Martin Luther King, Jr. was born on January 15, 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia. He followed his father’s footsteps, Martin Luther King, Senior, and became a Baptist minister and civil-rights activist. He also had a seismic impact on the race relations in the United States, beginning in the mid-1950’s.
Years later, in 1955, there was a law that colored people had to sit in the back of the bus and the whites had to sit in the front. Well, that law was broken by a colored woman named Rosa Parks. She just got off of work and was too tired to stand in the back of the bus where she belonged. So she trespassed the law and sat in the “White Only” section. She was told to go to the back and refused. She was arrested.
Martin Luther heard about this situation and thought that this was not fair. So on August 28, 1963, he led the biggest march of all. He led more than 200,000 people-the March of Washington. This was in Washington D.C. on the Lincoln Memorial. In his speech he said, “I have a dream.” His dream: “I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
In 1964, he was awarded with the Nobel Prize, which is one of the greatest prize any man can win.
In 1968, Martin Luther King ,Jr., was assassinated by a white man named James Earl Ray (40 year-old)King was standing in a second-floor balcony in a motel called Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn. (where Ray was), and shot