January 15, 1929

Originally named Michael Luther, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was born on this day in Atlanta, Georgia. After a trip to Europe in 1934, the elder King changed his name as well as his son’s to Martin Luther in honor of the leader of the Protestant Reformation. The younger King moved to Alabama in 1954 to pastor the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, beginning a rise to national prominence that would make the minister, philosopher and social activist America’s most significant civil rights leader. King was assassinated on April 4, 1968. Fifteen years later, President Ronald Reagan signed into law a bill that created the Martin Luther King Jr. National Holiday on the third Monday of every January.

Read more at Encyclopedia of Alabama.

The birthplace and boyhood home (until he was 12 years old) of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., preserved and protected at the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site, a park supervised by the U.S. National Park Service. (Photographs in Carol M. Highsmith’s America Project in the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division)

Martin Luther King Jr. speaking at an anti-war demonstration, New York City, 1967. (Don Rice, World Journal Tribune, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division)

Sanctuary of the Ebenezer Baptist Church at the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site, a park supervised by the U.S. National Park Service. (Photographs in Carol M. Highsmith’s America Project in the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division)

Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott met in Boston in the early 1950s. King was pursuing a doctoral degree at Boston University and Scott was a student at the New England Conservatory of Music. The couple married on June 18, 1953, in Heiberger, Perry County, where Scott had been raised. (Encyclopedia of Alabama, courtesy of Library of Congress)

Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King led thousands of protesters during the Selma to Montgomery March in March 1965. (From Encyclopedia of Alabama, courtesy of The Birmingham News)

Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church where Martin Luther King served as pastor, Montgomery. (Photographs in Carol M. Highsmith’s America Project in the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division)

Fred Lee Shuttlesworth (left), Ralph David Abernathy (center) and Martin Luther King Jr. (right) march on Good Friday on April 12, 1963, in Birmingham. The men were later arrested, prompting King to write his famous “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” (Encyclopedia of Alabama, courtesy of Birmingham Public Library Archives)

The “eternal flame” at the gravesite of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., at the King Center in Atlanta. (Photographs in Carol M. Highsmith’s America Project in the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division)

For more on Alabama’s Bicentennial, visit Alabama 200.