On January 15, 1929 — 93 years ago today — Martin Luther King Jr. was born in Atlanta, the son of a Baptist minister.
King received a doctorate degree in theology and, in 1955, helped organized the successful Montgomery Bus Boycott, the first major protest of the African-American civil rights movement.
Influenced by Mohandas Gandhi, he advocated civil disobedience and nonviolent resistance to segregation in the South. The peaceful protests he led throughout the American South were often met with violence, but King and his followers persisted and the movement gained momentum.
A powerful orator, King appealed to Christian and American ideals and won growing support from the federal government and Northern whites.
In 1963, Bayard Rustin and A. Philip Randolph led the massive March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The event's grand finale was King's famous, "I Have a Dream," address. Two hundred and fifty thousand people gathered outside the Lincoln Memorial to hear the stirring speech.
In 1964, the civil rights movement achieved two of its greatest successes: the ratification of the 24th Amendment, which abolished the poll tax, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibited racial discrimination in employment and education and outlawed racial segregation in public facilities.
Later that year, King became the youngest person to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
In the late 1960s, King openly criticized U.S. involvement in Vietnam and turned his efforts to winning economic rights for poor Americans. He was assassinated in Memphis on April 4, 1968 at age 39.
Here is Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream Speech” in Washington, D.C. on August 28, 1963
Thanks History.com
Martin Luther King mugshot
King was photographed by Alabama cops following his February, 1956 arrest during the Montgomery bus boycotts. The historic mug shot, taken when King was 27, was discovered in July, 2004 by a deputy cleaning out a Montgomery County Sheriff's Department storage room.