On this day 43 years ago the Rev Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated. The leading figure in the US civil rights movement had been born in Atlanta in 1929, one of three children of the Rev Martin Luther King Sr and Alberta Williams King. After attending Booker T Washington High School and Morehouse College, he earned a Bachelor of Divinity degree from Crozer Theological Seminary in 1951, before becoming pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery Alabama in 1954.
In December 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a bus, and King led a boycott of Montgomery buses which lasted for just over a year, ending with a court ruling ending racial segregation on Montgomery public buses. In 1957 King joined with other civil rights activists to form the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organisation of black churches supporting civil rights reform.
King’s famous “I have a dream” speech was delivered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on 28 August 1963. In 1964 the Civil Rights Act was passed, and the same year he became the youngest ever winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. However, the struggle was far from over, and King’s campaigning for the rights of African Americans continued. Although his life was cut short, the legacy of his achievements lives on.