Who was Martin Luther King Jr.? He was a Baptist minister and a social activist, who led the Civil Rights Movement in the United States between 1950 and 1968. Martin was born on 15 January 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia. His social status as a Baptist minister and a social activist had a big impact on race relations in United States in the beginning of 1950s. His activism and inspirational speeches played a big role in ending the legal segregation of the African-American citizens in the United States and for the creation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and for the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In 1964 Martin was awarded with the Nobel Peace Prize, among several other honors. On April 1968 he was assassinated on the balcony of his motel in Tennessee …show more content…
and Alberta Williams King. He and his family were rooted in rural Georgia. His grandfather A.D. Williams was a rural minister for many years and then in 1893 he moved to Atlanta. His father, Michael King Sr. stepped in as pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church because of the death of his father-in-law in 1931. He changed his name to Martin Luther King Sr. in honor of the German Protestant religious leader Martin Luther. In short time Michael Jr. would follow his father’s lead and adopt the name himself. King Jr. had an older sister named Willie Christine, and a younger brother named Alfred Daniel Williams King. All of them grew up in a loving and secure environment. In their family the father was more disciplinarian while his wife was gentleness and easily balanced out the father’s more strict hand. As parents they undoubtedly tried to shield Martin Jr. and his brother and sister from racism, but this was a hard mission to accomplish thinking about how black people were seen in that time in United States. Martin Luther King Sr. fought against racial prejudice but not just because his race or his color, but because he considered racism and segregation to be an insult to God’s will. He taught his children and strongly discouraged any sense of class superiority, wich in Martin Jr. case left a lasting