Martin Luther King Jr. was born in 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia to Reverend Michael King Sr. and Alberta Williams King. He attended Morehouse College and Crozer Theological Seminary, becoming a Baptist minister in 1954. In 1955, Rosa Parks' arrest sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott led by King, thrusting him into the civil rights movement. King advocated for nonviolent protest and gave his iconic "I Have a Dream" speech at the 1963 March on Washington. Tragically, King was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee in 1968 at the age of 39 while supporting a sanitation workers' strike. Today, King remains one of the most celebrated leaders in the fight for racial equality and civil rights in the United States