.[65] King's "I Have a Dream" speech electrified the crowd. It is regarded, along1976 with Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Addressvice president Walter Mondale. Carter and Franklin D. Roosevelt's Infamy Speech, as one of the finest speeches in the history of American oratory.[66]
Mondale

Gandhi and Rustin
Inspired by Gandhi's success with non-violent activism, King visited Gandhi's birthplace in India in 1959, with assistance from the Quaker group the American Friends Service Committee.[22] The trip to India affected King in a profound way, deepening his understanding of non-violent resistance and his commitment to America's struggle for civil rights. In a radio address made during his final evening in India, King reflected, "Since being in India, I am more convinced than ever before that the method of nonviolent resistance is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for justice and human dignity. In a real sense, Mahatma Gandhi embodied in his life certain universal principles that are inherent in the moral structure of the universe, and these principles are as inescapable as the law of gravitation."[23] African American civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, who had studied Gandhi's teachings,[24] counseled King to dedicate himself to the principles of non-violence,[25] served as King's main advisor and mentor throughout his early activism,[26] and was the main organizer of the 1963 March on Washington.[27] Rustin's open homosexuality, support of democratic socialism, and his former ties to the Communist Party USA caused many white and African-American leaders to demand King distance himself from Rustin.[28]
Sermons and speeches
Throughout his career of service, King wrote and spoke frequently, drawing on his experience as a preacher. His "Letter from Birmingham Jail", written in 1963, is a "passionate" statement of his crusade for justice.[29] On October 14, 1964, King became the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, which was awarded to him for leading non-violent resistance to racial prejudice in the United States.[30]
Montgomery Bus Boycott, 1955
In March 1955, a fifteen-year-old school girl, Claudette Colvin, refused to give up her bus seat to a white man in compliance with the Jim Crow laws. King was on the committee from the Birmingham African-American community that looked into the case; Edgar Nixon and Clifford Durr decided to wait for a better case to pursue.[31] On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat.[32] The Montgomery Bus Boycott, urged and planned by Nixon and led by King, soon followed.[33] The boycott lasted for 385 days,[34] and the situation became so tense that King's house was bombed.[35] King was arrested during this campaign, which ended with a United States District Court ruling in Browder v. Gayle that ended racial segregation on all Montgomery public buses.[36]
Southern Christian Leadership Conference
In 1957, King, Ralph Abernathy, and other civil rights activists founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). The group was created to harness the moral authority and organizing power of black churches to conduct non-violent protests in the service of civil rights reform. King led the SCLC until his death.[37]
In 1958, while signing copies of his book Stride Toward Freedom in Blumstein's department store on 125th Street, in Harlem,[38][39] King was stabbed in the chest by Izola Curry, a deranged black woman with a letter opener, and narrowly escaped death.[40]
Gandhi's nonviolent techniques were useful to King's campaign to change the civil rights laws implemented in Alabama.[41] King applied non-violent philosophy to the protests organized by the SCLC. In 1959, he wrote The Measure of A Man, from which the piece What is Man?, an attempt to sketch the optimal political, social, and economic structure of society, is derived.[42] His SCLC secretary and personal assistant in this period was Dora McDonald.
The FBI, under written directive from Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, began telephone tapping King in the Fall of 1963.[43] Concerned that allegations (of Communists in the SCLC), if made public, would derail the Administration's civil rights initiatives, Kennedy warned King to discontinue the suspect associations, and later felt compelled to issue the written directive authorizing the FBI to wiretap King and other leaders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.[44] J. Edgar Hoover feared Communists were trying to infiltrate the Civil Rights Movement, but when no such evidence emerged, the bureau used the incidental details caught on tape over the next five years in attempts to force King out of the preeminent leadership position.[45]
King believed that organized, nonviolent protest against the system of southern segregation known as Jim Crow laws would lead to extensive media coverage of the struggle for black equality and voting rights. Journalistic accounts and televised footage of the daily deprivation and indignities suffered by southern blacks, and of segregationist violence and harassment of civil rights workers and marchers, produced a wave of sympathetic public opinion that convinced the majority of Americans that the Civil Rights Movement was the most important issue in American politics in the early 1960s.[46]
King organized and led marches for blacks' right to vote, desegregation, labor rights and other basic civil rights.[47] Most of these rights were successfully enacted into the law of the United States with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the 1965 Voting Rights Act.[48]
King and the SCLC applied the principles of nonviolent protest with great success by strategically choosing the method of protest and the places in which protests were carried out. There were often dramatic stand-offs with segregationist authorities. Sometimes these confrontations turned violent.[49]
Albany movement
Main article: Albany movement
