Today is such a huge day in history!!!
Although it is always celebrated as a national holiday on a Monday, January 15th is Dr. King's actual birthday! Who knew on this day so many years ago that he would change the world?!
January 15, 1929 Martin Luther King, Jr., clergyman, activist and leader of the Civil Rights Movement, was born in Atlanta, Georgia. King entered Morehouse College at 15 and earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in sociology in 1948. He then earned his Bachelor of Divinity degree from Crozer Theological Seminary in 1951 and his Ph.D. from Boston University in 1955. King led the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott and in 1957 helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, serving as its first president. King was the 1957 recipient of the NAACP Spingarn Medal. On August 28, 1963, King led the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech. In 1964, he became the youngest person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his work to end racial segregation and discrimination through civil disobedience and other non-violent means.
King was assassinated April 4, 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee. In 1971, he was posthumously awarded the Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for “Why I Oppose the War in Vietnam.” He was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, by President Jimmy Carter July 11, 1977 and Congressional Gold Medal in 2004. On October 10, 1980, his boyhood home and several nearby buildings were designated the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site. On November 2, 1983, President Ronald Reagan signed a bill creating a federal holiday to honor King and Martin Luther King Jr. Day was officially observed in all 50 states for the first time January 17, 2000.
More than 750 cities in the United States have streets named in his honor. A memorial to King at the National Mall in Washington, D. C. opened October 16, 2011. “The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.” was published in 1998. King’s name is enshrined in the Ring of Genealogy at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit, Michigan.
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