Martin Luther King Jr. was a social activist, who led the Civil Rights Movement in the USA, in 1964. Martin Luther King Jr. was born on the 15th of January 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia, USA and died by assassination on April 4th 1968. He was originally named Michael, but later his name was changed to Martin, just like his father, who was a Baptist Minister. King’s father, Martin Luther King Sr. (1899-1984), was a pastor and his mother, Alberta Williams King (1904-1974), was a former school teacher. King Jr., had one older sister, Christine King Farris (born 1927), and one younger brother, Alfred Daniel Williams King (1930-1969). Martin Luther King Jr., was a gifted student, but due to discrimination he attended a segregated public school; later …show more content…
and his family lived in Montgomery, Atlanta; they were segregated is society, due to it being dominantly white. During the time King lived in Montgomery with his family; it was during this time on December 1st, 1955, Rosa Parks (1913-2005) was arrested because she refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a local, Montgomery, bus. Additionally this resulted in the Montgomery Bus Boycott, where activists avoided bus rides for 381 days; as a result this placed an economical strain on the public transport system. The committee chose Martin Luther King Jr. as the official representative and the protest leader. King was heavily influenced by Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948), who had been successful in gaining freedom for India from the British, and activist Bayard Rustin (1912-1987), as they both influenced him to hold non-violent protests for racial equality. King and other fellow activists had founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (aka, SCLC), a committee that wanted to achieve full racial equality for African-Americans without the use of violence. As King was the president of the SCLC he travelled across the country giving lectures on equality in society between all races and nonviolent protests. King also visited India, in 1959, where he met followers of Gandhi and his family, as King had always been influenced by the ways of