MLK

On January 15, 1929, eighty-eight years ago today, Michael King was born in Atlanta, Georgia.
 

In 1934, his father, also named Michael King, attended the Fifth Baptist World Alliance Congress in Berlin, Germany.  As a result, he changed his name and his son's name to Martin Luther King, in honor of the German reformer, Martin Luther.
 

In 1939, Martin Luther King, Jr. sang with his church choir at the Atlanta premier of the now classic film, Gone With the Wind, which won eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture.
 

In 1944, Martin Luther King, Jr., at age 15, passed the entrance exam for Morehouse College, an all male, historically black institution of higher learning, located in Atlanta, and entered it as a freshman that fall.
 

In 1949, Martin Luther King, Jr. was a student at the Crozer Theological Seminary in Upland, Pennsylvania.  He graduated in 1951 with a Bachelor of Divinity degree.
 

In 1954, Martin Luther King, Jr. was named as pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama.  He remained in that position until 1960.
 

In 1959, Martin Luther King, Jr. published a book of some of his sermons, called "The Measure of a Man."  One reviewer used the phrase, "eloquent and passionate, reasoned and sensitive" to describe it.
 

In 1964, Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered a lecture at The New School in New York City entitled, "The Summer of Our Discontent," in which he talked about "economic hardship in black communities, the resistance among political leaders to civil rights legislation, and inequality in public schools."
 

In 1969, when he would have been just forty-years-old, Martin Luther King, Jr. was dead, the victim of an assassin in Memphis, Tennessee the year before.  It is ironic to note that both he and Mahatma Gandhi, who according to King served as "the guiding light of our technique of non-violent social change," were victims of violent deaths.