Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr. (15 January 1929 – 4 April 1968) was a Baptist minister who led the modern American civil-rights movement from December 1955 until his assassination in Memphis. He directed the 385-day Montgomery bus boycott, co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, led the Birmingham campaign that produced the "Letter from Birmingham Jail," and spoke to more than 200,000 people at the March on Washington, where he delivered "I Have a Dream." His campaigns helped force passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965; he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. In 1968 he was shot at the Lorraine Motel while supporting striking sanitation workers in Memphis.