Martin
Luther King, Jr., (January 15, 1929-April 4, 1968) was born
Michael Luther King, Jr., but later had his name changed to
Martin. His grandfather began the family's long tenure as pastors
of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, serving from 1914 to
1931; his father has served from then until the present, and from
1960 until his death Martin Luther acted as co-pastor. Martin
Luther attended segregated public schools in Georgia, graduating
from high school at the age of fifteen; he received the B. A.
degree in 1948 from Morehouse College, a distinguished Negro
institution of Atlanta from which both his father and grandfather
had graduated. After three years of theological study at
Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania where he was elected
president of a predominantly white senior class, he was awarded
the B.D. in 1951. With a fellowship won at Crozer, he enrolled in
graduate studies at Boston University, completing his residence for
the
doctorate in 1953 and receiving the degree in 1955. In Boston he
met and married Coretta Scott, a young woman of uncommon
intellectual and artistic attainments. Two sons and two daughters
were born into the family.In 1954, Martin Luther King became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. Always a strong worker for civil rights for members of his race, King was, by this time, a member of the executive committee of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the leading organization of its kind in the nation. He was ready, then, early in December, 1955, to accept the leadership of the first great Negro nonviolent demonstration of contemporary times in the United States, the bus boycott described by Gunnar Jahn in his presentation speech in honor of the laureate. The boycott lasted 382 days. On December 21, 1956, after the Supreme Court of the United States had declared unconstitutional the laws requiring segregation on buses, Negroes and whites rode the buses as equals. During these days of boycott, King was arrested, his home was bombed, he was subjected to personal abuse, but at the same time he emerged as a Negro leader of the first rank.
