by Silva Payne

Created on: January 09, 2011

Could Alberta Williams King have known that her middle child would become so important to the fight for equality and racial harmony around the world?

On 15 January 1929, Alberta and her husband Michael King Sr welcomed their second child into the world. Michael King Jr, who would later have his name changed along with his father, in honour of the German Protestant Martin Luther, became brother to Alberta and Michael's daughter Willie Christine, and later their second son, Alfred Daniel Williams King.

Education

The family lived in Atlanta, Georgia, and King Jr was a bright child. He skipped the ninth and the twelfth grades at his school, the Booker T. Washington High School. Attending this school, built and developed after the inspirational achievements of Booker T. Washington, King Jr was ideally placed to excel and become inspirational himself.

Booker T. Washington was born into slavery in the state of Virginia in 1856, and after emancipation worked to gain his education at what is now called Hampton University. He returned to Hampton as a teacher in 1891 and was named the first leader of the Tuskegee Institute, Alabama. Booker T. Washington was on of the last black political figures born into slavery, and was able to bring together whites and blacks to raise funds for education as well as his stance on equality through struggle and not force.

These political beliefs and ethos would have been known to King Jr as he too gained his basic education, first at High School and then, at the age of 15, when he began attending Morehouse College. Morehouse is a traditional black men's college, and has been the seat of learning for a number of well-known figures in the 20th Century such as film director Spike Lee, Olympic sprinter Edwin Moses and the first African-American Mayor of Atlanta, Maynard Jackson. King Jr.'s father had also attended Morehouse College.

King Jr graduated from Morehouse in 1948 with a Bachelors degree in Sociology, which he followed up with a Bachelor of Divinity degree in 1951 from Crozier Theological Seminary, Pennsylvania. This could be seen as a strange path for a boy who openly denied the resurrection of Christ at his Sunday School when aged 13. King had doubts, but continued to study and learn to achieve better understanding.

King Jr then took a 3 year break from his studies, during which time he married and took up the position of preacher at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. In 1954, he began a doctoral programme

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