Martin Luther King Jr.
Born: January 15, 1929 (Atlanta, GA)
Died: April 4, 1968 (Memphis, TN)
Biography
Martin Luther King Jr. was an American Baptist minister and activist who became the most visible spokesman and leader in the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968. In 1963, King helped organize the March on Washington, an assembly of more than 200,000 people at which he made his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. The march influenced the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and King was awarded the 1964 Nobel Prize for Peace. In 1968 he went to Memphis, Tenn., to support a strike by sanitation workers; there on April 4, he was assassinated by James Earl Ray.
Connection to the Spencers
King visited Lynchburg in 1962 to speak at E. C. Glass High School, and while in the area stopped by to meet the Spencers.
