Martin Luther King,Jr.was born on January 15,1929.He received the B.A.degree in 1948 from Morehouse College.After three years of theological study at Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania,he was awarded the B.D.in 1951.And then he enrolled in graduate studies at Boston University,receiving the degree in 1955.In Boston he met and married Coretta Scott.Two sons and two daughters were born into the family.
In 1954,Martin Luther King became a pastor in Alabama.What’s more,King was a member of the executive committee of the National Association.Early in December,1955,he accepted the leadership of the first great Negro nonviolent demonstration of contemporary times.Around December 21,1956,King was arrested,his home was bombed,he was subjected to personal abuse,but at the same time he emerged as a Negro leader of the first rank.
In 1957 he was elected president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.In the eleven-year period between 1957 and 1968,King traveled over six million miles and spoke over twenty-five hundred times,appearing wherever there was injustice,protest,and action.He was arrested upwards of twenty times and assaulted at least four times; he was awarded five honorary degrees,and became not only the symbolic leader of American blacks but also a world figure.
Martin Luther King,Jr.,was the youngest man to have received the Nobel Peace Prize at his 35’s.On the evening of April 4,1968,while standing on the balcony of his motel room in Memphis,Tennessee,where he was to lead a protest march in sympathy with striking garbage workers of that city,he was assassinated.
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