Who Was Martin Luther King, Jr.?

King was born in Atlanta, Georgia, and was named Michael after his father. When King was five, his father changed both their names to Martin Luther. King had an older sister and a younger brother, and the family had a happy family life. They lived in a big house on Auburn Avenue, a comfortable neighborhood where “no one was very poor or very rich” (5).

King grew up with love. His mother, Alberta, was a kind woman, and King always talked with her. She had studied in college, something that few Black women could do at the time. King also admired and respected his father, who grew up in a poor family of sharecroppers, meaning that they farmed land but did not own it and had to share some of what they grew with the landowners. King’s father worked hard for his education and, after obtaining a college diploma, became a minister of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta.

His father’s church was a “second home” to King, who sang in the choir, attended Sunday school, and made many friends there. One of them was a white boy whom King grew up with. However, when they started school, King went to a school for Black children, and his friend’s father told King that he could not play with his son anymore. The friendship ended, and King was devastated. That night, his parents discussed it with him, explaining how white people treated Black people. His mother instilled in him a feeling of “somebodyness,” telling him that he was important despite the world’s treatment of him. King realized that society worked according to Jim Crow laws and felt angry.

Bader explains the meaning of Jim Crow. The term derives from 1830s minstrel performers. Minstrel performers traveled the country, staging shows, and were popular before and after the US Civil War. For these shows, white performers painted their faces black and danced in a way that mocked Black people, singing a song containing the phrase, “I jump Jim Crow.” Many believe that the character, which became a staple in minstrel shows, referred to an elderly enslaved man. The name remained a negative reference to Black people and became the term for the racist laws in the South.

King often took the bus to school. One day, on the way home, the driver ordered him and his teacher to give up their seats to white people. That day, King vowed to change the situation.

King was an excellent student and loved reading and giving speeches. He was only 15 when he graduated from high school. That summer, he found a job in the tobacco fields in Connecticut. It was his first time in the North, and King realized that Black people lived differently there because segregation did not exist. Black and white people went to the same schools and restaurants. King dreamed that this could happen in the South too.

Upon his return to the South, King attended Morehouse College in Atlanta, an all-Black institution where his father also studied. King was uncertain about his future but knew that he wanted to devote his life to helping Black people. In college, he found inspiration in Henry David Thoreau’s essays. During Thoreau’s time, enslavement was still legal in the US, and he protested. Thoreau argued that people must “disobey unjust laws” (14); he refused to pay taxes and was imprisoned. Thoreau’s thinking intrigued King, and he admired Thoreau for protesting peacefully.

Two of King’s minister mentors in college inspired him to become a minister too. He believed that as a minister, he could speak out against racism and show his love for the people. At 17, King gave his first sermon at the Ebenezer Baptist Church, and his words were inspiring. A year later, he became a minister.

King graduated from college in 1948, and though his father wanted him to stay at the church, he pursued further studies, enrolling in the Crozer Theological Seminary, where he discovered Mahatma Gandhi’s teachings about peaceful protest. After graduation, King entered graduate studies at the Boston University School of Theology in Massachusetts.

In Boston, King met Coretta Scott, a music student and singer from Alabama. She impressed King as they spoke about the struggles of being Black in the US and shared their dreams of people living together in peace.

Bader notes that Gandhi was an important political and spiritual leader in India. Born in 1869 in Porbandar, Gandhi went to London, England, at age 18 to study law. After college, he worked in South Africa and witnessed how white people there treated African people as second-class citizens. Realizing that white people in India treated Indigenous people unjustly too, Gandhi decided to organize peaceful protests against discrimination. Returning to India, he supported India’s freedom from British colonial rule. He spent many years in prison but followed nonviolence all his life. Gandhi was killed by a Hindu radical named Nathuram Godse, who thought he was responsible for “weakening” India.

King married Coretta in 1953 in Alabama, and the couple returned to Boston to finish their studies. After King received a doctorate degree, he wondered how to start his work.

King took a job in the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. In 1954, he gave his first sermon as a potential minister. He was nervous, wondering whether he wanted to live in the South. Still, he sought to impress people and knew that he had to speak from his heart.

Bader notes that Montgomery was “the cradle of the Confederacy” (22). In 1861, Alabama voted to leave the Union. Other Southern states followed because, as Bader explains, the North wanted to abolish enslavement. That same year, in Montgomery, Jefferson Davis was sworn in as president of the Confederacy, and the first Confederate flag flew from the state capitol. In 1865, the Northern states won the Civil War, and the Confederacy ended.

People loved King’s sermon and asked him to become their pastor. Despite initial hesitation, he and Coretta decided to stay in Alabama. King thought that he could help the local people.

Bader explains the Brown v. Board of Education case, which was brought to the Supreme Court around that time. In Topeka, Kansas, a Black girl named Linda Brown had to walk a mile to a Black school. Her father tried to enroll her in a school close to home, but the school was for white students only following the “separate but equal” doctrine (25). The girl’s father took the case to court. In 1954, the Supreme Court’s ruling on the case banned segregation in schools.

King became the pastor of the Dexter Baptist Church in 1954. In his sermons, he urged people to register to vote and join the NAACP, founded in 1909 and one of the oldest civil rights organizations in the US. Its goal was to help people of color achieve equal rights.

In 1995, Coretta gave birth to their daughter, Yolanda. Just two weeks after her birth, an event occurred that changed the course of US history: In Montgomery, an elderly Black woman, Rosa Parks, sat on the front seat of a bus, and when the driver told her to move, she refused and was arrested.

Parks was born in 1913 in Tuskegee, Alabama. After her parents’ divorce, she lived with her mother and grandparents. She was homeschooled until age 11 and attended school but had to stop to care for her sick mother. In 1943, Parks became an activist in the civil rights movement, joining the NAACP in Montgomery while working as a seamstress. After her arrest in 1953, she spent the night in prison, saying that she was “tired of giving in” (29). One hundred years after enslavement was abolished, Black people in the South were still fighting for change. Many say that Parks’s act incited the civil rights movement.

King and other leaders met with Parks and planned a boycott, deciding that they would not ride the bus to work or school. Some had to walk or find car rides. King thought the boycott would send a “strong message” that Black people should sit wherever they wanted. The boycott’s first day was successful, but people had to continue until laws changed. Many white politicians were furious because the buses were losing money. They tried to crush Black people’s protests, ordering taxi companies to charge additional fares. King and other leaders responded with another plan. They organized carpools, and many people, Black and white, volunteered to drive protesters. Peaceful protests, however, were dangerous too.

King was arrested on the pretext of speeding while driving. The police tried to intimidate him to stop the boycott, and soon, his house was firebombed. King worried about his family but continued. The boycott lasted a year, and finally, the Supreme Court banned segregation in buses. King was excited and happy. Activists and reporters gathered at his house, and cameras captured King boarding a bus and sitting in the front seat.