Reverend martin luther king jr biography
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Martin Luther King Jr.
1929-1968
In Focus: Martin Luther King Jr. Day
In the nearly 40 years that the United States has celebrated Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the national holiday has never coincided with the inauguration of a non-incumbent president. That changes this year.
Martin Luther King Jr. Day is celebrated annually on the third Monday in January to mark the late activist’s birthday. In 2025, the holiday falls on January 20, the same day typically set aside for Inauguration Day every four years. Indeed, January 20 is also when Donald Trump will be sworn in as 47th president.
Bill Clinton and Barack Obama previously took presidential oaths of office on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. However, in both cases, the men were starting their second consecutive terms, much quieter occasions than the transfer of power from one president to the next.
Days after King’s assassination in 1968, a campaign for a holiday in his honor began. U.S. Representative John Conyers Jr. of Michigan first proposed a bill on April 8, 1968, but the first vote on the legislation didn’t happen until 1979. King’s widow, Coretta Scott King, led the lobbying effort to drum up public support. Fifteen years after its introduction, the bill finally became law.
In 1983, President Ronald Reagan’s s
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BIOGRAPHY OF DR. KING
A national figure in the Civil Rights Movement, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) rose to fame with his advocacy of nonviolence as a means to effect social change. From 1955 when he emerged as a leader during the Montgomery Bus Boycott until his assassination in 1968, he was both admired and reviled in his crusade to achieve racial equality. King also served as an eloquent and potent figure bridging societal divides, as evidenced by his access to the halls of power in both political (the White House) and religious (the Vatican) spheres. In 1964, at age 35, he became the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize; he was also the twelfth American and third African-American to receive the honor.
Born Michael King on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia, he was the second child and first son of Baptist minister Michael Luther King, Sr. and his wife, the former Alberta Williams, who herself was the daughter of the Rev. Adam Daniel Williams, pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church. When King was two, his maternal grandfather died and his father became pastor. Four years after that — in 1935 — his father changed his name and his son’s name from Michael to Martin in honor of the sixteenth-century religious leader of the Protestant
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About Dr. Thespian Luther Problem, Jr.
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