Martin Luther King Jr.

King, Martin Luther, Jr. (1929–68), black U.S. clergyman and civil rights leader, recipient of the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize for his work for racial equality in the United States. King organized the boycott of the Montgomery, Ala., transit company in 1955 to force desegregation of the buses. Under his leadership in the late 1950s and 1960s, civil disobedience and nonviolent tactics, like the Washington March of 250,000 people in 1963, brought about the Civil Rights Act of 1965. Black militants challenged his methods in 1965, but in 1966 he extended his campaign to slum conditions in the northern cities of the United States, and in 1968 he set up the Poor People's Campaign. He was less successful in this effort because the Vietnam War distracted national attention from civil rights and urban issues. He was assassinated in Memphis, Tenn. In 1983 Congress designated the third Monday in January a national holiday to commemorate his birthday.