Dr. Martin Luther King Early life/Education/Awards and Recognition/Main impact on the movement: Dr. King was born on January 15, 1929 to Alberta Williams and michael Luther King sir. Dr. King’s mother was a teacher and his father was a minister and activist. Martin was the second of three children and grew up in a large Victorian house on Auburn Avenue in Atlanta, Georgia. In 1934, after visiting Europe, michael king sr. changed his and his sons names in honor of the sixteenth- century German church reformer Martin Luther. Kingś house was about a block from Ebenezer Baptist Church.His maternal grandfather, A. D. Williams, was pastor at Ebenezer from 1894 until 1931. After Williams's death, the elder King succeeded his father-in-law at …show more content…
Community activists proposed a bus boycott in protest. .The intimidation strengthened the resolve of the black community. The initial demands of the MIA for a modified system of segregation on city buses evolved into a lawsuit that called for its total abolishment. The case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled segregation on Montgomery buses unconstitutional. On December 21, 1956, King was among the first passengers to board an integrated bus.The bus boycott made King a national symbol of black protest. In the next few years he spoke alongside other national black leaders and met with U.S. president Dwight D. Eisenhower and a host of foreign dignitaries. In 1958 King published Stride toward Freedom, his account of the Montgomery boycott. In February 1960 four black students staged a sit-in at a segregated lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina. The sit-in movement rapidly expanded to other cities, where it met with some success in persuading local communities to desegregate facilities. The success of sit-ins and freedom rides demonstrated the relevance of nonviolent direct action to the civil rights movement. King's interest in nonviolent protest continued to develop and became a central tenet of his leadership. King joined student sit-ins in Atlanta, though he declined an invitation to participate in the freedom