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On January 15, 1929, King was born on January 15, 1929,in Atlanta,Georgia,to the Reverend Martin Luther King, Sr. (1899–1984) and Alberta Williams King (1904–1974). King's legal name at birth was Michael King Jr, and his father was also born Michael King, but the elder King changed his and his son's names.The elder King would later state that "Michael" was a mistake by the attending physician to his son's birth,and the younger King's birth certificate was altered to read "Martin Luther King Jr."in 1957.King's parents were both African-American, and he also had Irish ancestry through his paternal great-grandfather King received a doctorate degree in theology and in 1955 helped organized the first major protest of the African-American civil rights movement: the successful Montgomery Bus Boycott. Influenced by Mohandas Gandhi, he advocated civil disobedience and nonviolent resistance to segregation in the South. The peaceful protests he led throughout the American South were often met with violence, but King and his followers persisted, and the movement gained momentum.

A powerful orator, King appealed to Christian and American ideals and won growing support from the federal government and Northern whites. In 1963, Bayard Rustin and A. Philip Randolph led the massive March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom; the event’s grand finale was King’s famous “I Have a Dream” address. Two hundred and fifty thousand people gathered outside the Lincoln Memorial to hear the stirring speech. In 1964, the civil rights movement achieved two of its greatest successes: the ratification of the 24th Amendment, which abolished the poll tax, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibited racial discrimination in employment and education and outlawed racial segregation in public facilities. Later that year, King became the youngest person to win the Nobel Peace Prize. In the late 1960s, King openly criticized U.S. involvement in Vietnam and turned his efforts to winning economic rights for poor Americans. He was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968.