Michael King Jr. was born on the 15th January 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, and was a minister of Baptist religion, activist as well as a humanitarian and a writer who, as Martin Luther King Jr., was widely recognized for being the most prominent leader of the African-American Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. He was best known for his tempting rhetorical skills, nonviolent doctrine, and his fight against segregation as well as for being the First President of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968.
Have you ever wondered how much wealth this globally influential activist has accumulated for life? How rich would Martin Luther King Jr. be nowadays? According to sources, it is estimated that the total net worth of Martin Luther King Jr., as of early 2018, would revolve around the sum of $250,000 acquired primarily through his Civil Rights Movement engagements.
Martin Luther King Jr. Net Worth $250,000
Martin was the middle child of Alberta Williams King and Martin Luther King Sr., and apart from African-American was also of Irish descent. He went to Booker T. Washington High School, where he first expressed his talent for public speaking, before attending Morehouse College from which he graduated in 1948 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in sociology. King then continued his education at Crozer Theological Seminary from which he earned his Bachelor of Divinity degree in 1951. He then transferred to Boston, Massachusetts, where he began serving as an assistant minister at the Twelfth Baptist Church, and also enrolled at Boston University from which he graduated in 1955with his Doctor of Philosophy degree in systematic theology.
In December 1955, as a member of the Birmingham African-American community King led the Montgomery bus boycott which lasted for over a year. In 1957, alongside Fred Shuttlesworth, Ralph Abermathy and Joseph Lowery, King co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), a civil rights organization focused on organizing non-violent protests in order to unite black churches and reform the civil rights law of that era; King served as its inaugural holder and its first president between 1957 and 1968. It is certain that all these involvements somehow provided the basis for the net worth of Martin Luther King Jr.
As the president of the SCLC, King was also involved in founding the Big Six organization, and was one of the main leaders of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in August 1963, during which he gave his famous “I Have A Dream” speech. For all these efforts, in 1964 King was honored with the Nobel Peace Prize. All these endeavors helped Martin Luther King Jr. to dramatically raise not only his popularity and modest wealth, but also the collective conscience concerning the African-American Civil Rights Movement.
In 1965, Martin Luther King Jr. participated in the Selma to Montgomery march, while in 1966 he co-founded the Chicago Freedom Movement. He was also strongly opposed to the USA’s engagement in the Vietnam War, and was also involved in the organizing the rather controversial Poor People’s Campaign in 1968. During planning the latter campaign, propagating the national occupation of the Washington D.C., on the 4th April 1968 Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered by James Earl Ray in Memphis, Tennessee.
The death of Marin Luther King Jr. caused an avalanche of race riots across the US during the late 1960s and through the 1970s, bringing about the adoption of the Civil Rights Act of 1968 (known also as the Fair Housing Act) which prohibited racial discrimination. He also inspired South Africa’s Black Consciousness Movement, and posthumously became the icon of progressivism and liberalism. Apart from those already mentioned, King also published six literacy works including “Strength to Love” (1963) and “The Trumpet of Conscience” (1968). In the decades since, he has served as an inspiration for a handful of books and biographies. Posthumously, Martin Luther King Jr. was rewarded with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977, as well as with the Congressional Gold Medal in 2004.
He was survived by his wife, Coretta Scott King, to whom he was married from 1953 until his death in 1968; their four children – Yolanda Denise King, Martin Luther King III, Dexter Scott King and Bernice King have all followed in their father’s footsteps, and continued his fight for civil rights, particularly relating to black Americans.
