Martin Luther King Jr. skipped two grades in high school and started college at age 15, earning degrees from Morehouse College and Boston University. His father was a minister who inspired his career path. In 1953 he married Coretta Scott and had four children. MLK protested segregation and racism against black people. On April 4, 1968, at age 39, he was assassinated by James Earl Ray in Memphis, Tennessee while working to end poverty and oppose the Vietnam War.