Born January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia, King was assassinated April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee. Though he was buried South View Cemetery, Atlanta, he was re-interred at Martin Luther King, Jr., Center for Nonviolent Social Change, Atlanta. He graduated from Morehouse College with a B.A in 1948; from Crozer Theological Seminary with a B.D. in 1951; from Boston University with a Ph.D. in 1955 and a divinity degree in 1959; and from Chicago Theological Seminary with a divinity degree in 1957. King was chosen by Time magazine as one of the ten outstanding personalities of 1956. He was chosen as Time Man of the Year in 1963 and awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1964. He was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977. King was ordained a Baptist minister in 1948, and he was the founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Atlanta, in 1957; he served as its president from 1957 to 1968. His writings include Stride toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story, 1958; The Measure of a Man, 1959; Pilgrimage to Nonviolence, 1960; Letter from Birmingham City Jail, American Friends Service Committee, 1963, published as Letter from Birmingham Jail, 1968; Why We Can't Wait, 1964; Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, 1967; I've Been to the Mountaintop, 1994; The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr., 1998. A Knock at Midnight: Inspiration from the Great Sermons of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., 1998.

Papers of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference

Learn more about the history of the organization of which King was the first president.

Lincoln Memorial, National Park Service

Visit the web site depicting the location where King gave his famous "I Have a Dream" speech.

Morehouse College

Visit the web site of the college from which King graduated in 1948.

I Have a Dream