Martin Luther King Jr.

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00:00The Nobel Prize. Martin Luther King Jr. was born on January the 15th, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia.

00:22Martin Luther attended segregated public schools in Georgia,

00:26graduating from high school at the age of 15. He received the B.A. degree in 1948 from Morehouse

00:33College, a distinguished Negro institution of Atlanta from which both his father and grandfather

00:40had graduated. After three years of theological study at Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania,

00:48where he was elected president of a predominantly white senior class, he was awarded the B.D. in 1951.

00:56With a fellowship won at Crozer, he enrolled in graduate studies at Boston University,

01:03completing his residence for the doctorate in 1953 and receiving the degree in 1955.

01:10In 1954, Martin Luther King became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama.

01:18Always a strong worker for civil rights for members of his race, King was, by this time,

01:25a member of the Executive Committee of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People,

01:32the leading organization of its kind in the nation. He was ready then, early in December 1955,

01:40to accept the leadership of the first great Negro non-violent demonstration of contemporary times

01:47in the United States, the bus boycott, described by Gunnar Jan in his presentation speech in honor of the laureate.

01:55The boycott lasted 382 days. On December 21st, 1956, after the Supreme Court of the United States

02:05had declared unconstitutional the laws requiring segregation on buses,

02:11Negroes and whites rode the buses as equals.

02:15During these days of boycott, King was arrested, his home was bombed,

02:20he was subjected to personal abuse, but at the same time he emerged as a Negro leader of the first rank.

02:28In 1957, he was elected president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference,

02:33an organization formed to provide new leadership for the now burgeoning civil rights movement.

02:40The ideals for this organization he took from Christianity, its operational techniques from Gandhi.

02:47In the 11-year period between 1957 and 1968, King traveled over 6 million miles

02:56and spoke over 2,500 times, appearing wherever there was injustice, protest, and action.

03:05And meanwhile, he wrote five books as well as numerous articles.

03:10In these years, he led a massive protest in Birmingham, Alabama,

03:15that caught the attention of the entire world, providing what he called a coalition of conscience.

03:21And inspiring his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, a manifesto of the Negro Revolution,

03:28he planned the drives in Alabama for the registration of Negroes as voters.

03:34He directed the peaceful march on Washington, D.C. of 250,000 people,

03:40to whom he delivered his address, I have a dream.

03:43He conferred with President John F. Kennedy and campaigned for President Lyndon B. Johnson.

03:51He was arrested upwards of 20 times and assaulted at least four times.

03:57He was awarded five honorary degrees, was named Man of the Year by Time magazine in 1963,

04:04and became not only the symbolic leader of American blacks, but also a world figure.

04:10At the age of 35, Martin Luther King Jr. was the youngest man to have received the Nobel Peace Prize.

04:17When notified of his selection, he announced that he would turn over the prize money of $54,123

04:26to the furtherance of the Civil Rights Movement.

04:29On the evening of April 4, 1968, while standing on the balcony of his motel room in Memphis, Tennessee,

04:37where he was to lead a protest march in sympathy with striking garbage workers of that city,

04:44he was assassinated.