Born: January 15, 1929, Atlanta, GA

Education: Morehouse College, B.A., 1948; Crozer Theological Seminary, B.D. valedictorian, 1951; Boston University, Ph.D., 1955

Died: April 4, 1968, Memphis, TN

The civil rights movement made King. Perhaps its most influential leader, King also helped make the movement. Espousing nonviolent protest against racial segregation, he pursued “liberty and justice for all.”

He instilled humane values. His family, Ebenezer Baptist Church, and teachers nurtured his reverence for learning, religion, and service. College and seminary professors introduced him to social gospel theology and Mohandas Gandhi's teachings on nonviolence. Like other fellow seminarians who joined the Fellowship of Reconciliation and Congress of Racial Equality, he applied Gandhian ideas to social struggles for race and economic equality and peace. Nonviolence sustained his moral purpose and action in the Montgomery bus boycott and subsequent campaigns to end segregation.

King powerfully influenced the movement's priorities, including desegregation, voting rights, and fair employment, from Montgomery to the 1968 sanitation workers’ strike in Memphis, where he was assassinated. Southern Christian Leadership Conference raised funds and mobilized through black clergy, congregations, and communities as well as national Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish bodies. White supremacists and the FBI harassed him along the way, but he remained outspoken. He rejected both Black Power and the Vietnam War, hoping to redeem the soul of America from the injustice of racism, militarism, and poverty.