Martin Luther King Jr.
(born Michael King Jr.; January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968)
On January 15, 1929, Martin Luther King Jr. was born in Atlanta,
Georgia, the son of a Baptist minister. King received a doctorate
degree in theology and in 1955 helped organize the first major
protest of the African American civil rights movement: the
successful Montgomery Bus Boycott.
In Montgomery, Alabama on December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks was
jailed for refusing to give up her seat on a public bus to a white
man, a violation of the city’s racial segregation laws.
The successful Montgomery Bus Boycott, organized by a young
Baptist minister named Martin Luther King, Jr., followed Park’s
historic act of civil disobedience.
The restored Rosa Parks bus as it looks today in the Henry
Ford Museum.
Martin Luther King Jr. (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968)
King was a Baptist minister and activist who became the most
visible spokesperson and leader in the civil rights movement
from 1955 until his assassination in 1968.