Biography of Martin Luther King Jr.

Biography of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Early life and education

For more details on this topic, see Martin Luther King, Jr. authorship issues.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was born on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia, the middle child of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Sr. and Alberta Williams King.[5] King Jr. had an older sister, Willie Christine King, and a younger brother, Alfred Daniel Williams King.[6]:76 King sang with his church choir at the 1939 Atlanta premiere of the movie Gone with the Wind.[7]

King was originally skeptical of many of Christianity's claims.[8] Most striking, perhaps, was his initial denial of the bodily resurrection of Jesus during Sunday school at the age of thirteen. From this point, he stated, "doubts began to spring forth unrelentingly".[9] However, he later concluded that the Bible has "many profound truths which one cannot escape" and decided to enter the seminary.[8]

Growing up in Atlanta, King attended Booker T. Washington High School. A precocious student, he skipped both the ninth and the twelfth grade and entered Morehouse College at age fifteen without formally graduating from high school.[10] In 1948, he graduated from Morehouse with a Bachelor of Arts degree in sociology, and enrolled in Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania, from which he graduated with a Bachelor of Divinity degree in 1951.[11][12] King married Coretta Scott, on June 18, 1953, on the lawn of her parents' house in her hometown ofHeiberger, Alabama.[13] They became the parents of four children; Yolanda King, Martin Luther King III, Dexter Scott King, and Bernice King.[14]

King became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, when he was twenty-five years old, in 1954.[15] King then began doctoral studies in systematic theology at Boston University and received his Doctor of Philosophy on June 5, 1955, with a dissertation on "A Comparison of the Conceptions of God in the Thinking of Paul Tillich and Henry Nelson Wieman". A 1980s inquiry concluded portions of his dissertation had been plagiarized and he had acted improperly but that his dissertation still "makes an intelligent contribution to scholarship",[16][17][18]

Influences

Thurman

Civil rights leader, theologian, and educator Howard Thurman was an early influence on King. A classmate of King's father at Morehouse College,[19] Thurman mentored the young King and his friends.[20] Thurman's missionary work had taken him abroad where he had met and conferred withMahatma Gandhi.[21] When he was a student at Boston University, King often visited Thurman, who was the dean of Marsh Chapel.[22] Walter Fluker, who has studied Thurman's writings, has stated, "I don't