Martin Luther King Jr. facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Martin Luther King Jr.
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| 1st President of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference | |
| In office January 10, 1957 – April 4, 1968 |
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| Preceded by | Position established |
| Succeeded by | Ralph Abernathy |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
Michael King Jr.
January 15, 1929 Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. |
| Died | April 4, 1968 (aged 39) Memphis, Tennessee, U.S. |
| Cause of death | Gunshot wound |
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Buried
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| Spouse | |
| Children | Yolanda Martin Dexter Bernice |
| Parents | Martin Luther King Sr. Alberta Williams King |
| Relatives | Christine King Farris (sister) Alfred Daniel Williams King (brother) Alveda King (niece) |
| Education | Morehouse College (BA) Crozer Theological Seminary (BDiv) Boston University (PhD) |
| Occupation | Minister, activist |
| Known for | Civil Rights Movement, Peace movement |
| Awards | Nobel Peace Prize (1964) Presidential Medal of Freedom (1977, posthumous) Congressional Gold Medal (2004, posthumous) |
| Monuments | Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial |
| Signature |  |
Martin Luther King, Jr. (born Michael King, Jr.; January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American pastor, activist, humanitarian, and leader in the Civil Rights Movement. He was best known for improving civil rights by using nonviolent civil disobedience, based on his Christian beliefs. Because he was both a Ph.D. and a pastor, King is sometimes called the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr. (abbreviation: the Rev. Dr. King), or just Dr King. He is also known by his initials MLK.
King worked hard to help people understand that people of all races should be treated equally. He gave speeches to encourage African Americans to protest without using violence.
Led by Dr. King and others, many African Americans used nonviolent, peaceful ways to fight for their civil rights. These strategies included sit-ins, boycotts, and protest marches. Often, they were attacked by police officers or citizens of other races who did not want African Americans to have more rights. However, no matter how badly they were attacked, Dr. King and his followers never fought back.
King also helped to organize the 1963 March on Washington, where he delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech. The next year, he won the Nobel Peace Prize.
King fought for equal rights from the start of the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955 until he was murdered by James Earl Ray in April 1968.
Contents
Early life
Martin Luther King was born in Atlanta, Georgia, on January 15, 1929. He was the son of Michael King Sr. and Alberta Williams King.
During King's lifetime, public places in Georgia were segregated. This meant that black and white people were not allowed to go to the same schools, use the same public bathrooms, eat at the same restaurants, drink at the same water fountains, or even go to the same hospitals. The places that served white people were usually better than the places where black people were allowed to go.
King first experienced discrimination when he was six years old. He was sent to an all-black school, and a white friend was sent to an all-white school. Later, when he was fourteen, King won a contest with a speech about civil rights. When he was riding the bus home, he was told to give up his seat and stand for the remainder of his bus ride so that a white person could sit down. Even the buses at the time were segregated. If a white person wanted a seat in the black section of the bus, they could take the seat from any African American. King later said having to give up his seat made him "the angriest I've ever been in my life."
Name
At birth, Martin Luther King was named “Michael King” after his father. In August 1934, King Sr. changed his name to Martin Luther King in honor of German reformer Martin Luther. He also unofficially changed his son's name to Martin Luther King Jr. On King's birth certificate, dated 12 April 1934, "Michael" is crossed out, with "Martin Luther Jr." neatly written next to it in black ink.
However, it wasn't until July 23, 1957 that King's birth certificate was offically revised and his name changed. He was 28 at the time.
Early interests
Martin King Jr. memorized hymns and Bible verses by the time he was five years old. Beginning at six years old, he would attend church events with his mother and sing hymns while she was playing the piano. His favorite hymn was "I Want to Be More and More Like Jesus"; his singing moved attendees. King later became a member of the junior choir in his church.
He enjoyed opera, and played the piano. King garnered a large vocabulary from reading dictionaries. He got into physical altercations with boys in his neighborhood, but oftentimes used his knowledge of words to stop or avoid fights. King showed a lack of interest in grammar and spelling, a trait that persisted throughout his life.
In 1939, King sang as a member of his church choir dressed as a slave, for the all-white audience at the Atlanta premiere of the film Gone with the Wind. In September 1940, at the age of 11, King was enrolled at the Atlanta University Laboratory School for the seventh grade. While there, King took violin and piano lessons and showed keen interest in history and English classes.