The Albany Movement was a desegregation coalition formed in Albany, Georgia in November, 1961. In December King and the SCLC became involved. The movement mobilized thousands of citizens for a broad-front nonviolent attack on every aspect of segregation within the city and attracted nationwide attention. When King first visited on December 15, 1961, he "had planned to stay a day or so and return home after giving counsel."[50] But the following day he was swept up in a mass arrest of peaceful demonstrators, and he declined bail until the city made concessions. "Those agreements", said King, "were dishonored and violated by the city," as soon as he left town.[50] King returned in July 1962, and was sentenced to forty-five days in jail or a $178 fine. He chose jail. Three days into his sentence, Chief Pritchett discreetly arranged for King's fine to be paid and ordered his release. "We had witnessed persons being kicked off lunch counter stools ... ejected from churches ... and thrown into jail ... But for the first time, we witnessed being kicked out of jail."[50]
After nearly a year of intense activism with few tangible results, the movement began to deteriorate. King requested a halt to all demonstrations and a "Day of Penance" to promote non-violence and maintain the moral high ground. Divisions within the black community and the canny, low-key response by local government defeated efforts.[51] However, it was credited as a key lesson in tactics for the national civil rights movement.[52]
Birmingham campaign
Main article: Birmingham campaign
The Birmingham campaign was a strategic effort by the SCLC to promote civil rights for African Americans. Many of its tactics of "Project C" were developed by Rev. Wyatt Tee Walker, Executive Director of SCLC from 1960–1964. Based on actions in Birmingham, Alabama, its goal was to end the city's segregated civil and discriminatory economic policies. The campaign lasted for more than two months in the spring of 1963. To provoke the police into filling the city's jails to overflowing, King and black citizens of Birmingham employed nonviolent tactics to flout laws they considered unfair. King summarized the philosophy of the Birmingham campaign when he said, "The purpose of ... direct action is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation".[53]
Protests in Birmingham began with a boycott to pressure businesses to offer sales jobs and other employment to people of all races, as well as to end segregated facilities in the stores. When business leaders resisted the boycott, King and the SCLC began what they termed Project C, a series of sit-ins and marches intended to provoke arrest. After the campaign ran low on adult volunteers, SCLC's strategist, James Bevel, initiated the action and recruited the children for what became known as the "Children's Crusade". During the protests, the Birmingham Police Department, led by Eugene "Bull" Connor, used high-pressure water jets and police dogs to control protesters, including children. Not all of the demonstrators were peaceful, despite the avowed intentions of the SCLC. In some cases, bystanders attacked the police, who responded with force. King and the SCLC were criticized for putting children in harm's way. By the end of the campaign, King's reputation improved immensely, Connor lost his job, the "Jim Crow" signs in Birmingham came down, and public places became more open to blacks.[54]
Augustine and Selma
King and SCLC were also driving forces behind the protest in St. Augustine, Florida, in 1964.[55] The movement engaged in nightly marches in the city met by white segregationists who violently assaulted them. Hundreds of the marchers were arrested and jailed.
King and the SCLC joined forces with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in Selma, Alabama, in December 1964, where SNCC had been working on voter registration for several months.[56] A sweeping injunction issued by a local judge barred any gathering of 3 or more people under sponsorship of SNCC, SCLC, or DCVL, or with the involvement of 41 named civil rights leaders. This injunction temporarily halted civil rights activity until King defied it by speaking at Brown Chapel on January 2, 1965.[57]
March on Washington, 1963
Main article: March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom
King, representing SCLC, was among the leaders of the so-called "Big Six" civil rights organizations who were instrumental in the organization of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, which took place on August 28, 1963. The other leaders and organizations comprising the Big Six were: Roy Wilkins from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; Whitney Young, National Urban League; A. Philip Randolph, Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters; John Lewis, SNCC; and James L. Farmer, Jr. of the Congress of Racial Equality.[58] The primary logistical and strategic organizer was King's colleague Bayard Rustin.[59] For King, this role was another which courted controversy, since he was one of the key figures who acceded to the wishes of President John F. Kennedy in changing the focus of the march.[60] Kennedy initially opposed the march outright, because he was concerned it would negatively impact the drive for passage of civil rights legislation, but the organizers were firm that the march would proceed.[61]
The march originally was conceived as an event to dramatize the desperate condition of blacks in the southern United States and a very public opportunity to place organizers' concerns and grievances squarely before the seat of power in the nation's capital. Organizers intended to excoriate and then challenge the federal government for its failure to safeguard the civil rights and physical safety of civil rights workers and blacks, generally, in the South. However, the group acquiesced to presidential pressure and influence, and the event ultimately took on a far less strident tone.[62] As a result, some civil rights activists felt it presented an inaccurate, sanitized pageant of racial harmony; Malcolm X called it the "Farce on Washington," and members of the Nation of Islam were not permitted to attend the march.[62][63]
