King, Martin Luther, Jr (1929–1968)

US civil-rights leader Martin Luther King. An advocate of nonviolent protest, King organized many campaigns. In 1963 he led 200,000 protesters on a march to Washington, DC, and in 1965 he and several hundred marchers attempted to walk from Salem to Montgomery in Alabama. The latter march prompted the passing of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, which ended all attempts to restrict the right of black people to vote.

Martin Luther King at the march on Washington, DC, USA, 28 August 1963, where over 200,000 people gathered peacefully to demand equal rights and justice for all citizens. King made his famous ‘I have a dream’ speech here, in which he voiced his faith and hope in a fully equal society.

US civil-rights campaigner, black leader, and Baptist minister. He first came to national attention as leader of the Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott of 1955–56, and was one of the organizers of the march of 200,000 people on Washington, DC in 1963 to demand racial equality, during which he delivered his famous ‘I have a dream’ speech. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1964 for his work as a civil-rights leader and an advocate of nonviolence. He was assassinated on 4 April 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee.

In 1957 King founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, a civil-rights organization. A charismatic and moving speaker, he was the leading figure in the campaign for integration and equal rights for black Americans in the late 1950s and early 1960s. In the mid-1960s his moderate approach was criticized by black militants. He was the target of intensive investigation by the federal authorities, chiefly the FBI under J Edgar Hoover. King's nonviolent campaign to end segregation drew national attention in 1963, when police turned dogs and fire hoses on demonstrators, many of whom were children, in Birmingham, Alabama. King was jailed along with large numbers of his supporters. His ‘Letter from the Birmingham Jail’ eloquently expressed his philosophy of nonviolent direct action.

By the mid-1960s, King's actions and those of civil-rights activists across the nation had led to significant achievements in equal rights, notably the Civil Rights Act 1964 and the Voting Rights Act 1965. In the late 1960s King turned his attention to promoting economic opportunities for minorities and the disadvantaged, and to protesting against the Vietnam War.

In June 1999, New Hampshire became the last US state to approve a public holiday named for Martin Luther King. The state had a Civil Rights Day from 1991, but the name was changed to Martin Luther King Jr Civil Rights Day when New Hampshire's first woman governor, Jeanne Shaheen, signed the bill. The day was first observed on 17 January 2000.

The son of a Baptist minister, King was born in Atlanta, Georgia, educated at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania, and Boston University, and ordained to the ministry in Atlanta in 1947. He became a pastor in Montgomery, but moved back to his father's church in Atlanta in 1960. He wrote Stride Toward Freedom: the Montgomery Story (1958), Why We Can't Wait (1964), and Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community (1967).

James Earl Ray (1928–98) pleaded guilty to and was convicted of King's assassination, but over the years many people, including King's family, believed it was a conspiracy. A civil lawsuit brought by King's family in 1999 found that the assassination was the work of mobsters and ‘several government agencies’, but an 18-month federal investigation, concluded in 2000, found no solid evidence.

King's birthday (15 January) is observed on the third Monday in January as a national public holiday in the USA.