Martin Luther King Jr.
January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968) was an American civil rights activist and Baptist minister who was a prominent leader of the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968. He advanced civil rights through nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience, leading the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott, the 1963 March on Washington where he delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech, and the 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches. His work contributed to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Biography
Martin Luther King Jr. was born in Atlanta in 1929, the son of a Baptist minister. He studied theology and earned a doctorate at Boston University, then became pastor of a church in Montgomery, Alabama.
In 1955–56 he led the Montgomery bus boycott, which ended segregated seating on the city's buses. He co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and led nonviolent campaigns against segregation across the South, including Birmingham in 1963. At the March on Washington that year he gave his "I Have a Dream" speech. These campaigns helped win the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, after the Selma marches.
He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. In his last years he turned to poverty and opposition to the Vietnam War and planned the Poor People's Campaign. He was shot dead in Memphis on 4 April 1968.
