Martin Luther King Jr.

Life and Ministry

Martin Luther King Jr. was born on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia, the son of a Baptist minister. He received his undergraduate degree from Morehouse College in 1948, a Bachelor of Divinity from Crozer Theological Seminary in 1951, and a doctorate in systematic theology from Boston University in 1955. He served as pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, from 1954 to 1960, and thereafter as co-pastor with his father at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. King emerged as the principal leader of the American civil rights movement following his direction of the Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955–1956), which resulted in a federal court ruling against bus segregation. He was a founding president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (1957) and organized or participated in major campaigns in Birmingham, Alabama (1963), the March on Washington (1963), the Selma to Montgomery marches (1965), and the Poor People's Campaign (1968). His theological framework drew heavily on the Social Gospel tradition, the theology of personalism developed at Boston University, and the nonviolent direct-action methods associated with Mahatma Gandhi. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. Throughout the mid-1960s he expanded his public advocacy to include opposition to the Vietnam War and economic inequality. He was under sustained FBI surveillance during this period. King was assassinated on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee, where he had traveled in support of striking sanitation workers. Sources: David J. Garrow, Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (1986); Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters, Pillar of Fire, and At Canaan's Edge (1988–2006); Clayborne Carson, ed., The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Vols. 1–7 (1992–2014).

Circumstances of Death

On April 4, 1968, at approximately 6:01 PM local time, King was shot by a single rifle bullet while standing on the second-floor balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. He had traveled to Memphis in support of a strike by the city's sanitation workers. James Earl Ray, a fugitive from Missouri State Penitentiary, was subsequently convicted of the murder in 1969 following a guilty plea. King was pronounced dead at St. Joseph's Hospital at 7:05 PM. He was 39 years old.

Legacy

King is commemorated as one of ten 20th-century martyrs whose statues were unveiled above the Great West Door of Westminster Abbey, London, in 1998. In the United States, a federal holiday bearing his name has been observed on the third Monday of January since 1986. The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial was dedicated in Washington, D.C., in 2011. He is recognized as a martyr in several Christian communions, including the Episcopal Church, which observes his feast day on April 4. His papers are archived at Stanford University and at Morehouse College.