Martin Luther King, Jr.: An incomplete chronology of his life

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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 princple 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. Joseph'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 Americia, 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.