Early years and Family

He was born Michael Luther King, Jr. but later had his name changed to Martin Luther King Jnr. He was the second child of Martin Luther King Snr. (1899-1984), a pastor, and Alberta Williams King, a former schoolteacher. Martin Luther King Jr. was born in Atlanta, Georgia, on January 15, 1929. Martin (jnr.) grew up Along with his older sister, Christine King Farris, and younger brother, Alfred Daniel Williams King in the city’s Sweet Auburn neighborhood, which was then home to some of the most prominent and prosperous African Americans in the country. His grandfather began the family's long tenure as pastors of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, serving from 1914 to 1931, his father has served from then until the present, and from 1960 until his death Martin Luther acted as co-pastor.

Martin Luther attended segregated public schools in Georgia, graduating from high school at the age of fifteen; he received the B. A. degree in 1948 from Morehouse College, a distinguished Negro institution of Atlanta from which both his father and grandfather had graduated. After three years of theological study at Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania where he was elected president of a predominantly white senior class, he was awarded the B.D. in 1951. With a fellowship won at Crozer, he enrolled in graduate studies at Boston University, completing his residence for the doctorate in 1953 and receiving the degree in 1955.

In Boston he met and married Coretta Scott, a young woman of uncommon intellectual and artistic attainments. Two sons and two daughters were born into the family. In 1954, Martin Luther King became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. Always a strong worker for civil rights for members of his race, King was, by this time, a member of the executive committee of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the leading organization of its kind in the nation.