Education
King went to segregated schools in Georgia and finished high school at age fifteen. He went on to Morehouse College in Georgia, where his father and grandfather had gone. After graduating from college in 1948, King thought he was not the type of person to join the Baptist Church. He was not sure what kind of career he wanted. He thought about being a doctor or a lawyer. He decided not to do either, and joined the Baptist Church.
King went to a seminary in Pennsylvania to become a pastor. While studying there, King learned about the non-violent methods used by Mahatma Gandhi against the British Empire in India. King was convinced that these non-violent methods would help the civil rights movement.
Finally, in 1955, King earned a Ph.D. from Boston University's School of Theology.
Civil rights work
Montgomery Bus Boycott
King began his civil rights activism in 1955. At that time, he led a protest against the way black people were segregated on buses. Dr. King told everyone that people should only use peaceful ways to solve the problem.
A group of activists began a group called Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), and they chose King as the president. Rosa Parks later said: "Dr. King was chosen in part because he was relatively new to the community and so [he] did not have any enemies." King ended up becoming an important leader of the boycott, becoming famous around the country, and making many enemies. By December 1956, segregation had been ended on Montgomery's buses. People could sit anywhere they wanted on the buses.
After the bus boycott, King and Ralph Abernathy started the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). The group decided that they would only use non-violence. Its motto was "Not one hair of one head of one person should be harmed." The SCLC chose King as its president.
March on Washington
In 1963, King helped plan the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. This was the largest protest for human rights in United States history. On August 28, 1963, about 250,000 people marched from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial. Then they listened to civil rights leaders speak. King was the last speaker. His speech, called "I Have a Dream," became one of history's most famous civil rights speeches. King talked about his dream that one day, all people would be equal.
That same year, the United States government passed the Civil Rights Act. This law made many kinds of discrimination against black people illegal. The March on Washington made it clear to the United States government that they needed to take action on civil rights, and it helped get the Civil Rights Act passed.
Nobel Prize
In 1964, King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. When presenting him with the award, the Chairman of the Nobel Committee said:
[King] is the first person in the Western world to have shown us that a struggle can be waged without violence. He is the first to make the message of brotherly love a reality in the course of his struggle, and he has brought this message to all men, to all nations and races.
Voting rights
King and many others then started working on the problem of racism in voting. At the time, many of the Southern states had laws which made it hard for African-Americans to vote. For example, they would make African Americans pay extra taxes, pass reading tests, or pass tests about the Constitution. White people did not have to do these things.
In January 1965, civil rights groups in Selma, Alabama, asked Dr. King and the SCLC to help them work on voting rights in their county. The SCLC decided to organize a march from Selma to Montgomery. By walking 54 miles (87 kilometers) to the state capital, activists hoped to show how badly African-Americans wanted to vote. They also wanted to show that they would not let racism or violence stop them from getting equal rights.
The first march was on March 7, 1965. Police officers and people they had chosen to help them attacked the marchers with clubs and tear gas. Seventeen marchers had to go to the hospital, and 50 others were also injured. This day came to be called Bloody Sunday. Pictures and film of the marchers being beaten were shown around the world, in newspapers and on television. Seeing these things made more people support the civil rights activists. People came from all over the United States to march with the activists.
Finally, President Lyndon B. Johnson decided to send soldiers from the United States Army and the Alabama National Guard to protect the marchers. From March 21 to March 25, the marchers walked along the "Jefferson Davis Highway" from Selma to Montgomery. Led by King and other leaders, 25,000 people entered Montgomery on March 25. King gave a speech called "How Long? Not Long" at the Alabama State Capitol. He told the marchers that it would not be long before they had equal rights, "because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."
On August 6, 1965, the United States passed the Voting Rights Act. This law made it illegal to stop somebody from voting because of their race.
Later work
After this, King continued to fight poverty and the Vietnam War.
Assassination
King had made enemies by working for civil rights and becoming such a powerful leader. The Ku Klux Klan did what they could to hurt King's reputation, especially in the South. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) watched King closely. They wiretapped his phones, his home, and the phones and homes of his friends.
On April 4, 1968, King was in Memphis, Tennessee. He planned to lead a protest march to support garbage workers who were on strike. At 6:01 pm, King was shot while he was standing on the balcony of his motel room.
