Born on Jan. 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia, he was the second of three children of the Rev. Michael (later Martin) and Mrs. Alberta Williams King.

He received a bachelor's degree in sociology (1948) from Morehouse College, a B.D. (1951) from Crozer Theological Seminary, and a doctorate in philosophy (1955) from Boston University.

In 1954, King accepted his first pastorate in Montgomery, Ala. He and his wife, Coretta Scott King, whom he had met and married (June 1953) while at Boston University, had been resident in Montgomery less than a year when Mrs. Rosa Parks defied the ordinance concerning segregated seating on city buses (Dec. 1, 1955). King's successful organization of the year-long Montgomery bus boycott catapulted him into national prominence as a leader of the Civil Rights movement.

King studied the life and teachings of Mahatma Gandhi and further developed the Indian leader's doctrine of satyagraha (holding to the truth), or nonviolent civil disobedience.

In 1960 he became president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Although he continued to travel and speak widely and firmly committed the SCLC to voter-registration campaigns throughout the South, King's major campaigns were those in Albany, Ga., Birmingham, Ala. and Danville, Va.

He organized the massive March on Washington (Aug. 28, 1963) where, in his brilliant I Have a Dream speech, he "subpoenaed the conscience of the nation before the judgment seat of morality."

In January 1964, Time magazine chose King Man of the Year, the first black American so honored. Later that year he became the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.

Soon after, a tour of the northern cities led him to assail the conditions of economic as well as social discrimination. This marked a shift in SCLC strategy, one intended to "bring the Negro into the mainstream of American life as quickly as possible." Having begun to recognize the deeper relationships of economics and poverty to racism, King now called for a "reconstruction of the entire society, a revolution of values."
Along with demands for stronger civil and voting rights legislation and for a meaningful poverty budget, he spoke out against the Vietnam War.
On Apr. 4, 1967, he told an audience that "The Great Society (President Lyndon Johnson's antipoverty program) has been shot down on the battlefields of Vietnam."

Early in 1968, King began to plan a multiracial poor people's march on Washington to demand an end to all forms of discrimination and the funding of a $12-billion "Economic Bill of Rights." In the midst of organizing this campaign, he flew to Memphis, Tenn., where, on Apr. 4, 1968, was felled by an assassin's bullet.
The violent death of this man of peace brought an immediate reaction of rioting in black ghettos around the country. Although one man, James Earl Ray, was convicted of King's murder, it is clear only that the United States was deprived of a towering symbol of moral and social progress. King's birthday was declared a federal holiday in 1983.