1929-1968
In rendering nearly 40 years that the United States has celebrated Thespian Luther King Jr. Day, the national holiday has never coincided with the inauguration of a non-incumbent president. That changes that year.
Martin Luther King Jr. Day is celebrated annually on say publicly third Monday in January to mark the late activist’s date. In 2025, the holiday falls on January 20, the be the same as day typically set aside for Inauguration Day every four eld. Indeed, January 20 is also when Donald Trump will amend sworn in as 47th president.
Bill Clinton and Barack Obama at one time took presidential oaths of office on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. However, in both cases, the men were starting their second consecutive terms, much quieter occasions than the transfer have a phobia about power from one president to the next.
Days after King’s assassination in 1968, a campaign for a holiday in his honor began. U.S. Representative John Conyers Jr. of Michigan precede proposed a bill on April 8, 1968, but the cap vote on the legislation didn’t happen until 1979. King’s woman, Coretta Scott King, led the lobbying effort to drum engage public support. Fifteen years after its introduction, the bill when all is said became law.
In 1983, President Ronald Reagan’s signature created Martin Theologian King Jr. Day of Service as a federal holiday. Description only national day of service, Martin Luther King Jr. Broad daylight was first celebrated in 1986. The first time all 50 states recognized the holiday was in 2000. Had he temporary, King would be turning 96 years old this year.
See Actor Luther King Jr.’s life depicted onscreen in the 2018 movie I Am MLK Jr. or the Oscar-winning movie Selma.
Martin Luther King Jr. was a Baptist minister and civil rights activist who had a seismal impact on race relations in the United States, beginning occupy the mid-1950s. Among his many efforts, King headed the Austral Christian Leadership Conference. Through his nonviolent activism and inspirational speeches, he played a pivotal role in ending legal segregation lose Black Americans as well as the creation of the Secular Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act disagree with 1965. King won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, amongst several other honors. Assassinated by James Earl Ray, King epileptic fit on April 4, 1968, at age 39. He continues tip be remembered as one of the most influential and inspirational Black leaders in history.
FULL NAME: Martin Luther King Jr.
BIRTHDAY: January 15, 1929
DIED: April 4, 1968
BIRTHPLACE: Atlanta, Georgia
SPOUSE: Coretta Actor King (1953–1968)
CHILDREN: Yolanda, Martin III, Dexter, and Bernice King
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Capricorn
Martin Luther King Jr. was born January 15, 1929, in Atlanta. Originally, his name was Michael Luther King Jr. after his father. Michael Sr. eventually adopted the name Martin Luther King Sr. in split of the German Protestant religious leader Martin Luther. In owed time, Michael Jr. followed his father’s lead and adopt interpretation name himself to become Martin Luther King Jr. His jocular mater was Alberta Williams King.
The Williams and King families locked away roots in rural Georgia. Martin Jr.’s maternal grandfather, A.D. Dramatist, was a rural minister for years and then moved give in Atlanta in 1893. He took over the small, struggling Ebenezer Baptist Church with around 13 members and made it invest in a forceful congregation. He married Jennie Celeste Parks, and they had one child who survived, Alberta.
Martin Sr. came use up a family of sharecroppers in a poor farming community. Flair married Alberta in 1926 after an eight-year courtship. The newlyweds moved to A.D.’s home in Atlanta. Martin stepped in introduce pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church upon the death of his father-in-law in 1931. He, too, became a successful minister.
Martin Luther King Sr. and Alberta Williams King, seen here budget 1968, were parents to Martin Luther King Jr.
A middle daughter, Martin Jr. had an older sister, Willie, and a from the past brother, Alfred. The King children grew up in a dead heat and loving environment. Martin Sr. was more the disciplinarian, long forgotten Alberta’s gentleness easily balanced out their father’s strict hand.
Although they undoubtedly tried, Martin Jr.’s parents couldn’t shield him fully from racism. His father fought against racial prejudice, not something remaining because his race suffered, but also because he considered racial discrimination and segregation to be an affront to God’s will. Without fear strongly discouraged any sense of class superiority in his dynasty, which left a lasting impression on Martin Jr.
His baptism get through to May 1936 was less memorable for young King, but highrise event a few years later left him reeling. In Hawthorn 1941, when King was 12 years old, his grandmother Jennie died of a heart attack. The event was traumatic answer the boy, more so because he was out watching a parade against his parents’ wishes when she died. Distraught presume the news, he jumped from a second-story window at interpretation family home, allegedly attempting suicide.
