In October of 1980, 12 years after his death, the Martin Luther King, Jr., National Historic Site was established in Atlanta, Georgia, as a unit of the National Park Service to honor the life of Dr. King and his leadership in the American Civil Rights Movement. In 1996, Congress also established the Selma-to-Montgomery National Historic Trail under the National Trails System Act. This historic Alabama trail included 54 miles of city streets and US Highway 80 from Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church in Selma to the State Capitol Building in Montgomery, traveled by voting rights advocates during March 1965 to dramatize the need for voting rights legislation. The trail was later designated an "All-American Road," the highest tribute a road can receive under the Federal Highway Administration's National Scenic Byways Program.
The National Park Service maintains a number of other sites dedicated to the preservation of African-American history, including the Tuskegee Institute National Historic Site, the Brown vs. Board of Education National Historic Site, the Boston African-American National Historic Site, and the most recently established African Burial Grounds National Monument.
Biographical Highlights
Martin Luther King, Jr. was born on January 15th, 1929, the son of an Atlanta pastor. He graduated from Booker T. Washington High School and was admitted to Morehouse College at the age of 15. He graduated from Morehouse as an ordained Baptist minister in 1948 at the age 19 and entered Crozer Theological Seminary where he earned a degree in divinity. In June of 1953, he married Correta Scott King and went on to earn a doctorate in theology from Boston University in 1955.
On December 5, 1955, five days after Montgomery civil rights activist Rosa Parks refused to obey the city's rules mandating segregation on buses, black residents carried out a bus boycott and elected King as president of the newly-formed Montgomery Improvement Association, making him the official spokesman for the boycott. As the boycott continued during 1956, King gained national prominence as a result of his exceptional oratorical skills and personal courage. In 1957, King and other southern black ministers founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). As SCLC's president, King emphasized the goal of black voting rights when he spoke at the Lincoln Memorial during the 1957 Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom. That same year he also published his first book, Stride Toward Freedom, about the Montgomery boycotts.
On August 28, 1963, he delivered his most famous speech, " I Have a Dream," in Washington, DC. In January of the following year, he appeared appeared on the cover of Time magazine as its Man of the Year and in December of the same year he received the Nobel Peace Prize. While helping out with a garbage-workers' strike, King was shot and killed on April 4, 1968, outside his motel room in Memphis by James Earl Ray. In 1986, Congress proclaimed a national holiday in King's honor, which was to be observed on the third Monday in January each year. During the period leading up to and including the King Holiday, numerous events occur in Atlanta, and across the country commemorating the birth of Martin Luther King, Jr. The MLK National Historic Site commemorates his birth on his actual birthday, January 15th.
