Especially through his formal education, King began to marginalize himself among his peers and society. Aside from the obvious marginality of being Black in America in the 1950's and 1960's, King pushed himself further to edge of American society through his intellect and education.

    King skipped both the ninth and twelfth grades and entered Morehouse College in Atlanta at the age of 15. His sharp intelligence and maturity placed him at the forefront of his peers, forcing him to learn how to deal constantly with "being on stage" and being in the public eye. His favorite and chief extracurricular passion was the debate team, an activity that measurably furthered his innate rhetorical skills. In high school, he won the Elks annual oratorical prize for his presentation on "The Negro and the Constitution."

    At Morehouse, King was determined to be a physician. Soon, however, he learned he was relatively lacking in the logical/mathematical intelligence and was not scientifically gifted. Sensing a future of professional social prominence, King took aim at studying law. Soon, however, he recognized his love for people, his proclivity for understanding people in social systems, and his incessant analysis of how people reacted in different situations. He decided to major in sociology.

    His junior year he met George Kelsey and Benjamin Mays, two professors that challenged the young King to think seriously about the ministry. From them, and from his reverend father, King developed his deep Christian concern for the brotherhood of man and his abiding faith in the fundamental decency of the human race. Studying religion at Boston University, King magnified his intense intrapersonal reflection on his world view and on his expectations of himself, of his country, and of the world. Here, too, is where he developed his view on education. He said "I too often find that most college men have a misconception of the purpose of education - the tools with which to exploit the trusting masses for its own material security" and that the others "wanted a bachelor's degree to launch them to prestige and privilege." King believed the function of education was to "teach one to think intensively and to think critically." He continued to say that "the most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reason, but with no morals." Thus, through his subsequent intense study of people and religion at Morehouse College, and later at Boston University, Martin Luther King, Jr., perfected his uniquely powerful interpersonal and verbal skills that would catapult him to the forefront of arguably the most important socio-political movement in twentieth-century America.

Adulthood --

In 1954, Martin Luther King accepted the pastorale of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. Always a strong worker for civil rights for members of his race, King was, by this time, a member of the executive committee of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the leading organization of its kind in the nation. He was ready, then, early in December, 1955, to accept the leadership of the first great Negro nonviolent demonstration of contemporary times in the United States, the bus boycott described by Gunnar Jahn in his presentation speech in honor of the laureate. The boycott lasted 382 days. On December 21, 1956, after the Supreme Court of the United States had declared unconstitutional the laws requiring segregation on buses, Negroes and whites rode the buses as equals. During these days of boycott, King was arrested, his home was bombed, he was subjected to personal abuse, but at the same time he emerged as a Negro leader of the first rank.

In 1957 he was elected president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization formed to provide new leadership for the now burgeoning civil rights movement. The ideals for this organization he took from Christianity; its operational techniques from Gandhi. In the eleven-year period between 1957 and 1968, King traveled over six million miles and spoke over twenty-five hundred times, appearing wherever there was injustice, protest, and action; and meanwhile he wrote five books as well as numerous articles. In these years, he led a massive protest in Birmingham, Alabama, that caught the attention of the entire world, providing what he called a coalition of conscience. and inspiring his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail", a manifesto of the Negro revolution; he planned the drives in Alabama for the registration of Negroes as voters; he directed the peaceful march on Washington, D.C., of 250,000 people to whom he delivered his address, "l Have a Dream", he conferred with President John F. Kennedy and campaigned for President Lyndon B. Johnson; he was arrested upwards of twenty times and assaulted at least four times; he was awarded five honorary degrees; was named Man of the Year by Time magazine in 1963; and became not only the symbolic leader of American blacks but also a world figure.

At the age of thirty-five, Martin Luther King, Jr., was the youngest man to have received the Nobel Peace Prize. When notified of his selection, he announced that he would turn over the prize money of $54,123 to the furtherance of the civil rights movement.
 

Impact on society --

    Martin Luther King, Jr. came of age during a time when Jim Crow laws reigned supreme, a time when “separate but equal” was the accepted doctrine (Cornell University Law), a time when things were always separate but never equal for blacks and whites.  This was a time when blacks were not permitted to use the same stores as whites, to stay in the same hotels, or to attend the same schools as whites.  Oppression was practiced throughout America.  It was during this time that the winds of change started to blow. 

    King, one of many Civil Rights leaders in the United States, rose to prominence due to his exceptional leadership and oratory skills.  It is true that the Civil Rights Movement would have occurred with or without Martin Luther King, Jr., but it is also true that without King, the Civil Rights Movement would not have had the same impact on society.   It has been said that Martin Luther King, Jr. did not make the Civil Rights Movement, but the Civil Rights Movement made Martin Luther King, Jr. (Dyson 2000).  The events that occurred during the 50’s and 60’s gave King the arena in which to shine.  Author Michael Eric Dyson said, “Martin Luther King, Jr., is the greatest American in our history because in his life the contradictory meanings of American democracy found a perfect and healing embodiment.  King is the great thesaurus of American identity…King’s genius was the willingness to risk everything he was – a preacher, a leader, a husband, a father, a son, a brother, a black man – to make America all that it could become...He freed the American soul to love its black self and, hence, to love itself wholly and universally.  He embraced the best of America and made it better.” (Dyson 2000, 306).

Martin Luther King may have been assassinated but he will always live on in all our hearts and everyone will know what he had done. 

 Biographical Highlights
I have a dream speech
Nobel Prize
  MLK Pop Quiz
 The King Center