The march did, however, make specific demands: an end to racial segregation in public school; meaningful civil rights legislation, including a law prohibiting racial discrimination in employment; protection of civil rights workers from police brutality; a $2 minimum wage for all workers; and self-government for Washington, D.C., then governed by congressional committee.[64] Despite tensions, the march was a resounding success. More than a quarter million people of diverse ethnicities attended the event, sprawling from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial onto the National Mall and around the reflecting pool. At the time, it was the largest gathering of protesters in Washington's history.[65] King's "I Have a Dream" speech electrified the crowd. It is regarded, along with Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and Franklin D. Roosevelt's Infamy Speech, as one of the finest speeches in the history of American oratory.[66]

Early life
Martin Luther King, Jr., was born on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia. He was the son of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Sr. and Alberta Williams King.[3] King's father was born "Michael King", and Martin Luther King, Jr., was originally named "Michael King, Jr.," until the family traveled to Europe in 1934 and visited Germany. His father soon changed both of their names to Martin Luther in honor of the German Protestant leader Martin Luther.[4] He had an older sister, Willie Christine King, and a younger brother, Alfred Daniel Williams King.[5] King sang with his church choir at the 1939 Atlanta premiere of the movie Gone with the Wind.[6] King was originally skeptical of many of Christianity's claims.[7] Most striking, perhaps, was his denial of the bodily resurrection of Jesus during Sunday school at the age of thirteen. From this point, he stated, "doubts began to spring forth unrelentingly."[8]
King married Coretta Scott, on June 18, 1953, on the lawn of her parents' house in her hometown of Heiberger, Alabama.[9] King and Scott had four children; Yolanda King, Martin Luther King III, Dexter Scott King, and Bernice King.[10] King became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama when he was twenty-five years old in 1954.[11]
Education
Growing up in Atlanta, King attended Booker T. Washington High School. He skipped both the ninth and the twelfth grade and entered Morehouse College at age fifteen without formally graduating from high school.[12] In 1948, he graduated from Morehouse with a Bachelor of Arts degree in sociology, and enrolled in Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania, from which he graduated with a Bachelor of Divinity degree in 1951.[13][14] King then began doctoral studies in systematic theology at Boston University and received his Doctor of Philosophy on June 5, 1955, with a dissertation on "A Comparison of the Conceptions of God in the Thinking of Paul Tillich and Henry Nelson Wieman." A 1980s inquiry concluded portions of his dissertation had been plagiarized and he had acted improperly but that his dissertation still "makes an intelligent contribution to scholarship."[15] (See:Martin Luther King, Jr. authorship issues)
Influences
Populist tradition and Black populism
Harry C. Boyte, a self-proclaimed populist, field secretary of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and white civil rights activist describes an episode in his life that gives insight on some of King's influences:
My first encounter with deeper meanings of populism came when I was nineteen, working as a field secretary for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in St. Augustine, Florida in 1964. One day I was caught by five men and a woman who were members of the Ku Klux Klan. They accused me of being a "communist and a Yankee." I replied, "I'm no Yankee – my family has been in the South since before the Revolution. And I'm not a communist. I'm a populist. I believe that blacks and poor whites should join to do something about the big shots who keep us divided." For a few minutes we talked about what such a movement might look like. Then they let me go.
When he learned of the incident, Martin Luther King, head of SCLC, told me that he identified with the populist tradition and assigned me to organize poor whites.[16]
Thurman
Civil rights leader, theologian, and educator Howard Thurman was an early influence on King. A classmate of King's father at Morehouse College,[17] Thurman mentored the young King and his friends.[18] Thurman's missionary work had taken him abroad where he had met and conferred with Mahatma Gandhi.[19] When he was a student at Boston University, King often visited Thurman, who was the dean of Marsh Chapel.[20] Walter Fluker, who has studied Thurman's writings, has stated, "I don't believe you'd get a Martin Luther King, Jr. without a Howard Thurman".[21]
Gandhi and Rustin
Inspired by Gandhi's success with non-violent activism, King visited Gandhi's birthplace in India in 1959, with assistance from the Quaker group the American Friends Service Committee.[22] The trip to India affected King in a profound way, deepening his understanding of non-violent resistance and his commitment to America's struggle for civil rights. In a radio address made during his final evening in India, King reflected, "Since being in India, I am more convinced than ever before that the method of nonviolent resistance is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for justice and human dignity. In a real sense, Mahatma Gandhi embodied in his life certain universal principles that are inherent in the moral structure of the universe, and these principles are as inescapable as the law of gravitation."[23] African American civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, who had studied Gandhi's teachings,[24] counseled King to dedicate himself to the principles of non-violence,[25] served as King's main advisor and mentor throughout his early activism,[26] and was the main organizer of the 1963 March on Washington.[27] Rustin's open homosexuality, support of democratic socialism, and his former ties to the Communist Party USA caused many white and African-American leaders to demand King distance himself from Rustin.[28]