Martin Luther King, Jr.: A Chronological Life Story
January 15,1929
King was born in Atlanta, Georgia. From the parents of Martin L. King Sr. and
Alberta Williams King. Other than his parents he had an older sister, Christine,
and a younger brother, Alfred Daniel.
1953
King got married to Coretta Scott and together they had 2 sons, Martin Luther
King III and Dexter Scott, and 2 daughters, Yolanda Denise and Bernice
Albertine.
Dec.1955-1956
King was the leader of the Montgomery Boycott. During the boycott King's
house was bombed. King and others called off the boycott a month late.
1957
King became the youngest recipient of the Spingarn Medal an award that is
presented annually to a great black person by the National Association for
the Advancement for Colored People (NAACP).
1958
King was appointed president of a group known later as Southern Christian
Leadership Conference (SCLC). He also inspired blacks to hold peaceful
sit-ins and freedom riders to protect segregation.
1963
King was jailed during a successful campaign to achieve the desegregation
in many public facilities in Birmingham, Alabama. Also that year he was
designated as Time Magazine's Man of the Year. Then was a principle speaker
at the march on Washington, D.C.
July 2,1964
King won the Nobel Peace Prize. He regarded it as not only a personal honor,
but also as an international tribute to the nonviolent civil rights movement.
1965
King leads a rally in Selma, Alabama to get blacks to register to vote. The
rally ended when demonstrators marched five days, from Selma to Montgomery.
March 4, 1968
King inspired and planned a poor people campaign, a march on Washington,
in 1968 to dramatize the relationship of poverty to urban violence. But he
did not live to take part in it.
April 4, 1968
King is assassinated in Memphis on the Balcony of the Lorraine Motel. At
7:05 P.M. that evening, doctors at the St. Joeseph's Hospital pronounced him dead.
June 8, 1968
James Earl Ray is arrested for the crime of murdering Martin Luther King.
January 15, 1986
President Reagan confirms King's birthday as a national holiday.
Sources
"A Herous Footnotes of Clay" Time magazine (Nov. 19, 1990) page 99
The Negro Almanac 1983, Bellwether Publishing Company
Encyclopedia America, Grolier International; Volume 16, "Martin L. King"
The Day Martin Luther King Was Shot by Jim Haskins, Scholastic Inc. 1992
By: Bradley D. , Creston K.
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