MARTIN LUTHER KING — a life in dates

January 15, 1929:

King is born in Atlanta in the southern state of Georgia.

June 18, 1953:

He marries Coretta Scott and they go on to have four children.

December 1955

A pastor at the Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, King takes the lead of a year-long boycott against racial segregation on local buses. It results in an end to such segregation and earns him a national profile.

April 1963

Arrested after demonstrations against racial segregation, King writes his famous “Letter From a Birmingham Jail” in which he outlines his non-violent resistance to racism.

August 1963

King pronounces his inspiring “I Have a Dream” speech to about 250,000 people at the “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.”

October 1964

Aged 35, he becomes the youngest Nobel Peace Prize winner at the time for his non-violent resistance.

1966

King moves to the slums of Chicago to extend the civil rights movement into the north of the country.

1967

He denounces the war in Vietnam and expands his campaign against poverty in the United States.

April 4, 1968

King is assassinated at age 39 by James Earl Ray, who shoots King while he is standing on a motel balcony in Memphis, Tennessee. —