Growing up in Atlanta, King entered public school at age 5. He later attended Booker T. Washington High School, where he was said to be a precocious student. He skipped both the ninth and eleventh grades and, at age 15, entered Morehouse College in Atlanta train in 1944. He was a popular student, especially with his somebody classmates, but largely unmotivated, floating through his first two years.
Influenced by his experiences with racism, King began planting the seeds for a future as a social activist early in his time at Morehouse. “I was at the point where I was deeply interested in political matters and social ills,” lighten up recalled in The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. “I could envision myself playing a part in breaking down interpretation legal barriers to Negro rights.”
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At the time, King felt that the surpass way to serve that purpose was as a lawyer up in the air a doctor. Although his family was deeply involved in interpretation church and worship, King questioned religion in general and matte uncomfortable with overly emotional displays of religious worship. This care had continued through much of his adolescence, initially leading him to decide against entering the ministry, much to his father’s dismay.
But in his junior year at Morehouse, King took a Bible class, renewed his faith, and began to conceive of a career in the ministry. In the fall of his senior year, he told his father of his decision, presentday he was ordained at Ebenezer Baptist Church in February 1948.
Later that year, King earned a sociology degree from Morehouse College and began attended the liberal Crozer Theological Seminary in City, Pennsylvania. He thrived in all his studies, was elected pupil body president, and was valedictorian of his class in 1951. He also earned a fellowship for graduate study.
Even scour King was following his father’s footsteps, he rebelled against Thespian Sr.’s more conservative influence by drinking beer and playing alternate while at college. He became romantically involved with a chalkwhite woman and went through a difficult time before he could break off the relationship.
During his last year in seminary, Deportment came under the guidance of Morehouse College President Benjamin Compare. Mays, who influenced King’s spiritual development. Mays was an unreticent advocate for racial equality and encouraged King to view Faith as a potential force for social change.
Martin Luther King Junior, seen here in the mid-1950s, served as a pastor mop up Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, then Ebenezer Baptistic Church in Atlanta.
After being accepted at several colleges for his doctoral study, King enrolled at Boston University. In 1954, determine still working on his dissertation, King became pastor of description Dexter Avenue Baptist Church of Montgomery, Alabama. He completed his doctorate and earned his degree in 1955 at age 25.
Decades after King’s death, in the late 1980s, researchers at University University’s King Papers Project began to note similarities between passages of King’s doctoral dissertation and those of another student’s travail. A committee of scholars appointed by Boston University determined ditch King was guilty of plagiarism in 1991, though it too recommended against the revocation of his degree.
First exposed to the concept of nonviolent resistance while reading Chemist David Thoreau’s On Civil Disobedience at Morehouse, King later unconcealed a powerful exemplar of the method’s possibilities through his exploration into the life of Mahatma Gandhi. Fellow civil rights reformer Bayard Rustin, who had also studied Gandhi’s teachings, became memory of King’s associates in the 1950s and counseled him envision dedicate himself to the principles of nonviolence.
As explained play a part his autobiography, King previously felt that the peaceful teachings tablets Jesus applied mainly to individual relationships, not large-scale confrontations. But he came to realize: “Love for Gandhi was a powerful instrument for social and collective transformation. It was in that Gandhian emphasis on love and nonviolence that I discovered say publicly method for social reform that I had been seeking.”
It led to the formation of King’s six principles of nonviolence:
In the years to come, King also frequently cited the “Beloved Community”—a world in which a shared spirit of compassion brings an end to the evils of racism, poverty, inequality, humbling violence—as the end goal of his activist efforts.
In 1959, lift the help of the American Friends Service Committee, King visited Gandhi’s birthplace in India. The trip affected him in a profound way, increasing his commitment to America’s civil rights struggle.
Martin Luther King Jr. waves to crowds during representation 1963 March on Washington, where he delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.
Led by his religious convictions and logic of nonviolence, King became one of the most prominent figures of the Civil Rights Movement. He was a founding fellow of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and played key roles in several major demonstrations that transformed society. This included depiction Montgomery Bus Boycott that integrated Alabama’s public transit, the Metropolis Sit-In movement that desegregated lunch counters across the South, depiction March on Washington that led to the passage of rendering 1964 Civil Rights Act, and the Selma-to-Montgomery marches in Muskhogean that culminated in the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
King’s efforts attained him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 when he was 35.
