Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site
Atlanta, Georgia

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Martin Luther King Jr., is one of the most remarkable and storied personalities of the 20th Century. King, a revered orator and minister, championed and fought for equal rights as racism and discriminatory sanctions permeated the country.

King was born on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia. He was the first son and second child born to Rev. Martin Luther King Sr., pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church, and Alberta Williams King, a former schoolteacher. Young Martin began his formal education in the city's public schools. Wise beyond his years, King skipped the ninth grade as well as his senior year of high school after receiving a high score on college entrance exams during his junior year. He enrolled in Morehouse College at 15.

After graduating from Morehouse with a bachelor's degree in sociology in 1948, King enrolled in Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania. He also entered the Christian ministry that year and was ordained at Ebenezer Baptist Church, where he became assistant pastor. King was elected class president of Crozer's senior class, delivered the valedictory address, and won an award for most outstanding student. He earned a bachelor's degree in divinity from Crozer in 1951 and received a fellowship for graduate study at the university of his choice.

King married Coretta Scott in 1953 (they would later have four children) and completed his doctorate of philosophy in systematic theology at Boston University in 1955. He then began serving as pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. That December, King was appointed president of the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), a group formed by African-American leaders in Montgomery to organize and sponsor the Montgomery Bus Boycott. King was arrested, violently harassed, and his home was bombed during the boycott, but he refused to back down. The boycott lasted 381 days before the U.S. Supreme Court declared bus segregation unconstitutional, ending the city's segregated bus system.

In 1959, King, a figure of growing prominence, moved to Atlanta to direct the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, a recently formed strategist human rights coalition. He began helping communities organize peaceful discrimination protests. King and SCLC practiced and encouraged nonviolent mass-action tactics and applauded the turn-the-other-cheek philosophy.

King never strayed from his policy of nonviolence during the Civil Rights Movement despite repeated attempts to test his strength and steadfastness. In fact, his policy would become a powerful force in the fight for equality during the decade of the Movement's greatest achievement, 1957 to 1968.

King rose to national prominence while serving as the unofficial leader of the Civil Rights Movement. He was a resilient leader who, despite prejudice, hardship, and his own second-class citizenship, dedicated his life to fighting for equal rights and equal opportunity for the oppressed. Before being fatally shot while standing on a Memphis hotel balcony in1968, King made countless efforts on behalf of the Movement: He led a voter-registration campaign that resulted in the Selma-to-Montgomery Freedom March; protested segregated department store facilities; launched programs to rehabilitate tenements and provide adequate housing; and supported the Memphis sanitation men's strike. And in 1963, King delivered his famed "I Have A Dream" speech in front of hundreds of thousands of civil rights supporters at the March on Washington.

Martin Luther King Jr., has received several hundred awards for his role in the Civil Rights Movement, including the John F. Kennedy Award from the Catholic Interracial Council of Chicago and the Spingarn Award from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. He also was selected one of the most outstanding personalities of the year by Time magazine in 1957 and named Man of the Year by the magazine in 1963. King received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. He was the youngest male recipient, the second American, and the third black man to receive the award.

The National Park Service designated Martin Luther King Jr., National Historic Site on October 10, 1980. The site includes a Birth Home Museum, the Ebenezer Baptist Church Museum, Freedom Hall, a Park Service visitor center, and the King Center, King's final resting place, established by his wife. The park site also loans out a traveling trunk show exhibit, which includes photos, background information, and videos, among other things, that provides students with hands-on information about King's life, and features film series.

Martin Luther King Jr.'s courage, morality, and transcendence gave blacks and other disfranchised people a sense of dignity and self-worth, faith and hope. Martin Luther King Jr., National Historic Site celebrates that legacy.