Martin Luther King Jr.

He was Michael King Jr. until 1934, when his father came home from a Baptist congress in Berlin, having walked the sites of the Reformation, and renamed them both after Martin Luther. He was about six when a white playmate's parents ended the friendship, telling him they were white and he was not. Twice as a boy he jumped from a second-story window: once believing his brother had killed their grandmother, and again in May 1941 when she actually died and he blamed himself for sneaking out to watch a parade. He skipped two grades. At 15 he won an oratorical contest and was made to stand on the bus home so white passengers could sit. He called it the angriest he ever was.

Morehouse at 15, Crozer, a Boston University doctorate in 1955, the pulpit at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church at 25. He was 26 when the boycott made him national and 39 when he was shot in Memphis. In between came 29 arrests and a letter opener in the chest at a Harlem book signing. The campaigns, the laws they forced and the Nobel are on BriefHistory at length. What that page cannot carry is how young he was for all of it, or the autopsy finding that at 39 he had the heart of a 60-year-old.

At Crozer he fell in love with Betty Moitz, whose German-born mother worked in the seminary cafeteria, and meant to marry her. His father and his friends told him an interracial marriage would shut every Southern pulpit against him. He ended it after six months. A friend said he never recovered, and Harry Belafonte called her the love of his life. He married Coretta Scott in 1953 and then kept her out of the movement, expecting a wife at home. In October 1991 a Boston University committee found that parts of his doctoral dissertation were plagiarized and that he had acted improperly. It declined to revoke the degree, said the work still contributed to scholarship, and filed a letter with the library copy listing the unattributed passages.

He was buried at South View Cemetery and moved in 1977 to what is now a national historical park. Reagan signed the holiday in November 1983, it was first observed in 1986, and all 50 states did not mark it until January 17, 2000 — Utah had been calling the day Human Rights Day. The memorial in West Potomac Park opened in 2011 with a shortened quotation cut into the Stone of Hope: that he was a drum major for justice, peace and righteousness. Critics said the compression made him sound boastful, and it was ground off in 2013. The FBI surveillance tapes stay sealed until 2027, and both sides of the argument are waiting on them.

Martin Luther King Jr.'s life against the full span of the corpus.

• Southern Christian Leadership Conference company
  He was its first president, from 1957 until his death 1957
• Stride Toward Freedom book
  He was signing copies in Harlem when a woman stabbed him in the chest 1958
• Letter from Birmingham Jail article
  Composed in a Birmingham cell, on the 13th of his 29 arrests 1963
• I Have a Dream speech
  Delivered at the Lincoln Memorial on August 28 1963
• Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence speech
  Riverside Church, one year to the day before he was killed 1967
• I've Been to the Mountaintop speech
  Mason Temple, Memphis, the night before the assassination 1968

• 1934 aged ~5 Renamed Martin Luther King Jr. at five, after his father's trip to Germany His birth certificate was not corrected until 1957.
• May 18, 1941 aged 12 Jumps from a second-story window after his grandmother's death It was the second time as a child that he had done it. He survived both.
• April 13, 1944 aged 15 Wins an oratorical contest at 15, then is made to stand on the bus home He called it the angriest he had ever been.
• June 18, 1953 aged 24 Marries Coretta Scott on her parents' lawn in Heiberger, Alabama
• June 5, 1955 aged 26 Receives his doctorate from Boston University A 1991 inquiry found parts of the dissertation plagiarized and left the degree standing.
• September 20, 1958 aged 29 Stabbed in the chest with a letter opener at a Harlem book signing Izola Curry was later found mentally incompetent to stand trial.
• October 14, 1964 aged 35 Becomes the youngest Nobel Peace Prize winner to that point, at 35
• April 4, 1968 aged 39 Shot on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis He had gone to support striking sanitation workers.
• November 2, 1983 aged 54 Reagan signs the federal holiday into law All 50 states observed it for the first time on January 17, 2000.

• J. Edgar Hoover 1895–1972
  Longtime FBI director who built a powerful national police institution while conducting extensive political surveillance and abuses. surveilled by
• Lyndon B. Johnson 1908–1973
  36th President who signed the Civil Rights Act and launched the Great Society programs. pressed for legislation
• Bayard Rustin 1912–1987
  Civil rights strategist who organized the 1963 March on Washington and championed LGBTQ and labor rights. strategist and adviser
• Malcolm X 1925–1965
  Civil-rights leader whose critique of racism and advocacy of Black dignity reshaped American political thought. argued against
• Rosa Parks 1913–2005
  Civil rights activist whose refusal to give up her bus seat sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott. sat behind the movement he led
• John Lewis 1940–2020
  Freedom Rider and congressman whose activism was central to the civil-rights movement and voting-rights legislation. carried the work into Congress