Martin Luther, portrait of a future King
- Lucas Cranach the elder, Martin Luther, probably 1532, oil on panel. Courtesy of Met, New York.
- circa 1965: American civil rights leader and Baptist Minister, Martin Luther King (1929 – 1968). A leader of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, he became America’s foremost campaigner for civil rights and addressed the vast crowd at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC during the march for jobs and freedom. He was shot dead on the balcony of his hotel in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was supporting striking sanitation workers. (Photo by MPI/Getty Images)
King’s original name was Michael King Jr. It was only when he was five years old that his father, Michael King Sr., changed both his name and his son’s to Martin Luther King, following a trip to eastern Germany. Here the father, a Baptist minister of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta , “came and developed an appreciation for the Father of the Reformation to the extent that, upon returning to the States, he changed both names.
January 20, 2014