Life,+Assassination,+and+Legacy+of+MLK+Jr.+1968


 * Martin Luther King Jr. **

**  On April 4, 1968, he was standing on the balcony of his hotel room in Memphis, Tennessee where he was killed by a single shot which struck his face and neck. He had gone to Tennessee to lead a peaceful march in support of striking sanitation workers. James Earl Ray was the man who shot King. A month passed before Ray had been located and then on June 1st, the Royal Canadian Mounted police found a possible photographic match between Ray and a George Raymon Sneyd’s Canadian passport. A week later he was arrested. He pleaded guilty to avoid a death penalty and was sentenced to 99 years in prison. [|(2)] ** ** We now celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. day every year on the date of his birthday, January 15. **
 *  Martin Luther King Jr. was born on January 15, 1929. He attended segregated schools in Georgia and graduated from high school at age fifteen. He attended Morehouse College, a black institution in Atlanta where both his father and grandfather went. While there, he received his B.A. in 1948. He then studied for three years at Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania where he was elected the president of his predominantly white senior class. He was awarded the B.D. in 1951. He then enrolled at Boston University for graduate studies where he completed his residence for his doctorate in 1953 and received the degree in 1955. **
 *  In 1954 he became the pastor Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. He was a member of the executive committee of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. In December 1955, he accepted the leadership of the bus boycott. Throughout the boycott, he was arrested, his house was bombed, and he was subjected to personal abuse. **
 *  At age thirty five, he won the Nobel Peace Prize, making him the youngest man to have ever received it. He took the money that he won from the prize, which was $54,123, and used it for the civil rights movement. [|(1)] **