King graduated from Morehouse College in 1948 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in sociology.

It was at Morehouse College that Martin Luther King was exposed to the writings of Henry David Thoreau.

From 1954 until 1960, Martin Luther King Jr. was the pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, the only church where MLK pastored and the site where he began his Civil Rights activism.

The FBI was under written directive from Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy when it began tapping King's telephone line in the fall of 1963.

According to the King Center, Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech is 17 minutes long.

King married Coretta Scott on June 18, 1953, on the lawn of her parents' house in her hometown of Heiberger, Alabama.

On September 20, 1958, King was signing copies of his book Stride Toward Freedom in Blumstein's department store in Harlem when Izola Curry--a mentally ill woman who thought Dr. King was conspiring against her with communists--stabbed him in the chest with a letter opener.

In 1934, Dr. King's father traveled to Germany and was inspired by the Protestant Reformation leader Martin Luther. As a result, King Sr. changed his own name as well as that of his 5-year-old son from Michael to Martin Luther.

The boycott lasted for over a year. It finally ended on December 20, 1956 after 381 days.

King had four children: Yolanda King (born 1955), Martin Luther King III (born 1957), Dexter Scott King (born 1961), and Bernice King (born 1963).