Martin Luther King Junior was born on 15 of January 1929, in Atlanta Georgia. He was the second child of a Baptist minister the reverend Martin Luther King (Senior) and Alberta Williams King a school teacher. His name then being Michael as was his Fathers but later his Father had it changed to Martin. He entered More House college in 1944, in 1953 martin married Coretta Scott on June 18 1953 and together they had four children. At the Crozer religions Seminary in 1955 King received his Doctorate. Shortly after he became a pastor of a Baptist Church Dexter Avenue in Montgomery Alabama.

Martin had always shown great interest in the civil rights movement. It was while he was working as a pastor at the Baptist Church in Dexter Avenue that the famous bus boycott of Montgomery took place. On  December 1st  1955 Rosa Parks then aged 42, refused to obey bus driver James Blakes and give up her seat for a white man. Rosa was not the first black person to refuse to give up their seat for a white person but unlike the previous actions of Civil Disobedience. Rosa Mc Cauley Parks action was to spark the boycott. King and many of his friends helped organize protests against bus segregation. All black people in Montgomery walked to and from work instead of taking the bus. The boycott of all buses went on for over a year. Finally on December 20th 1956 The Supreme Court forced the Montgomery Bus Company to accept intergration. The boycott was at last over, with black and white people sitting where they wanted on buses in Montgomery.

In 1957 King joined the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, (SCLC). This new organisation was committed to nonviolence in the struggle for civil rights. King also travelled the country making speeches about the non-violent civil rights movement inspiring people to become involved. In 1964 THE CIVIL RIGHTS ACT. made racial discrimination in public places illegal. Also in 1964 Martin Luther King became the youngest person to receive the Noble Peace Prize for his work to end racial segregation and discrimination through civil non-violent disobedience. King strongly opposed the Vietnam War as did his great friend J. F Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy. King was a thorn in the side of J. Edgar Hoover head of the Bureau of Investigation. Later becoming the, Federal Bureau of Investigation. (FBI)  On April 4th 1968 when he was staying at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis Tennessee, Martin Luther King was shot and killed while standing on the Motels second floor balcony. The man, who shot and killed him, was James Earl Ray, a known criminal with a long police record.