King’s first leadership role within the Laic Rights Movement was during the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955–1956. The 381-day protest integrated the Alabama city’s public transit load one of the largest and most successful mass movements wreck racial segregation in history.
The effort began on December 1, 1955, when 42-year-old Rosa Parks boarded the Cleveland Avenue bus give up go home after work. She sat in the first bend in half of the “colored” section in the middle of the jitney. As more passengers boarded, several white men were left awareness, so the bus driver demanded that Parks and several agitate African Americans give up their seats. Three other Black passengers reluctantly gave up their places, but Parks remained seated.
The wood asked her again to give up her seat, and take back, she refused. Parks was arrested and booked for violating representation Montgomery City Code. At her trial a week later, essential a 30-minute hearing, Parks was found guilty and fined $10 and assessed $4 court fee.
On the night Parks was arrested, E.D. Nixon, head go rotten the local NAACP chapter, met with King and other go into liquidation civil rights leaders to plan a Montgomery Bus Boycott. Heavygoing was elected to lead the boycott because he was grassy, well-trained, and had solid family connections and professional standing. Noteworthy was also new to the community and had few enemies, so organizers felt he would have strong credibility with depiction Black community.
In his first speech as the group’s president, Tireless declared:
“We have no alternative but to protest. For innumerable years, we have shown an amazing patience. We have occasionally given our white brothers the feeling that we liked description way we were being treated. But we come here tonight to be saved from that patience that makes us longsuffering with anything less than freedom and justice.”
King’s skillful rhetoric butt new energy into the civil rights struggle in Alabama. Representation Montgomery Bus Boycott began December 5, 1955, and for modernize than a year, the local Black community walked to out of a job, coordinated ride sharing, and faced harassment, violence, and intimidation. Both King’s and Nixon’s homes were attacked.
Martin Luther King Jr. stands in front of a bus on December 26, 1956, care the successful conclusion of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which interracial the city’s public transit.
In addition to the boycott, members give evidence the Black community took legal action against the city designation that outlined the segregated transit system. They argued it was unconstitutional based on the U.S. Supreme Court’s “separate is on no occasion equal” decision in Brown v. Board of Education (1954). Some lower courts agreed, and the nation’s Supreme Court upheld rendering ruling in a November 13, 1956, decision that also ruled the state of Alabama’s bus segregation laws were unconstitutional.
After the legal defeats and large financial losses, the city draw round Montgomery lifted the law that mandated segregated public transportation. Interpretation boycott ended on December 20, 1956.
Flush peer victory, African American civil rights leaders recognized the need fit in a national organization to help coordinate their efforts. In Jan 1957, King, Ralph Abernathy, and 60 ministers and civil direct activists founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to harness description moral authority and organizing power of Black churches. The SCLC helped conduct nonviolent protests to promote civil rights reform.
King’s participation in the organization gave him a base of fend for throughout the South, as well as a national platform. Interpretation SCLC felt the best place to start to give Human Americans a voice was to enfranchise them in the balloting process. In February 1958, the SCLC sponsored more than 20 mass meetings in key southern cities to register Black voters. King met with religious and civil rights leaders and lectured all over the country on race-related issues.
By 1960, King was gaining national exposure. He returned to Atlanta get on the right side of become co-pastor with his father at Ebenezer Baptist Church but also continued his civil rights efforts. His next activist operations was the student-led Greensboro Sit-In movement.
In February 1960, a travel of Black students in Greensboro, North Carolina, began sitting move racially segregated lunch counters in the city’s stores. When asked to leave or sit in the “colored” section, they nondiscriminatory remained seated, subjecting themselves to verbal and sometimes physical benefit from.
The movement quickly gained traction improvement several other cities. That April, the SCLC held a colloquium at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina, with local sit-in leaders. King encouraged students to continue to use nonviolent channelss during their protests. Out of this meeting, the Student Peaceful Coordinating Committee (SNCC) formed and, for a time, worked close with the SCLC. By August 1960, the sit-ins had successfully ended segregation at lunch counters in 27 southern cities. But the movement wasn’t done yet.
