M l k biography

BIOGRAPHY OF DR. KING

A national figure in the Civil Rights Movement, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) rose to fame with his advocacy of nonviolence as a means to effect social change. From 1955 when he emerged as a leader during the Montgomery Bus Boycott until his assassination in 1968, he was both admired and reviled in his crusade to achieve racial equality. King also served as an eloquent and potent figure bridging societal divides, as evidenced by his access to the halls of power in both political (the White House) and religious (the Vatican) spheres. In 1964, at age 35, he became the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize; he was also the twelfth American and third African-American to receive the honor.

Born Michael King on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia, he was the second child and first son of Baptist minister Michael Luther King, Sr. and his wife, the former Alberta Williams, who herself was the daughter of the Rev. Adam Daniel Williams, pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church. When King was two, his maternal grandfather died and his father became pastor. Four years after that — in 1935 — his father changed his name and his son’s name from Michael to Martin in honor of the sixteenth-century religious leader of the Protestant

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