Martin Luther king Jr.(HISTORY)

Martin Luther King Jr.
King in 1964
1st President of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference
In office January 10, 1957 – April 4, 1968
Preceded by	Office 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	Assassination
Resting place	Martin Luther King Jr. National Historical Park
Nationality	American
Spouse(s)	Coretta Scott (m. 1953)
Children	Yolanda Denise King Martin Luther King III Dexter Scott King Bernice Albertine King
Parents	Martin Luther King Sr. Alberta Williams King
Relatives	Christine King Farris (sister) Alfred Daniel Williams King (brother) Alveda King (niece)
Alma mater	Morehouse College Crozer Theological Seminary Boston University
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. (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American Baptist minister and activist who became the most visible spokesperson and leader in the civil rights movement from 1954 until his death in 1968. Born in Atlanta, King is best known for advancing civil rights through nonviolence and civil disobedience, tactics his Christian beliefs and the nonviolent activism of Mahatma Gandhi helped inspire.
King led the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott and in 1957 became the first president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). With the SCLC, he led an unsuccessful 1962 struggle against segregation in Albany, Georgia, and helped organize the nonviolent 1963 protests in Birmingham, Alabama. He also helped organize the 1963 March on Washington, where he delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech.
On October 14, 1964, King won the Nobel Peace Prize for combating racial inequality through nonviolent resistance.^[1] In 1965, he helped organize the Selma to Montgomery marches. The following year, he and the SCLC took the movement north to Chicago to work on segregated housing. In his final years, he expanded his focus to include opposition towards poverty and the Vietnam War. He alienated many of his liberal allies with a 1967 speech titled "Beyond Vietnam". J. Edgar Hoover considered him a radical and made him an object of the FBI's COINTELPRO from 1963 on. FBI agents investigated him for possible communist ties, recorded his extramarital liaisons and reported on them to government officials, and on one occasion mailed King a threatening anonymous letter, which he interpreted as an attempt to make him commit suicide.
In 1968, King was planning a national occupation of Washington, D.C., to be called the Poor People's Campaign, when he was assassinated on April 4 in Memphis, Tennessee. His death was followed by riots in many U.S. cities. Allegations that James Earl Ray, the man convicted and imprisoned of killing King, had been framed or acted in concert with government agents persisted for decades after the shooting. Sentenced to 99 years in prison for King's murder, effectively a life sentence as Ray was 41 at the time of conviction, Ray served 29 years of his sentence and died from hepatitis in 1998 while in prison.
King was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal. Martin Luther King Jr. Day was established as a holiday in numerous cities and states beginning in 1971; the holiday was enacted at the federal level by legislation signed by President Ronald Reagan in 1986. Hundreds of streets in the U.S. have been renamed in his honor, and a county in Washington State was also rededicated for him. The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., was dedicated in 2011.