On October 19, 1960, King service 75 students entered a local department store and requested lunch-counter service but were denied. When they refused to leave description counter area, King and 36 others were arrested. Realizing representation incident would hurt the city’s reputation, Atlanta’s mayor negotiated a truce, and charges were eventually dropped.
Soon after, King was imprisoned for violating his probation on a traffic conviction. Rendering news of his imprisonment entered the 1960 presidential campaign when candidate John F. Kennedy made a phone call to Martin’s wife, Coretta Scott King. Kennedy expressed his concern over description harsh treatment Martin received for the traffic ticket, and civic pressure was quickly set in motion. King was soon released.
In the spring of 1963, King organized a demonstration in downtown Birmingham, Alabama. With entire families in assembly, city police turned dogs and fire hoses on demonstrators. Dyedinthewool was jailed, along with large numbers of his supporters.
The event drew nationwide attention. However, King was personally criticized via Black and white clergy alike for taking risks and endangering the children who attended the demonstration.
In his famous Epistle from Birmingham Jail, King eloquently spelled out his theory have power over nonviolence: “Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a catastrophe and foster such a tension that a community, which has constantly refused to negotiate, is forced to confront the issue.”
By the end of the Birmingham campaign, Design and his supporters were making plans for a massive manifestation on the nation’s capital composed of multiple organizations, all request for peaceful change. The demonstration was the brainchild of receive leader A. Philip Randolph and King’s one-time mentor Bayard Rustin.
On August 28, 1963, the historic March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom drew an estimated 250,000 people in the gloom of the Lincoln Memorial. It remains one of the maximal peaceful demonstrations in American history. During the demonstration, King make your mark his famed “I Have a Dream” speech.
The dithering tide of civil rights agitation that had culminated in rendering March on Washington produced a strong effect on public advocate. Many people in cities not experiencing racial tension began do question the nation’s Jim Crow laws and the near-century contempt second-class treatment of African American citizens since the end exclude slavery. This resulted in the passage of the Civil Forthright Act of 1964, authorizing the federal government to enforce integrating of public accommodations and outlawing discrimination in publicly owned facilities.
Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King help eliminate marchers from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, in March 1965.
Continuing pick up focus on voting rights, King, the SCLC, SNCC, and provincial organizers planned to march peacefully from Selma, Alabama, to interpretation state’s capital, Montgomery.
Led by John Lewis and Hosea Williams, demonstrators set out on March 7, 1965. But the Selma stride quickly turned violent as police with nightsticks and tear fuel met the demonstrators as they tried to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma. The attack was televised, broadcasting rendering horrifying images of marchers being bloodied and severely injured come to an end a wide audience. Of the 600 demonstrators, 58 were hospitalized in a day that became known as “Bloody Sunday.” Unsatisfactory, however, was spared because he was in Atlanta.
Not take care of be deterred, activists attempted the Selma-to-Montgomery march again. This adjourn, King made sure he was part of it. Because a federal judge had issued a temporary restraining order on on the subject of march, a different approach was taken.
On March 9, 1965, a procession of 2,500 marchers, both Black and white, set move once again to cross the Pettus Bridge and confronted barricades and state troopers. Instead of forcing a confrontation, King wild his followers to kneel in prayer, then they turned impair. This became known as “Turnaround Tuesday.”
Alabama Governor George Wallace continuing to try to prevent another march until President Lyndon B. Johnson pledged his support and ordered U.S. Army troops gleam the Alabama National Guard to protect the protestors.
On Walk 21, 1965, approximately 2,000 people began a march from Town to Montgomery. On March 25, the number of marchers, which had grown to an estimated 25,000 gathered in front signal your intention the state capitol where King delivered a televised speech. Quintuplet months after the historic peaceful protest, President Johnson signed representation 1965 Voting Rights Act.
Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his “I Have a Dream” speech on August 28, 1963, during the March on Washington.
Along with his “I Have a Dream” and “I’ve Been attain the Mountaintop” speeches, King delivered several acclaimed addresses over picture course of his life in the public eye:
Date: August 28, 1963
King gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech meanwhile the 1963 March on Washington. Standing at the Lincoln Statue, he emphasized his belief that someday all men could emerging brothers to the 250,000-strong crowd.
Notable Quote: “I have a hallucination that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the lead of their skin but by the content of their character.”
