A Baptist minister and civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was born Micheal Luther King, Jr., on January 15, 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia. The grandson and son of Baptist ministers He grew up singing in his church choir. In 1935, his father changed both of their names to Martin to honor the German Protestant leader who bears the same name.
Young Martin attended segregated public schools and graduated from high school at age 15. In 1948, he received his B. A. degree from Morehouse College in Georgia, the alma mater of both his father and grandfather, and in 1951 he earned the Bachelor of Divinity (B.D.) from Crozer Theological Seminary.
While at Crozer, King was elected president of a predominantly white senior class and in 1955, he received a Ph.D. from Boston University, where he also met his future wife, Coretta Scott, with whom he had four children.
Dr. King was ordained a minister in 1947 at his father's Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta and became the pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama in 1953at age 24. He became committed to black civil rights from 1954 and was an active member of the executive committee of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
With an oratorical style that drew directly on the force of the Bible and a serene confidence derived from his non-violent philosophy, King from 1955 advocated a program of moderation and inclusion and was the guiding light for 13 of the most crucial years in America's civil rights struggle.
Relatively untested when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat in a bus in December 1955, King led the boycott of segregated buses in Montgomery in Alabama state for 382 days. This led to the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in 1956 that segregation on buses was unconstitutional The situation became so intense that he was arrested, he and his family were threatened, and his home was bombed. But eventually the Supreme Court outlawed discrimination in public transportation and King emerged a prominent national leader of the civil rights movement.
In 1957, Dr. King Jr. was elected president of the newly formed Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), organized by Reverend Dr. Ralph Abernathy who succeeded Dr. King after his assassination on April 4, 1968. SCLC was a group designed to harness the moral authority and organizing power of black churches to conduct non-violent protests in the interest of civil rights reform. And Dr. King's approach was based on the ideas of Henry David Thoreau and Mohandas Gandhi as well on Christian teachings. A trip to India in 1959 to meet the Gandhi family cemented his belief in nonviolent resistance and his commitment to civil rights in the United States.
In 1959, King moved to Atlanta to become co-pastor of his father's church, and in the ensuing years gave much of his energies to organizing protest demonstrations and marches in such cities as Birmingham, Alabama (1963), St. Augustine, Florida (1964), and Selma, Alabama (1965). The marches were for the right to vote, desegregation, labor rights, and other basic civil rights. The protests won media attention and public sympathy for the indignities suffered by Southern blacks, providing what he called "a coalition of conscience" and bringing the civil rights movement to the forefront of American politics in the 1960s.
Between 1957 and 1968, King canvassed the country and appeared more than 2,500times to speak in protest against injustices toward his race. He wrote five books and numerous articles. King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail", written in 1964, was a manifesto for the revolution, drawing on his experience as a preacher to galvanize and inspire an audience.
During these years, King was arrested and jailed by Southern officials and on several occasions was stoned and physically attacked, and his house was bombed. He was also placed under secret surveillance by the FBI due to the strong prejudices of its director, J Edgar Hoover, who wanted to discredit King as both a leftist and a womanizer.
King's finest hour came on August 28, 1963 when he led the great march in Washington, DC, that culminated with his famous "I Have a Dream" speech at the Lincoln Memorial. The March on Washington for jobs and freedom was the cooperative effort of the Big six civil rights organizations, SCLC, NAACP, Urban League, SNCC, Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, and the Congress of Racial Equality. An unequivocal success, more than a quarter million people of all races attended the event, making it the largest gathering of protesters in and United States history.
Political success arrived with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. At the height of his influence, King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 at age 35, becoming the award's youngest recipient.
He turned over the prize money, $54,123, to the movement.
King then used his newfound powers and prestige to attack discrimination in the North. To educate themselves about the plight of Northern blacks, King and Ralph Abernathy moved to Chicago where Obama lived before becoming president today and helped found The Chicago Freedom Movement. Both reflected that the public reception in Chicago was much worse than in the South, the politics more corrupt, and the threat of violence more dire. Abernathy and King eventually returned to the South, leaving young Jesse Jackson to continue their work.
King was also an advocate of a government compensatory programme seeking restitution of wages lost to slavery. In 1968, without the full support of the SCLC, King organized the Poor People's Campaign, which included a march on Washington D. C. The organization demanded aid for the poorest communities in the United States and sought an economic bill of rights that provided for massive government job programmes to reconstruct society. Critics called this switch in agenda a new brand of democratic socialism.
In the spring of 1968, King went to Memphis, Tennessee, to show support for black city workers striking for higher wages and better treatment. He was shot and killed on April 4, 1968 by a white racist, James Earl Ray as he stood on the balcony of his motel there. He was 39 years old. The assassination led to a wave of riots in cities nationwide, and President Lyndon Johnson declared a national day of mourning in his honor. Two months after the shooting, escaped convict James Earl Ray pleaded guilty to the murder, although he later insisted he was innocent and was sentenced to serve 99 years in prison.
President Jimmy Carter of the Democratic Party acknowledged King's contributions by posthumously awarding him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977 and from 1986 during the tenure of Republican President Ronald Reagan his birthday January 15 became an annual national holiday in the United States.
This script which was obtained from Goggle on the internet was produced by A & E Television Networks in the United States and edited by Sina Adedipe, who divided the script into paragraphs bringing the last paragraph in the original text to become paragraph four.

such men are a rarity. A great man he was MLK.

A great historian u're. Nice one bout great Martin Luther King.

A Man of Vision Never die.

Martin Luther lives forever.

I think he made Obama President.

The dream he had in the 50s is Obama.

The dream[b](Obama)[/b] has come to pass.