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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.”
He later 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. 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 many people were without jobs. They had a hard time making a living. His family wasn’t rich. But they were comfortable and had enough to eat. When he was five years old, he asked his parents why so many people were standing in lines to get food. Later, as an adult, he remembered the poverty he had seen.
▲ This is the house where Martin grew up. At about age six, he had his first taste of segregation. Martin often played with a white boy. One day the boy told Martin they couldn’t be friends anymore. The boy’s father said it was because Martin was black. That night, Martin’s parents told him about the insults they had suffered. Years later, when Martin’s daughter Yolanda was six, he found himself having the same talk with her. She wanted to go to an amusement park that did not let in blacks. Things hadn’t changed much in the South in 25 years.
▲ Martin was a good student. He skipped the 9th and 12th grades. He graduated from high school at 15. Then he went to Morehouse College in Atlanta. Morehouse was all black, like every school he had attended. He was an ordinary student there, with a C+ average. But when he became a senior, he got serious. He decided to enter the ministry and began working with his father at Ebenezer Baptist Church. In 1948, he earned a divinity degree at Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania. In 1951, he went to 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 picture, Martin is seated at the far right, next to Christine and A.D. Their parents and grandmother are standing. When Martin was a boy, his mother warned him that people would tell him he was not as good as 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 badly. He told policemen not to call him “boy.” He led fights against segregation. Martin’s hardest experience with segregation took place at age 15. Riding home on a bus from a speech competition, Martin and his teacher had to give their seats to white riders. They stood for 90 minutes. King later said, “It was the angriest I have ever been in my life.”
King married Coretta Scott in 1953. She was a music student. Coretta 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. Martin, Coretta, and little Yolanda are pictured outside the church. In 1960, he moved his family to Atlanta. Then 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.”
▲ King wanted to draw attention to how bad Chicago’s black ghettos were. So he and his family moved to a slum there in 1966. They joined the Movement to End Slums. They helped to repair buildings. Soon, King saw his children changing. Living in a slum made them sad.
