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Martin Luther King Jr. was born on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia. The city was known as the “gateway to the South.”
When he was grown, he wrote that he came from a family “where love was central and where lovely relationships were ever present.” He could never remember his parents fighting. He grew up around people with deep religious beliefs and a great sense of human dignity. His father was pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church and his mother had been a teacher. Her father had been pastor of Ebenezer before his death. Martin had an older sister, Christine, and a younger brother, A.D.
Martin grew up during the Depression. It was a time when jobs were scarce and many struggled to make a living. His family wasn’t rich, but they were comfortable and had enough to eat. When he was just five years old, he asked his parents why so many people were standing in lines to get food. Later, when he was an adult, he remembered the poverty he had seen.
▲ This is the house where Martin grew up. When he was about six years old, he had his first taste of segregation. Martin often played with a white boy. One day the boy told Martin he could no longer be his friend. The boy’s father had forbidden it because Martin was black. That night, Martin’s parents told him of insults they had experienced. Years later, when Martin’s daughter Yolanda was six, he found himself having the same conversation with her when she wanted to go to a segregated amusement park. Things hadn’t changed much in the South in 25 years.
▲ Martin was a good student. He skipped both the 9th and 12th grades. He graduated from high school at 15 and entered Morehouse College in Atlanta. Like every school he had attended, Morehouse was all black. At Morehouse, he was an ordinary student with a C+ average. But when he became a senior, he buckled down. He decided to enter the ministry and began working with his father at Ebenezer Baptist Church. In 1948, he received a divinity degree at Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania. In 1951, he entered Boston University’s School of Theology to study for his Ph.D. degree. In the King family album above, Martin is seen graduating from Morehouse College.
▲ In this King family portrait, Martin is seated at the far right, next to Christine and A.D. Their parents and maternal grandmother are standing. When Martin was a boy, his mother warned him that people would tell him he was inferior to whites. She told him the truth: “You are as good as anyone.” King’s father taught by example. He never shopped in stores that treated him poorly, he told policemen not to call him “boy,” and he led fights against segregation. Martin had his bitterest experience with segregation at age 15. Riding home on a bus from a speech competition, Martin and his teacher had to give up their seats to white riders. They stood for 90 minutes. King later said, “It was the angriest I have ever been in my life.”
In 1953, King married Coretta Scott, a music student. She wanted to stay in the North, but he felt he could do more good in the South. Instead of joining his father at Ebenezer in Atlanta, King went out on his own. In April of 1954, he became the minister of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery. King, Coretta, and their daughter Yolanda are pictured outside the church. In 1960, he moved his family to Atlanta, where he joined his father as co-pastor of Ebenezer. ▶
“Fortunately I have a most understanding wife who has tried to explain to the children why I have to be absent so much. I think in some way they understand, even though it’s pretty hard on them.”
▲ To draw attention to the terrible conditions in Chicago’s black ghettos, King and his family moved to a slum there in 1966. They joined the Movement to End Slums, helping to repair buildings. King soon saw changes in his children. Living in a slum crushed their spirit.
