Martin Luther King, Jr. was born on Tuesday, January 15, 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia.  He was the first son and second child born to the Reverend Martin Luther King, Sr., and Alberta Williams King. His siblings were Christine King and Alfred Daniel Williams King.
    Martin's education was very fascinating.   He was a very bright young man and was able skip both the 9th and 12th grades. He attended the Atlanta University Laboratory School and Booker T. Washington High School.  His high score on the college entrance examinations allowed him to advanced to Morehouse College without completing his senior year of high school.  At the very young age of fifteen, Martin entered Morehouse College.  He received his PH.D. in June of 1955.
    Following the footsteps of his father, Martin entered the Christian ministry and was ordained at the age of nineteen at Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta, Georgia.  In 1954 he became pastor of Dexter Avenue.  He resigned in 1959 to be director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
    He married Coretta Scott on June 18, 1953. They had four children together.  Yolanda Denise, their first child, was born on November 17, 1955.  Martin Luther III was born October 23, 1957.  Dexter Scott arrived on January 30, 1961.  Last but not least, Bernice Albertine entered this world on March 28, 1963.
    Dr. King was a monumental Civil Rights leader.  He was arrested thirty times for his patirotism and received several hundred awards for leading the Civil Rights Movement.  Here is a list of some of those awards:
 

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I Have a Dream

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in
history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the
history of our nation.

Fivescore years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic
shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation.
This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope
to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames
of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the
long night of their captivity.

But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free; one
hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by
the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination;
one hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of
poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity; one
hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners
of American society and finds himself in exile in his own land.

So we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.
In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check.
When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent
words of our Constitution and the Declaration of Independence,
they were signing a promissory note to which every American was
to fall heir. This note was the promise that all men, yes, black men
as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights
of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory
note in so far as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of
honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro
people a bad check ; a check which has come back marked
"insufficient funds." We refuse to believe that there are insufficient
funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation.

And so we've come to this hallowed spot to remind America of
the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury
of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now
is the time to make real the promises of democracy; now is the
time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to
the sunlit path of racial justice; now is the time to lift our nation
from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of
brotherhood; now is the time to make justice a reality for all
God's children. It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the
urgency of the movement. This sweltering summer of the Negro's
legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn
of freedom and equality.

Nineteen sixty-three is not and end, but a beginning. And those
who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be
content, will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business
as usual.

There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro
is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue
to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice
emerges.

But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the
warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process
of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds.

Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the
cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on
the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative
protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must
rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.

The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community
must not lead us to distrust of all white people, for many of our white
brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to
realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny and they have come
to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.
This offense we share mounted to storm the battlements of injustice
must be carried forth by a biracial army. We cannot walk alone.

And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always
march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking
the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?: We can never
be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable
horrors of police brutality.
 
  We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with fatigue
of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the
hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro's
basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one.

We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of
their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating
"for whites only." We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in
Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has
nothing for which to vote.  No, we are not satisfied, and we will not
be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness
like a mighty stream.

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of excessive
trials and tribulation.  Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail
cells.  Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom
left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the
winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering.
Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.

Go back to Mississippi; go back to Alabama; go back to Louisiana; go
back to the slums and ghettos of the northern cities, knowing that
somehow this situation can, and will be changed. Let us not wallow in
the valley of despair.

So I say to you, my friends, that even though we must face the difficulties
of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted
in the American dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the
true meaning of its creed - we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all
men are created equal.

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, sons of former
slaves and sons of former slave-owners will be able to sit down together
at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day, even the state of Mississippi, a state
sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression,
will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream my four little children will one day live in a nation where
they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their
character. I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and
mountain shall be made low, the rough places shall be made plain, and the
crooked places shall be made straight and the glory of the Lord will be
revealed and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with.

With this faith we will be able to hear out of the mountain of despair a stone
of hope.  With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of
our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.

With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to go to
jail together, knowing that we will be free one day. This will be the day when
all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning-"my country 'tis
of thee; sweet land of liberty; of thee I sing; land where my fathers died, land
of the pilgrim's pride; from every mountain side, let freedom ring"-and if America
is to be a great nation, this must become true.

Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.

Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.

Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.

But not only that.

Let freedom ring from the Stone Mountain of Georgia.

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi, from every
mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village
and hamlet, from every state and city, we will be able to speed up that day
when all of God's children - black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles,
Catholics and Protestants - will be able to join hands and to sing in the words
of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last, free at last; thank God Almighty,
we are free at last."
 
 

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The Voice of Dr. King
 

I Have a Dream, clip 1
I Have a Dream, clip 2
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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