The waymark coordinates are for the public entry door on the west side of the capitol, since GPS units do not work inside the building.
This portrait of and biography of Atlanta native Dr Martin Luther King occupies a corner of the second floor of the GA State Capitol Building in downtown Atlanta.
From the Georgia Encyclopedia: (
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"Martin Luther King Jr., a Baptist minister and president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), was the most prominent African American leader in the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.
Early Life and Education, 1929-1955
Family, church, and education shaped King's life from an early age. Michael Luther King Jr. was born in Atlanta on January 15, 1929, to Alberta Williams and Michael Luther King Sr. In 1934, after visiting Europe, Michael King Sr. changed his and his son's name in honor of the sixteenth-century German church reformer Martin Luther. King spent his early years in the family home at 501 Auburn Avenue, about a block from Ebenezer Baptist Church. His maternal grandfather, A. D. Williams, was pastor at Ebenezer from 1894 until 1931. After Williams's death, the elder King succeeded his father-in-law at the pulpit.
King was educated in Atlanta, graduating from Booker T. Washington High School in 1944. He then enrolled at Morehouse College, where Williams had studied. King first considered studying medicine or law but decided to major in sociology. He ultimately found the call to the ministry irresistible, however. He served as assistant to his father at Ebenezer while studying at Morehouse. In February 1948 King Sr. ordained his son as a Baptist minister.
After graduating from Morehouse in June 1948, King studied for a divinity degree at Crozer Theological Seminary in Upland, Pennsylvania, and graduated in May 1951. The following September King enrolled in the Ph.D. program in systematic theology at Boston University. There he met his future wife, Coretta Scott. King's father preferred that his son marry an Atlanta woman and initially opposed King's plans to marry Coretta. When King refused to back down, his father relented, and on June 18, 1953, he performed the marriage ceremony at the Scott family home in rural Perry County, Alabama.
During his last year of residential studies at Boston University, King sought employment while he finished his dissertation. Through a family friend he learned of a vacant position at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. King desired a pulpit in a southern city but also wanted to escape Atlanta and gain independence from his father, so he arranged a trial sermon. King was offered the position, and in 1954 he moved to Montgomery with Coretta. In June 1955 King received his Ph.D.
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On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, a respected member of Montgomery's black community, refused to surrender her bus seat to a white passenger when asked to do so. She was arrested for violating a city segregation statute. Community activists proposed a bus boycott in protest. They asked King if his church could be used as a meeting place to discuss the boycott. Although he supported the plan to boycott, King hesitated to become involved because of his existing commitments. After some persuasion, however, he agreed.
At the meeting black leaders agreed on a one-day boycott. When this was successful, they agreed to extend the action. King was asked to head the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), a new organization formed to run the bus boycott. He had not planned to take a leading role, but he agreed to serve. The boycott ran for 381 days. Throughout, whites in Montgomery tried to stymie it. King and other MIA members were arrested. Segregationists even bombed King's home.
The intimidation strengthened the resolve of the black community. The initial demands of the MIA for a modified system of segregation on city buses evolved into a lawsuit that called for its total abolishment. The case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled segregation on Montgomery buses unconstitutional. On December 21, 1956, King was among the first passengers to board an integrated bus.
The bus boycott made King a national symbol of black protest. In the next few years he spoke alongside other national black leaders and met with U.S. president Dwight D. Eisenhower and a host of foreign dignitaries.
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Despite the personal challenges King looked to capitalize on the success of the Montgomery boycott. . . .These early campaigns made little impression. At the end of 1959 King resigned from his position at Dexter and in early 1960 moved back to Atlanta, sharing the pastorate at Ebenezer with his father. There he could maintain closer contact with SCLC headquarters in the hope of launching more effective campaigns in the future. Though his work kept him away much of the time, Atlanta remained home for King, Coretta, and their children, for the final eight years of King's life.
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