Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: His Life and Times

1929
Martin Luther King, Jr. is born to Rev. and Mrs. Martin Luther King, Sr. (formerly Alberta Christine Williams) on Jan. 15 in Atlanta, Georgia.
1935 – 1944
Dr. King attends the segregated David T. Howard Elementary School in Atlanta, the University Laboratory School, and Booker T. Washington High School.
1947
Dr. King is licensed to preach.
1948
Dr. King is ordained to the Baptist ministry and appointed associate pastor at Ebenezer. He graduates from Morehouse College with a BA degree in Sociology and enters Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania. After hearing Dr. A. J. Muste and Dr. Mordecai W. Johnson preach on the life and teachings of Mahatma Gandhi, he begins to study Gandhi seriously.
1951
Dr. King graduates from Crozer with a Bachelor of Divinity degree. In June Dr. King marries Coretta Scott in Marion, Alabama.
1954
The Supreme Court of the United States rules unanimously in Brown vs. Board of Education that racial segregation in public schools is unconstitutional.
1955
Dr. King earns a Ph.D. degree in Systematic Theology from Boston University. The King's first child, Yolanda Denise, is born.
Mrs. Rosa Parks, a forty-two year old Montgomery seamstress, refuses to relinquish her bus seat to a white man and is arrested, sparking the Montgomery bus boycott. Dr. King is unanimously elected president of the Montgomery Improvement Association.
1956
Dr. King is arrested on a charge of traveling thirty miles per hour in a twenty-five miles per hour zone in Montgomery. He is released. A bomb is thrown onto the porch of Dr. King's Montgomery home. Mrs. King is inside with her baby, but no one is injured.
Dr. King is indicted with other figures in the Montgomery bus boycott on the charge of being party to a conspiracy to hinder and prevent the operation of business without "just or legal cause."
A United States District Court rules that racial segregation on city bus lines is unconstitutional.
Federal injunctions prohibiting segregation on buses are served on state, city and bus company officials in Montgomery, Alabama. In December, Montgomery buses are integrated.
1957
An unexploded bomb is discovered on the front porch of the King's house.
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) is founded.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower federalizes the Arkansas National Guard to escort nine Black students to an all-white high school in Little Rock, Arkansas.
In September, the first Civil Rights Act since Reconstruction is passed by
Congress, creating the Civil Rights Commission and the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice.
The King's second child, Martin Luther III, is born.
1958
Dr. King, along with Roy Wilkins of the NAACP, A. Philip Randolph, and Lester Granger meet with President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Dr. King is arrested on a charge of loitering — later changed to "failure to obey an officer" — in the vicinity of the Montgomery Recorder's Court. He is released on $100.00 bond.
Dr. King is convicted after pleading "Not Guilty" on the charge of failure to obey an officer. Over Dr. King's objection, Montgomery Police Commissioner Clyde C. Sellers, pays the fine.
In Harlem, New York, Dr. King is stabbed in the chest by Mrs. Izola Curry, who is subsequently alleged to be mentally ill.
1959
Dr. and Mrs. King spend a month in India studying Gandhi's techniques of nonviolence.
1960
Students in Greensboro, North Carolina hold the first lunch counter sit-in to desegregate eating facilities.
A warrant is issued for Dr. King's arrest on charges that he had falsified his 1956 and 1958 Alabama state income tax returns. Later an all-white jury acquits him.
At an Atlanta sit-in Dr. King is arrested and jailed on a charge of trespassing. Later the trespassing charges are dropped. All jailed demonstrators are released except Dr. King, who is held on a charge of violating a probated sentence in a traffic arrest case. He is finally released on a $2,000.00 bond.
Dexter Scott, is born to Dr. and Mrs. King.
In May, the first group of Freedom Riders, intent on integrating interstate buses, leaves Washington, D.C. The bus is burned outside of Anniston, Alabama on May 14, and a Birmingham mob beats the Freedom Riders. The Freedom Riders are arrested in Jackson, Mississippi, and spend forty to sixty days in Parchman Penitentiary.
Dr. King visits Albany, Georgia in response to a call from Dr. W. G. Anderson, the leader of the Albany Movement to desegregate public facilities. At a demonstration, he is arrested and charged with obstructing the sidewalk and parading without a permit.
1962
Dr. King is tried and convicted for leading the December march in Albany, Georgia. Dr. King is arrested at an Albany, Georgia city hall prayer vigil and jailed on charges of failure to obey a police officer, obstructing the sidewalk and disorderly conduct.
That fall, James Meredith makes his first attempt to enroll at the University of Mississippi. He is actually enrolled by Supreme Court order and escorted onto the Oxford, Mississippi campus by U.S. Marshals.
1963
The King's fourth child, Bernice Albertine, is born.
Sit-in demonstrations are held in Birmingham, Alabama to protest segregation. Dr. King is arrested during a demonstration.
Dr. King writes the "Letter From A Birmingham Jail" while imprisoned for demonstrating.