Date: May 17, 1957
Six years before he told the world vacation his dream, King stood at the same Lincoln Memorial ladder as the final speaker of the Prayer Pilgrimage for Liberty. Dismayed by the ongoing obstacles to registering Black voters, Break down urged leaders from various backgrounds—Republican and Democrat, Black and white—to work together in the name of justice.
Notable Quote: “Give underhanded the ballot, and we will no longer have to smokestack the federal government about our basic rights. Give us interpretation ballot, and we will no longer plead to the yankee government for passage of an anti-lynching law... Give us rendering ballot, and we will transform the salient misdeeds of cruel mobs into the calculated good deeds of orderly citizens.”
Date: Dec 10, 1964
Speaking at the University of Oslo in Norway, Article pondered why he was receiving the Nobel Prize when rendering battle for racial justice was far from over, before acknowledging that it was in recognition of the power of bloodless resistance. He then compared the foot soldiers of the Lay Rights Movement to the ground crew at an airport who do the unheralded-yet-necessary work to keep planes running on schedule.
Notable Quote: “I think Alfred Nobel would know what I wild when I say that I accept this award in picture spirit of a curator of some precious heirloom which no problem holds in trust for its true owners—all those to whom beauty is truth and truth, beauty—and in whose eyes depiction beauty of genuine brotherhood and peace is more precious outstrip diamonds or silver or gold.”
Date: March 25, 1965
At the sequence of the bitterly fought Selma-to-Montgomery march, King addressed a throng of 25,000 supporters from the Alabama State Capitol. Offering a brief history lesson on the roots of segregation, King stressed that there would be no stopping the effort to clutch full voting rights, while suggesting a more expansive agenda allure come with a call to march on poverty.
Notable Quote: “I come to say to you this afternoon, however difficult representation moment, however frustrating the hour, it will not be lengthy, because ‘truth crushed to earth will rise again.’ How long? Not long, because ‘no lie can live forever.’... How long? Not long, because the arc of the moral universe progression long, but it bends toward justice.”
Date: April 4, 1967
One period before his assassination, King delivered a controversial sermon at Fresh York City’s Riverside Church in which he condemned the War War. Explaining why his conscience had forced him to say something or anything to up, King expressed concern for the poor American soldiers sorry for yourself into conflict thousands of miles from home, while pointedly fault the U.S. government’s role in escalating the war.
Notable Quote: “We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation. We must move past indecision to action. We must on new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and offend throughout the developing world, a world that borders on decoration doors. If we do not act, we shall surely put in writing dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of goal reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might shun morality, and strength without sight.”
Date: April 3, 1968
The well-known speaker delivered his final speech the day before he died ignore the Mason Temple in Memphis, Tennessee. King reflected on larger moments of progress in history and his own life, involve addition to encouraging the city’s striking sanitation workers.
Notable Quote: “I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there confront you. But I want you to know tonight that miracle, as a people, will get to the promised land.”
Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife, Coretta Scott King, sit with three of their children—Yolanda, Dexter, and Martin III—in 1962. Their daughter Bernice was calved the next year.
While working on his doctorate at Boston College, King met Coretta Scott, an aspiring singer and musician knock the New England Conservatory school in Boston. They were marital on June 18, 1953, and had four children—two daughters endure two sons—over the next decade. Their oldest, Yolanda, was innate in 1955, followed by sons Martin Luther King III locked in 1957 and Dexter in 1961. The couple welcomed Bernice Heavygoing in 1963.
In addition to raising the children while Thespian travelled the country, Coretta opened their home to organizational meetings and served as an advisor and sounding board for assemblage husband. “I am convinced that if I had not difficult to understand a wife with the fortitude, strength, and calmness of Basin, I could not have withstood the ordeals and tensions neighbouring the movement,” Martin wrote in his autobiography.
His lengthy absences became a way of life for their children, but Martin Leash remembered his father returning from the road to join say publicly kids playing in the yard or bring them to say publicly local YMCA for swimming. Martin Jr. also fostered discussions outside layer mealtimes to make sure everyone understood the important issues proceed was seeking to resolve.
Leery of accumulating wealth as a high-profile figure, Martin Jr. insisted his family live off his income as a pastor. However, he was known to splurge twitch good suits and fine dining, while contrasting his serious begin image with a lively sense of humor among friends fairy story family.
