He described the community of his upbringing as wholesome and religious, average in income, and one of little crime.
Yet even there, he experienced racism at a young age. When Martin was about six years old, the father of a white playmate refused to let the children continue a friendship because of their different races.
Martin’s parents helped the young boy cope with such experiences.
“My mother confronted the age-old problem of the Negro parent in America: how to explain discrimination and segregation to a small child…Then she said the words that almost every Negro hears before he can yet understand the injustice that makes them necessary: ‘You are as good as anyone,’” Martin wrote.
In his father, Martin saw an example of one who stood up to racism. In one instance, as Martin and his father were driving, a policeman pulled up and said, “All right, boy, pull over and let me see your license.”
Martin’s father replied, “Let me make it clear to you that you aren’t talking to a boy. If you persist in referring to me as boy, I will be forced to act as if I don’t hear a word you are saying.”
While Martin experienced many such incidents of racism towards the black community, he also experienced economic injustice that impacted a broader swath of society.
Working at a plant for two summers as a teen, he observed the exploitation of poor white people. In his words,
“Through these early experiences I grew up deeply conscious of the varieties of injustice in our society.”
At home, Martin was raised in a devout household. His father served as pastor at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. Religion was an important part of Martin’s upbringing.
Even though he questioned his faith at times, religion would serve as a core foundation for his views and become integral to his life.
After attending Morehouse College for undergraduate study, Martin entered a Ph.D. program in systematic theology at Boston University.
During his time there, the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, invited him to become their pastor. Martin accepted, completing his studies while serving the congregation.
It was in Montgomery that Martin was fully drawn into the leadership of the Civil Rights Movement. As pastor of a prominent black church, Martin was already a public figure, accustomed to speaking to and on behalf of the community.
So after Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a city bus in 1955, Martin was asked to lead what would become the more than year-long Montgomery Bus Boycott.
During that time, Martin was arrested, imprisoned, and his home was bombed. Many others in the community also experienced similar hardship, including harassment, intimidation, and economic retaliation.
But the boycott led to change, as the ruling in Browder v. Gayle prohibited racial segregation on Montgomery’s public bus lines. And for Martin, he began to view boycotts as the community saying, “We can no longer lend our cooperation to an evil system.”
The years that followed took Martin through many marches, sit-ins, boycotts, and other forms of nonviolent resistance in advocating for progress.
Arrested and imprisoned often, and repeatedly attacked, he continued preaching unity, moral courage, and nonviolent resistance.