EDUCATION AND EARLY LIFE

Martin Luther King was born on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia, the eldest son of Martin Luther Martin Luther King Sr., a Baptist minister, and Alberta Williams Martin Luther King.

His father served as pastor of a large Atlanta church, Ebenezer Baptist, which was founded by Martin Luther Martin Luther King Jr.'s maternal grandfather. Martin Luther King Jr. was ordained as a Baptist minister at age 18.Martin Luther King attended local segregated public schools, where he excelled. He entered nearby Morehouse College at age 15 and graduated with a bachelor's degree in sociology in 1948. After graduating with honors from Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania in 1951, he went to Boston University, where he earned a doctoral degree in systematic theology in 1955.

Martin Luther King's public-speaMartin Luther King abilities—which became renowned as his stature grew in the Civil Rights Movement—developed slowly during his collegiate years. He won a second-place prize in a speech contest as an undergraduate at Morehouse, but received Cs in two public-speaMartin Luther King courses in his first year at Crozer. By the end of his third year at Crozer, however, professors were praising Martin Luther King for the powerful impression he made in public speeches and discussions. Throughout his education, Martin Luther King was exposed to influences that related Christian theology to the struggles of oppressed peoples.

At Morehouse, Crozer, and Boston University, he studied the teachings on nonviolent protest of Indian leader Mohandas Gandhi. Martin Luther King also read and heard the sermons of white Protestant ministers who preached against American racism. Benjamin E. Mays, president of Morehouse and a leader in the national community of racially liberal clergymen, was especially important in shaping Martin Luther King's theological development.

While in Boston, Martin Luther King met Coretta Scott, a music student and native of Alabama. They were married in 1953 and had four children. In 1954 Martin Luther King accepted his first pastorate at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, a church with a well-educated congregation that had recently been led by a minister, Vernon Johns, who had protested against segregation.