Martin Luther King Jr. was born in Atlanta Georgia in 1929. He graduated from Morehouse College, Crozer Theological Seminary, and he got a Ph.D at Boston University. The son of the pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, King was ordained in 1947 and became minister of a Baptist church in Montgomery, Alabama.

In 1953 Martin Luther King married Coretta Scott at her parents home in Alabama. In 1955 he led the boycott by Montgomery blacks against segregated city bus lines, and he attained national prominence by advocating a policy of passive resistance to segregation. In 1956, he gained a major victory and prestige as a civil rights leader when the Montgomery buses began to operate on a desegregated basis.

After the Montgomery success, King organized the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which gave him a base to pursue further civil rights activities, first in the South and later nationwide. His philosophy of nonviolent resistance led to his arrest on numerous occasions in the 1950s and 60s. In the early 1960s King tried to keep the SCLC active by holding nonviolence workshop, and helping other groups, such as the Freedom Riders.

He organized the massive March on Washington, August 23, 1963, which brought more than 200,000 people together. In 1964 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. King s leadership in the civil rights movement was challenged in the mid-1960s as others grew more militant. However, King s interests widened from civil rights to criticism of the Vietnam War and to a deeper concern for poverty.

His plans for a Poor People s March to Washington were interrupted for a trip to Memphis, Tennessee, in support of striking sanitation workers. On April 4, 1968, he was shot and killed by an assassin s bullet on the balcony of the motel where he was staying. James Earl Ray was later convicted of his murder. On April 9 in Atlanta, Abernathy officiated at King s funeral service in Ebenezer Baptist Church, before a tightly packed congregation of 800 people.

On his crypt are carved the words he quoted many times, Free at last, free at last, Thank God Almighty, I m free at last.