Martin Luther King Jr. was born in the late 1920s into a loving family in Georgia, with his father being a minister. He showed a strong determination for justice from a young age. He entered Morehouse College at age 15 and graduated at 19, then continued his education at Crozer Seminary and Boston University, where he was influenced by thinkers like Gandhi and developed his philosophy of nonviolent resistance. After earning his doctorate, he and his wife returned to the South, where he became a pastor in Montgomery and helped organize the local NAACP chapter and bus boycott that began with Rosa Parks, marking the beginning of his leadership of the civil rights movement.