How well do you know Martin Luther King Jr

Martin Luther King Jr.: A Life of Civil Rights and Activism

• Martin Luther King Jr. was an American Baptist minister and civil rights leader who advanced civil rights for people of color in the United States through nonviolence and civil disobedience.

• King led targeted, nonviolent resistance against Jim Crow laws and other forms of discrimination in the United States, and participated in and led marches for the right to vote, desegregation, labor rights, and other civil rights.

• He was the first president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and helped organize some of the nonviolent 1963 protests in Birmingham, Alabama.

• King was one of the leaders of the 1963 March on Washington, where he delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

• The civil rights movement achieved pivotal legislative gains in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968.

• King was jailed several times, and was investigated by the FBI for possible communist ties, spied on his personal life, and secretly recorded him.

• On October 14, 1964, King won the Nobel Peace Prize for combating racial inequality through nonviolent resistance.

• In his final years, he expanded his focus to include opposition towards poverty, capitalism, and the Vietnam War.

• King was planning a national occupation of Washington, D.C., to be called the Poor People's Campaign, when he was assassinated on April 4 in Memphis, Tennessee.

• King was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 2003.

• Martin Luther King Jr. Day was established as a holiday in cities and states throughout the United States beginning in 1971; the federal holiday was first observed in 1986.

• The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., was dedicated in 2011.Martin Luther King Jr.'s Education, Marriage, and Activism

• King worked on his family's farm and earned money for his college education at Morehouse College by working in tobacco fields.

• At Morehouse College, King played freshman football and studied under Baptist minister Benjamin Mays, who became his "spiritual mentor."

• King enrolled in Crozer Theological Seminary, where he became known as one of the "Sons of Calvary" and was elected president of the student body.

• While at Crozer, King became romantically involved with a white woman but broke off the relationship due to concerns about potential animosity towards an interracial marriage.

• King received his Ph.D. in systematic theology from Boston University, where he worked as an assistant minister at Twelfth Baptist Church.

• In 1955, King was called as pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama.

• King became a national figure and the best-known spokesman of the civil rights movement after leading the Montgomery bus boycott, which lasted for 385 days.

• King founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957 and led the organization until his death.

• King survived a knife attack in 1958 from a mentally ill black woman who believed he was conspiring against her with communists.

• King led marches and protests for black rights and voting rights, which led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

• King believed in nonviolent protest and strategically chose methods and places for protests, often resulting in dramatic stand-offs with segregationist authorities.

• King participated in the Atlanta sit-ins in 1960 and was among the many arrested that day.Key Moments of Martin Luther King Jr.'s Civil Rights Career

• King was sentenced to four months of hard labor after being arrested for a sit-in at an Atlanta department store in 1960.

• Both Presidential candidates, Nixon and Kennedy, were asked to weigh in on King's sentence, with Kennedy offering to help and Nixon declining to make a statement.

• The Albany Movement was a desegregation coalition formed in Albany, Georgia, in November 1961, which King and the SCLC became involved in later that year.

• In April 1963, the SCLC began a campaign against racial segregation and economic injustice in Birmingham, Alabama, which used nonviolent but confrontational tactics.

• During the protests, the Birmingham Police Department used high-pressure water jets and police dogs against protesters, including children.

• King was arrested and jailed early in the campaign in Birmingham, and from his cell he composed the now-famous "Letter from Birmingham Jail".

• King, representing the SCLC, was among the leaders of the "Big Six" civil rights organizations who were instrumental in the organization of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, which took place on August 28, 1963.

• In March 1964, King and the SCLC joined forces with Robert Hayling's then-controversial movement in St. Augustine, Florida.

• In November 1964, King supported a labor strike led by several hundred workers at the Scripto factory in Atlanta, just a few blocks from Ebenezer Baptist.

• In December 1964, King and the SCLC joined forces with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in Selma, Alabama, where the SNCC had been working on voter registration for several months.

• During the 1965 march to Montgomery, Alabama, violence by state police and others against the peaceful marchers resulted in much publicity, which made racism in Alabama visible nationwide.

• The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on August 6, 1965, which aimed to overcome legal barriers at the state and local levels that prevented African Americans from exercising their right to vote.Martin Luther King Jr.'s Activism and Assassination

• Bloody Sunday on March 7, 1965, was a turning point in King's nonviolent strategy to gain public support for the civil rights movement.

• King met with officials in the Johnson Administration on March 5, 1965, to request an injunction against any prosecution of the demonstrators.

• King organized a march for March 9, 1965, but it was blocked by a court order, and he turned the marchers around to avoid violating the order.

• The march finally took place on March 25, 1965, and King delivered a speech on the steps of the state capitol known as "How Long, Not Long".

• In 1966, King took the civil rights movement to the North, starting with Chicago, where he and Ralph Abernathy moved into a building in the slums of North Lawndale on Chicago's West Side.

• King organized the Chicago Freedom Movement, which uncovered discriminatory processing of housing requests by couples through white couple/black couple tests.

• King opposed the Vietnam War and delivered a speech titled "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence" on April 4, 1967, at the New York City Riverside Church.

• King's opposition to the war cost him significant support among his white allies, including President Johnson, Billy Graham, union leaders, and powerful publishers.

• In 1968, King and the SCLC organized the "Poor People's Campaign" to address issues of economic justice.

• On April 3, 1968, King delivered his "I've Been to the Mountaintop" speech at Mason Temple in Memphis, where he was supporting the black sanitary public works employees' strike.

• King was assassinated on April 4, 1968, by James Earl Ray, leading to a nationwide wave of race riots and the settlement of the Memphis strike.