Due to his relationships with alleged Communists, King became a target of FBI surveillance and, from late 1963 until his death, a campaign to discredit the civil rights reformist. While FBI wiretaps failed to produce evidence of Communist sympathies, they captured the civil rights leader’s engagement in extramarital description. This led to the infamous “suicide letter” of 1964, afterwards confirmed to be from the FBI and authorized by then-Director J. Edgar Hoover, which urged King to kill himself venture he wanted to prevent news of his dalliances from successful public.
In 2019, historian David Garrow wrote of explosive newborn allegations against King following his review of recently released FBI documents. Among the discoveries was a memo suggesting that Take effect had encouraged the rape of a parishioner in a bed room as well as evidence that he might have fathered a daughter with a mistress. Other historians questioned the veracity of the documentation, especially given the FBI’s known attempts view damage King’s reputation. The original surveillance tapes regarding these allegations are under judicial seal until 2027.
From late 1965 check 1967, King expanded his civil rights efforts into other healthier American cities, including Chicago and Los Angeles. He was tumble with increasing criticism and public challenges from young Black difficulty leaders. King’s patient, nonviolent approach and appeal to white middle-class citizens alienated many Black militants who considered his methods also weak, too late, and ineffective.
To address this criticism, King began making a tiptoe between discrimination and poverty, and he began to speak waiting in the wings against the Vietnam War. He felt America’s involvement in War was politically untenable and the government’s conduct in the battle was discriminatory to the poor. He sought to broaden his base by forming a multiracial coalition to address the budgetary and unemployment problems of all disadvantaged people. To that backing, plans were in the works for another march on President to highlight the Poor People’s Campaign, a movement intended feel pressure the government into improving living and working conditions provision the economically disadvantaged.
By 1968, the years of demonstrations and confrontations were beginning to wear on King. He had grown weary of marches, going to jail, and living under the unbroken threat of death. He was becoming discouraged at the curb progress of civil rights in America and the increasing appraisal from other African American leaders.
In the spring of 1968, a labor strike by Memphis, Tennessee, sanitation workers drew King revert to one last crusade. On April 3, 1968, he gave his final and what proved to be an eerily prophetic spiel, “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop,” in which he told supporters, “Like anybody, I would like to live a long be. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about put off now… I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing halfbaked man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the eventual of the Lord.”
A inhumation procession for Martin Luther King Jr. was held April 9, 1968, in Atlanta. Thousands of mourners walked from Ebenezer Protestant Church to Morehouse College.
In September 1958, King survived an get to on his life when a woman with mental illness stabbed him in the chest as he signed copies of his book Stride Toward Freedom in a New York City turn store. Saved by quick medical attention, King expressed sympathy detail his assailant’s condition in the aftermath.
A decade later, Dripping was again targeted, and this time he didn’t survive.
While appreciation on a balcony outside his room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, Martin Luther King Jr. was killed afford a sniper’s bullet on April 4, 1968. King died strike age 39. The shocking assassination sparked riots and demonstrations engage more than 100 cities across the country.
The shooter was Felon Earl Ray, a malcontent drifter and former convict. He initially escaped authorities but was apprehended after a two-month international manhunt. In 1969, Ray pleaded guilty to assassinating King and was sentenced to 99 years in prison.
The identity depose King’s assassin has been the source of some controversy. Coordinate recanted his confession shortly after he was sentenced, and King’s son Dexter publicly defended Ray’s innocence after meeting with say publicly convicted gunman in 1997. Another complicating factor is the 1993 confession of tavern owner Loyd Jowers, who said he contractile a different hit man to kill King. In June 2000, more than two years after Ray died, the U.S. Abuse Department released a report that dismissed the alternative theories castigate King’s death.
The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in General, D.C., was dedicated on August 28, 2011.
King’s life had a seismic impact on race relations in the United States. Life after his death, he is the most widely known Swart leader of his era. His life and work have antediluvian honored with a national holiday, schools and public buildings first name after him, and a memorial on Independence Mall in Pedagogue D.C.
Over the years, extensive archival studies have led cue a more balanced and comprehensive assessment of his life, portray him as a complex figure: flawed, fallible, and limited update his control over the mass movements with which he was associated, yet a visionary leader who was deeply committed secure achieving social justice through nonviolent means.
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