Martin Luther King Jr.

Hello. My name is Martin Luther King Jr., and I want to share my story with you. I was born in a bustling city called Atlanta, Georgia, on January 15, 1929. The world was a very different place back then. I grew up in a loving home on Auburn Avenue with my parents, my older sister Christine, and my younger brother, A.D. My father, Martin Luther King Sr., was the pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church, and from him, I learned about faith and the importance of standing up for others. In our community, I felt safe and loved. But outside of it, the world showed me its unfair side through laws called Jim Crow laws, which separated people based on the color of their skin. There were separate water fountains, separate schools, and separate entrances to buildings labeled “White” and “Colored.”

I remember this unfairness so clearly from one day when I was six years old. My best friend, who was a white boy, and I were inseparable. We played games and shared secrets just like any friends do. But one afternoon, his mother told me that we could no longer play together. When I asked why, she said it was because I was Black and he was white. I was heartbroken and confused. That night, my parents sat me down and explained the painful history of racism and segregation in our country. My mother told me, “You are as good as anyone.” Those words stayed with me forever. That painful moment was not just an ending to a friendship; it was the beginning of my lifelong journey to fight for a world where friendships would never be broken by something as meaningless as skin color.

I always had a deep love for learning and was often lost in books. I worked hard in school, so hard that I skipped two grades and found myself entering Morehouse College in 1944 when I was only fifteen years old. It was at Morehouse, a historically Black college, where I began to truly think about what I wanted to do with my life. Like my father and grandfather before me, I felt a strong calling to become a minister. I realized that the church could be a powerful place to inspire people and lead them in the struggle for justice. I wanted to give people hope and courage through my words.

After Morehouse, I continued my education at Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania, and it was there, around the year 1950, that I discovered the teachings of a remarkable leader from India named Mahatma Gandhi. He had led his country to independence from British rule not with weapons or violence, but with a powerful idea he called nonviolent resistance, or “satyagraha,” which means “truth-force.” I was captivated. Gandhi showed me that you could challenge injustice and hate with love, courage, and peaceful protest. This was a turning point in my life. I finally saw a clear path forward. We could fight for our civil rights without becoming the very thing we were fighting against. We could meet hate with love, and violence with peace.

My journey took a new direction in 1954 when my wonderful wife, Coretta Scott King, and I moved to Montgomery, Alabama. I became the pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, eager to serve my new community. Montgomery was a city deeply divided by segregation, and the city buses were a daily reminder of that painful reality. Black passengers were forced to pay at the front, get off, and re-enter through the back door, and they had to give up their seats to white passengers if the bus became full. Then, on December 1, 1955, a seamstress named Rosa Parks made a courageous choice. After a long day of work, she refused to give up her seat to a white man. She was arrested for her quiet act of defiance, and her bravery sparked a movement.

The Black community of Montgomery was ready to take a stand. They decided to organize a boycott of the city buses, refusing to ride until the laws were changed. The leaders of the community asked me, a young pastor of only 26, to lead the protest as the president of the Montgomery Improvement Association. I accepted the role, knowing it would be filled with danger and difficulty. For 381 long days, my community showed incredible strength and unity. People walked miles to work, organized carpools, and supported one another. Our home was even bombed in January of 1956, but thankfully Coretta and our baby daughter were unharmed. We never gave up, and we never fought back with violence. Finally, on November 13, 1956, our peaceful protest was rewarded. The United States Supreme Court ruled that segregation on public buses was unconstitutional. We had won. The Montgomery Bus Boycott proved to the entire world that nonviolent protest was a powerful force for change.

After our victory in Montgomery, the fight for civil rights grew stronger and spread across the nation. In 1957, I helped form the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, or SCLC, an organization dedicated to using nonviolent strategies to achieve equality. We organized sit-ins at segregated lunch counters, marches to demand voting rights, and peaceful demonstrations in some of the most resistant cities in the South. The path was never easy. We were met with angry mobs, police dogs, and high-pressure fire hoses. I was arrested and put in jail numerous times for simply demanding the rights that all Americans were promised. During one such time, in 1963, I wrote my “Letter from Birmingham Jail” to explain why we could not wait for justice to be given to us; we had to demand it.

Our movement reached its most memorable moment on August 28, 1963, with the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. More than 250,000 people—Black and white, young and old—gathered together in our nation's capital. It was a beautiful, powerful display of unity. Standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, I shared my vision for our country. I spoke of a future where my four little children would one day live in a nation where they would “not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” I had a dream of a truly united America. The world heard our call, and in 1964, the Civil Rights Act was signed into law, making segregation in public places illegal. That same year, I was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, an honor that I accepted on behalf of every person fighting peacefully for justice.

Even after these victories, I knew my work was not done. In my final years, I broadened my focus to include economic justice for all people. I believed that true freedom meant not only having the right to sit at a lunch counter but also having the money to buy a meal. I launched the Poor People's Campaign to fight against poverty for all Americans, regardless of their race. My life's mission was to overcome what I called the “three giant evils” of racism, poverty, and war. But my time to do this work was cut short. On April 4, 1968, while I was in Memphis, Tennessee, to support sanitation workers who were on strike for better pay and safer working conditions, my life was ended by an assassin. It was a day of great sadness for my family and for people all over the world who believed in our cause.

But a dream can never be silenced. My story did not end on that day in Memphis. The dream of equality and justice lives on in the hearts of people everywhere. My life is a testament to the idea that one person, armed with love and a belief in what is right, can change the world. The work of creating a better, fairer, and more peaceful world is now in your hands. Every time you stand up for someone who is being treated unfairly, every time you choose kindness over hate, and every time you work to bring people together, you are helping to carry the dream forward.