| The chronology of the life of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. | |
| 1929 | January 15 Martin Luther King, Jr. is born to Rev. and Mrs. Martin Luther King, Sr. (former Alberta Christine Williams) in Atlanta, Georgia. |
| 1935-1944 | Dr. King attends David T. Howard Elementary School, Atlanta University Laboratory School, and Booker T. Washington High School. He passes the entrance examination to Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia without graduating from high school. |
| 1947 | Dr. King is licensed to preach. |
| 1948 | February 25 Dr. King is ordained to the Baptist ministry and appointed associate pastor at Ebenezer. June 8 Dr. King graduates from Morehouse College with a BA degree in Sociology. September: Dr. King enters Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania. After hearing Dr. A. J. Muste and Dr. Mordecai W.Johnson preach on the life and teachings of Mahatma Gandhi, he begins to study Gandhi seriously. |
| 1951 | May 6-8 Dr. King graduates from Crozer with a Bachelor of Divinity degree. |
| 1953 | June 18 Dr. King marries Coretta Scott in Marion, Alabama. |
| 1954 | May 17 The Supreme Court of the United States rules unanimously in Brown vs. Board of Education that racial segregation in public schools is unconstitutional. October 31 Rev. Martin Luther King, Sr. appoints Dr. King as the twentieth pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. |
| 1955 | June 5 Dr. King receives a Ph.D. degree in Systematic Theology from Boston University. November 17 The King's first child, Yolanda Denise, is born in Montgomery, Alabama. December 1 Mrs. Rosa Parks, a forty-two year old Montgomery seamstress, refuses to relinquish her bus seat to a white man and is arrested. December 5 The first day of the Montgomery bus boycott and the trial date of Mrs. Parks. A meeting of movement leaders is held. Dr. King is unanimously elected president of the Montgomery Improvement Association. December 10 The Montgomery Bus Company suspends service in black neighborhoods |
| 1956 | January 26 Dr. King is arrested on a charge of traveling thirty miles per hour in a twenty-five miles per hour zone in Montgomery. He is released on his own recognizance. January 30 A bomb is thrown onto the porch of Dr. King's Montgomery home. Mrs. King and Mrs. Roscoe Williams, wife of a church member, are in the house with baby Yolanda Denise. No one is injured. February 2 A suit is filed in Federal District Court asking that Montgomery's travel segregation laws be declared unconstitutional. February 21 Dr. King is indicted with other figures in the Montgomery bus boycott on the charge of being party to a conspiracy to hinder and prevent the operation of business without "just or legal cause." June 4 A United States District Court rules that racial segregation on city bus lines is unconstitutional. August 10 Dr. King is a speaker before the platform committee of the Democratic Party in Chicago, Illinois. October 30 Mayor Gayle of Montgomery, Alabama instructs the city's legal department "to file such proceedings as it may deem proper to stop the operation of car pools and transportation systems growing out of the boycott." November 13 The United States Supreme Court affirms the decision of the three-judge district court in declaring Alabama's state and local laws requiring segregation on buses unconstitutional. December 20 Federal injunctions prohibiting segregation on buses are served on city and bus company officials in Montgomery, Alabama. Injunctions are also served on state officials. Montgomery buses are integrated. |
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