what would be Martin Luther King Jr.'s 98th Birthday Countdown

Martin Luther King Jr. Timeline

About Martin Luther King Jr.

The leader of the American civil rights movement, King preached nonviolent resistance from the Montgomery bus boycott to the March on Washington, where he delivered the 'I Have a Dream' speech. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.

The 26-year-old they turned to

King skipped two grades, entered Morehouse College at 15, and took his first pastorate at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery. Barely a year later, after Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat in December 1955, local leaders elected the 26-year-old newcomer to lead the boycott - partly because he was new in town and had few enemies. He recalled it happened so quickly he did not even have time to think it through. The boycott lasted 381 days and ended bus segregation.

A dream, a quarter-million witnesses

On August 28, 1963, King stood at the Lincoln Memorial before some 250,000 people at the March on Washington and delivered the 'I Have a Dream' speech, one of the most famous addresses in American history. The next year Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and that October the Nobel Committee named him the Nobel Peace Prize laureate - at 35, the youngest recipient up to that time.

The prize money went straight back

King gave away his entire Nobel Prize award of $54,123, splitting it among civil rights organizations including the SCLC, CORE, and the NAACP. His legacy is carried on by The King Center in Atlanta, founded by Coretta Scott King in 1968, and by the Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford. Since 1994, MLK Day has been a national day of service - Americans honor him each January not with a day off, but a day on.

Quick facts

• Born January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia
• Skipped two grades and entered Morehouse College at 15
• Elected to lead the Montgomery bus boycott at 26, barely a year into his first pastorate
• Delivered 'I Have a Dream' to some 250,000 people at the 1963 March on Washington
• At 35, the youngest Nobel Peace Prize laureate at the time - and gave the $54,123 prize to the movement
• MLK Day, the third Monday of January, is observed as a national day of service

His words, in print

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