Martin Luther King, Jr., was born on January 15, 1929 as Michael Luther King, Jr., but later changed his name to Martin. He attended segregated public schools in Georgia, graduating from high school at the age of 15. He received the B. A. degree in 1948 from Morehouse College.

After three years of theological study at Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania where he was elected president of a predominantly White senior class, he was awarded the B.D. in 1951. He enrolled in graduate studies at Boston University, completing his residence for the doctorate in 1953 and receiving the degree in 1955. In Boston he met and married Coretta Scott. Two sons and two daughters were born into the family.

In 1954, Martin Luther King became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. Early in December, 1955, he accepted the leadership of the first great Negro nonviolent demonstration of contemporary times in the United States, the Montgomry bus boycott, which lasted 382 days. On December 21, 1956, after the Supreme Court of the United States had declared unconstitutional the laws requiring segregation on buses, [Blacks] and Whites rode the buses as equals. In 1957 he was elected president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Between 1957 and 1968, King traveled over six million miles and spoke over 2,500 times. He wrote five books as well as numerous articles.

He directed the peaceful march on Washington, D.C., of 250,000 people to whom he delivered his address, “l Have a Dream”, he conferred with President John F. Kennedy and campaigned for President Lyndon B. Johnson; He was named Man of the Year by Time magazine in 1963; and became not only the symbolic leader of American Blacks but also a world figure.

At the age of 35, Martin Luther King, Jr., was the youngest man to have received the Nobel Peace Prize. On the evening of April 4, 1968, while standing on the balcony of his motel room in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was to lead a protest march in sympathy with striking garbage workers of that city, he was assassinated.   
                                                                                                                                                                                                                   Excerpted from www.nobelprize.org