Nobel Prize winner Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. originated the nonviolence strategy within the activist civil rights movement. King was born on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia. Following graduation from Morehouse College in 1948, King entered Crozer Theological Seminary, having been ordained the previous year. He graduated from Crozer in 1951 and received his doctorate in theology from Boston University in 1955.

In Boston, King met Coretta Scott, whom he married on June 18, 1953. They had four children. King became minister of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1954, and became active with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Alabama Council on Human Relations.

In December 1955, Rosa Parks, a black woman, was arrested for violating a segregated seating ordinance on a public bus in Montgomery, thus initiating a series of protests which ultimately led to the boycott the segregated city buses and the formation of Montgomery...