History Made Every Day™

KING'S FAMILY

Martin Luther King Sr.

Michael King Sr. (he later changed his name to Martin Luther King Sr.) was born into a family of sharecroppers on December 19, 1899, in Stockbridge, Georgia. As a teenager, he became interested in becoming a preacher after hearing several black preachers speak out against racial injustice. King married Alberta Christine Williams, daughter of Rev. Adam Daniel Williams, then the leader of Atlanta's Ebenezer Baptist Church, in 1926. That same year, he began studying theology at Morehouse College. Martin Luther King Jr., the second of Rev. King and Alberta King's three children, was born on January 15, 1929. King graduated in 1930 and in 1931, "Daddy King," became pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church, a position he held until 1975. His son Martin Jr. joined him as co-pastor at Ebenezer in 1960. The elder Rev. King was also an influential civil-rights leader and headed the Atlanta chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. He died of a heart attack on November 11, 1984, at age 84.

Alberta Williams King

Alberta Christine Williams was born on September 13, 1904, to Rev. Adam Daniel Williams, who served as pastor of Atlanta's Ebenezer Baptist Church from 1914 to 1931, and Jenny Parks Williams. Alberta Williams attended what is now Hampton University in Hampton, Virginia, and married Martin Luther King Sr. (then known as Michael King) in 1926. The couple had three children: a daughter named Willie Christine in 1927, Martin Jr. in 1929 and Albert in 1930. After Alberta's father died, her husband took over as head of Ebenezer Baptist Church and she served as choir director and organist. Alberta King was shot and killed by a deranged black man at Ebenezer on June 30, 1974. Her first son Martin was assassinated in 1968 and her second son Albert, who had also been a pastor at Ebenezer, drowned in a swimming pool the following year.

Coretta Scott King

Coretta Scott was born on April 27, 1927, and grew up poor in rural, segregated Alabama. She attended Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, and the New England Conservatory of Music. In 1952, while a classical music student in Boston, she met her future husband, Martin Luther King, Jr., who was doing graduate studies in philosophy at Boston University. The couple married on June 18, 1953, and later had four children. In 1955, Dr. King, then the pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, rose to national prominence when he spearheaded a year-long, city-wide public transportation boycott, sparked by the arrest of Rosa Parks, an African-American seamstress who refused to obey the Jim Crow law requiring her to relinquish her bus seat to a white man.

Following the successful bus boycott, which ended when the U.S. District Court outlawed racial segregation on public transportation, Dr. King, who advocated nonviolent civil disobedience, went on to become the leading figure of the American civil-rights movement until his assassination on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968. Following her husband's death, Coretta Scott King carried on his work, campaigning for civil-rights issues and other human-rights causes. In 1968, she founded the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Changenow known as the King Center--in Atlanta. The center, which serves as the official public memorial to Dr. King, is part of a national historic site that includes the civil-rights leader's birth home and the Ebenezer Baptist Church, where he preached.

Coretta Scott King also worked to have a national holiday created to honor her late husband, a goal that was achieved in 1983, when President Ronald Reagan signed a bill designating the third Monday in JanuaryDr. King's birthday was January 15, 1929--a federal holiday. The first Martin Luther King Day was observed on January 20, 1986.

On January 30, 2006, Coretta Scott King, who was suffering from ovarian cancer, died of respiratory failure at age 78. Her six-hour funeral service was held at the 10,000-seat New Birth Missionary Church, where her daughter Bernice is a co-pastor. Mrs. King was eulogized by U.S. presidents, civil-rights leaders and other dignitaries. Today, her tomb is located beside her husband's at the King Center.

Yolanda Denise King

The first child of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Coretta Scott King was born in Montgomery, Alabama, on November 17, 1955. Several weeks after her birth, her father launched the Montgomery bus boycott, which was sparked by African-American seamstress Rosa Parks' refusal to give up her seat to a white man on a public bus. Yolanda King was 12 when her father was assassinated on April 4, 1968. After graduating from Smith College and earning a Master's degree in Theater from New York University, King became a human-rights activist, motivational speaker and actress, whose roles included those of Rosa Parks in a TV miniseries titled "King" and Reena Evers, the daughter of murdered civil-rights activist Medgar Evers in the 1996 film "Ghosts of Mississippi." Yolanda King died on May 15, 2007, at age 51, from what her family suspected was a heart ailment.

Martin Luther King III

Dr. King's namesake and second child was born on October 3, 1957, in Montgomery. He went on to graduate from Morehouse College, his father's alma mater. In 1997, King became the fourth president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), a civil-rights group that his father co-founded in 1957 and headed until his death in 1968. The younger King helmed the SCLC until 2004, when he assumed leadership of the King Center. Today, Martin Luther King III is a human-rights activist and chairman of Realizing the Dream, a non-profit organization that "promotes and embodies justice, equality, and the 'beloved' community through specific sustainable initiatives in economic development, non-violence and conflict resolution training, and targeted leadership development for youth."

Dexter Scott King

The King family's third child was born January 31, 1961, in Atlanta, and named after the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, where his father was once the pastor. Dexter King attended Morehouse College and later became a filmmaker, actor and entrepreneur. He also served as chairman of the King Center in Atlanta. Dexter King has spoken publicly about his belief (shared by his late mother, among others) that small-time criminal James Earl Ray did not kill his father. Although Ray pled guilty to the murder in 1969 and was sentenced to 99 years in prison, he later claimed he was not the shooter. In 1997, Dexter King met with the convicted assassin and pledged to help him get him a new trial; however, Ray died in 1998 before that could happen.

Bernice Albertine King

The King's youngest child was born on March 28, 1963, in Atlanta. She graduated from Spelman College and received a law degree and Master of Divinity from Emory University. King followed in her father's footsteps and was ordained as a Baptist minister. In the early 1990s, she served as assistant minister at Atlanta's Ebenezer Baptist Church, where her father and grandfather were both pastors. In 2004, Bernice King marched against same-sex marriage, coming out on the opposite side of the issue from her mother, Coretta Scott King, who spoke out against homophobia and discrimination. Today, King is an attorney, public speaker and elder at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, a mega-church in Lithonia, Georgia.