When King did lead

Friday, Jan. 7, 2005 | 3:34 a.m.

WEEKEND EDITION

January 8 - 9, 2005

Martin Luther King Jr., the grandson and son of preachers, graduated from Morehouse College in 1948, completed his theological studies three years later and received his doctorate in 1955 at Boston University, where he met and married Coretta Scott. They had four children.

In 1955, when he was a member of the executive committee of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, King became spiritual leader of the Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott that began when seamstress Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white rider on Dec. 1.

The boycott ended on Dec. 21, 1956, when the U.S. Supreme Court declared unconstitutional laws requiring segregation on buses. During the boycott, King was assaulted and arrested and his home was bombed, yet he urged his followers to continue to practice nonviolent means of protest.

In 1957 King became president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and, between then and 1968, he gave 2,500 speeches and wrote five books.

King, Time magazine's 1963 man of the year, led several protest marches, including the 250,000-person march on Washington, D.C., where he gave his "I Have a Dream" speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Aug. 28, 1963.

In 1964 King, at age 35, became the youngest man to earn the Nobel Peace Prize. Four years later, while in Memphis to lead a protest march supporting the city's striking garbage workers, King was shot dead while standing on the balcony of his motel room.