•Martin Luther King,
Jr., was born in Atlanta, Georgia in 1929. He was the oldest son of Martin Luther King, Sr., a Baptist
minister, and Alberta Williams King.
His father served as pastor of a large Atlanta church, Ebenezer Baptist, which had been founded by Martin Luther King,
Jr.’s, maternal grandfather.
King, Jr., was ordained as a Baptist minister at age 18.
•King attended local
segregated public schools, where he excelled. He entered nearby Morehouse College at age 15 and graduated
with a bachelor’s degree in
sociology in 1948. After graduating with honors from Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania in 1951, he
went to Boston University where he earned a doctoral degree in
systematic theology in 1955.
•King’s public-speaking
abilities—which would become renowned as his stature grew in the civil rights movement—developed
slowly during his collegiate
years. He won a second-place prize in a speech contest while an undergraduate at Morehouse, but received Cs in two
public-speaking courses in
his first year at Crozer. By the end of his third year at Crozer, however, professors were praising King for the powerful
impression he made in public
speeches and discussions.