Eugene "Bull" Connor, Director of Public Safety of Birmingham, Alabama, orders the use of police dogs and fire hoses against the marching protesters, including young adults and children.
The Supreme Court of the United States rules Birmingham, Alabama's segregation ordinances unconstitutional.
Dr. King's book, Strength To Love, is published.
Governor George C. Wallace tries to stop the court ordered integration of the University of Alabama by "standing in the schoolhouse door" and personally refusing entrance to black students and Justice Department officials. President John F.
Kennedy then federalizes the Alabama National Guard, and Governor Wallace removes himself from blocking the entrance of the Negro students.
Medgar Evers, NAACP leader in Jackson, Mississippi, is assassinated at his home in the early morning darkness.
In August, the March on Washington, the first large integrated protest march, is held in Washington, D.C. Dr. King delivers his "I Have A Dream" speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Afterwards he and other Civil Rights leaders meet with President John F. Kennedy in the White House.
In September, Governor Wallace orders the Alabama state troopers to stop the court ordered integration of Alabama's elementary and high schools until prevented by court injunction. Four young girls are killed in a Birmingham, Alabama church bombing.
In November, President Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas, Texas.
1964
Dr. King joins a demonstration for the integration of public accommodations in St. Augustine, Florida. He is jailed.
Three civil rights workers, James Chaney , who is Black, and Andrew
Goodman and Michael Schwerner, both white, are reported missing after a short trip to Philadelphia, Mississippi. Their bodies are not found until the following year. Neshoba County Sheriff Rainey and his deputy, Cecil Price, are allegedly implicated in the murders.
Dr. King and Rev. Ralph Abernathy visit West Berlin at the invitation of Mayor Willy Brandt.
Dr. King has an audience with Pope Paul VI at the Vatican.
Dr. King receives the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway.
1965
Malcolm X, leader of the Organization of Afro-American Unity and former Black Muslim leader, is murdered in New York City.
More than 3,000 protests marchers leave Selma for a march to Montgomery, Alabama protected by federal troops. They are joined along the way by a total of twenty-five thousand marchers.
Upon reaching the capitol, they hear an address by Dr. King.
Mrs. Viola Liuzzo, wife of a Detroit Teamsters Union business agent, is shot and killed while driving a carload of marchers back to Selma.
In Alabama, SCLC spearheads voter registration campaigns in
December Green, Wilcox and Eutaw counties, and in the cities of Montgomery and Birmingham, Alabama.
The 1965 Voting Rights Act is signed by President Johnson.
In Watts, the black ghetto of Los Angeles, riots leave a total of 16 thirty-five dead Twenty-eight are black.
1966
Dr. King tours Alabama to help elect black candidates.
The Alabama Primary is held, and for the first time since Reconstruction, blacks vote in significant numbers.
An antiwar statement by Dr. King is read at a large Washington rally to protest the war in Vietnam.
Stokely Carmichael and Willie Ricks of the SNCC,  use the slogan
"Black Power" in public for the first time.
James Meredith is shot soon after beginning his 220-mile "March
Against Fear" from Memphis, Tennessee to Jackson, Mississippi.
Dr. King launches a drive to make Chicago an "open city" regarding housing.
Dr. King is stoned in Chicago as he leads a march through crowds of angry whites in southwest Chicago.
SCLC launches a project with the aim of integrating schools in
Grenada, Mississippi.
Fall SCLC initiates the Alabama Citizen Education Project in Wilcox County.
1967
Dr. King writes his book Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? while in Jamaica.
Alabama is ordered to desegregate all public schools.
Dr. King attacks the government's Vietnam policy in a Chicago speech.
A black student is killed in a riot on the campus of all Negro Jackson State College, Jackson, Mississippi.
The Justice Department reports that more than 50 percent of all eligible black voters are registered in Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana and South Carolina.
Forty-three die and 324 are injured in the Detroit riots, the worst of the century.
Black leaders, Martin Luther King, Jr., A. Philip Randolph, Roy
Wilkins and Whitney Young appeal for an end to the riots, "which have proved ineffective and damaging to the civil rights cause and the entire nation."
The Supreme Court upholds the contempt-of-court convictions of
Dr. King and seven other black leaders who led the 1963 marches in Birmingham, Alabama. Dr. King and his aides enter jail to serve four-day sentences.
Dr. King announces the formation of a Poor People's
Campaign, with the aim of representing the problems of poor blacks and whites.
1968
Dr. King's last speech titled "I've Been to the Mountain Top" is delivered at the Memphis Masonic Temple.
Dr. King is assassinated as he stands talking on the balcony of his second-floor room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. He dies in St. Joseph's Hospital from a gunshot wound in the neck.
Dr. King is buried in Atlanta, Georgia.
1986
Following passage of Public Law 98-144, President Ronald
Reagan signs a proclamation declaring the third Monday in
January of each year a public holiday in honor of the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr.
For additional information about Dr. King visit  www.thekingcenter.org