Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Day! Here are four key places where Dr. King lived and made history.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was an American pastor, activist, humanitarian and leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. He led the Civil Rights Movement in the United States from the mid-1950s until his death by assassination in 1968.
Today marks the federal holiday in his honor and below are four key places where Dr. King spent his time and made history.
The birth place of Dr. King is located at 501 Auburn Ave. in Atlanta, Georgia. His parents purchased the home for $3,500 in 1909 and his family lived in the home until 1941. The house was then converted into a two-unit multifamily property, according to the American Historical Association.
From 1948 to around 1954, King attended Chester's Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania. He was one of only eleven black students and was the first black graduate, according to ExplorePaHistory.com. He graduated in 1951 and used a fellowship to enroll in Boston University, where he completed his doctorate.
King's home at 315 S. Jackson St. in Montgomery, Alabama is known as “birth place of the civil rights movement." From September 1954 to February 1960 King and his family lived here while he led the Montgomery Bus Boycott, according to the Dexter Parsonage Museum.
In 1966, King and his family moved to Chicago in a small apartment at 1550 S. Hamlin Ave. King moved to The Windy City to work on the desperate state of housing in Chicago's minority neighborhoods. Following his assassination in 1968, the apartment building was damaged during riots and eventually demolished. However, in 2011, a developer constructed a new multifamily property at the site named Dr. King Legacy Apartments.