King was rushed to St. Joseph's Hospital. His heart had stopped. Doctors there tried to make his heart start pumping again. However, they were unable to save King's life. He died at 7:05 p.m.
King's death led to riots in many cities.
In March 1969, James Earl Ray was found guilty of killing King. He was sentenced to 99 years in prison. Ray died in 1998.
Legacy
Just days after King's death, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1968. Title VIII of the Act, usually called the Fair Housing Act, made it illegal to discriminate in housing because of a person's race, religion, or home country. (For example, this made it illegal for a realtor to refuse to let a black family buy a house in a white neighborhood.) This law was seen as a tribute to King's last few years of work fighting housing discrimination in the United States.
After his death, King was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. King and his wife were also awarded the Congressional Gold Medal.
In 1986, the United States government created a national holiday in King's honor. It is called Martin Luther King Jr. Day. It is celebrated on the third Monday in January. This is around the time of King's birthday. Many people fought for the holiday to be created, including singer Stevie Wonder.
In 2003, the United States Congress passed a law allowing the beginning words of King's "I Have a Dream" speech to be carved into the Lincoln Memorial.
King County in the state of Washington, is now named after MLK. Originally, the county was named after William R. King, an American politician who owned slaves. In 2005, the King County government decided the county would now be named after Martin Luther King, Jr. Two years later, they changed their official logo to include a picture of King.
More than 900 streets in the United States have also been named after King. These streets exist in 40 different states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico.
In 2011, a memorial statue of King was put up in West Potomac Park next to the National Mall in Washington, D.C..
There are also memorials for King around the world. These include:
- The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. Church in Hungary;
- The King-Luthuli Transformation Center in Johannesburg, South Africa;
- The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. Forest in Israel's Southern Galilee area (along with the Coretta Scott King Forest in Biriya Forest, Israel);
- The Martin Luther King, Jr. School in Accra, Ghana;
- The Gandhi-King Plaza (garden), at the India International Center in New Delhi, India;
- A statue of King at Westminster Abbey in London; and
- A statue dedicated to Martin Luther King Jr. in Uppsala, Sweden.
Martin Luther King Jr. quotes
- "Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, 'What are you doing for others?'"
- "[After I die,] I'd like somebody to mention that day that Martin Luther King Jr. tried to give his life serving others."
- "The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy."
- “The time is always right to do what is right.”
- “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”
- “Forgiveness is not an occasional act. It is a permanent attitude.”
- “We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.”
- “Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.”
- “Let no man pull you so low as to hate him.”
- "I submit to you that if a man has not discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.”
Interesting facts about Martin Luther King Jr.
- He was born in his Grandparents house in Atlanta, Georgia.
- He graduated from high school early and entered college at just 15 years of age in 1944.
- He earned $8,000 a year as a preacher ($87,177 in 2024), so he wasn't wealthy when he died.
- In 1964, he was the youngest person (35 years) to have received the Nobel Peace Prize.
- He won the Nobel Peace Prize for his nonviolent resistance to racial prejudice in in the United States.
- His favorite foods were fried chicken and pecan pie.
- Martin Luther King Jr. would be 95 years old today.
Related pages
Images for kids
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King's childhood home in Atlanta, Georgia
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King received a Bachelor of Divinity degree at Crozer Theological Seminary (pictured in 2009).
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King first rose to prominence in the civil rights movement while minister of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama.
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King led the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and later became co-pastor with his father at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta (pulpit and sanctuary pictured).
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King was arrested in 1963 for protesting the treatment of blacks in Birmingham.
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The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (1963)
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The civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, in 1965
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King standing behind President Johnson as he signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964
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President Lyndon B. Johnson meeting with King in the White House Cabinet Room in 1966
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King speaking to an anti-Vietnam war rally at the University of Minnesota in St. Paul on April 27, 1967
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A shantytown established in Washington, D. C. to protest economic conditions as a part of the Poor People's Campaign
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The sarcophagus for Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King is within the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historical Park in Atlanta, Georgia.
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Martin Luther King Jr. statue over the west entrance of Westminster Abbey, installed in 1998
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The only meeting of King and Malcolm X, outside the United States Senate chamber, March 26, 1964, during the Senate debates regarding the (eventual) Civil Rights Act of 1964.
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King showing his medallion, which he received from Mayor Wagner, 1964
See also
In Spanish: Martin Luther King para niños
