Martin Luther King Jr.

TIME first wrote about Martin Luther King Jr. in 1956 during the bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama: "Said the Rev. Martin Luther King, 27: 'This is not a tension between the Negro and whites. This is only a conflict between justice and injustice.'" Since then King has appeared on four TIME covers, was named Man of the Year for 1963 and numbered among TIME's 100 Persons of the 20th Century.
Here are some excerpts from TIME's coverage of King's lifelong demand for justice and his 1968 assassination:

Caucasian officialdom in Montgomery, Ala. (pop. 120,000) moved drastically last week to break the twelve-week-old Negro boycott of the Jim Crow city buses.
From City on Trial
Mar. 5, 1956

The man whose word they [Negro leaders] seek is not a judge, or a lawyer, or a political strategist or a flaming orator. He is a scholarly, 28-year-old Negro Baptist minister, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who in little more than a year has risen from nowhere to become one of the nation's remarkable leaders of men.
From Attack on the Conscience
Feb. 18, 1957

King's accomplishment came only with the inadvertent help of Birmingham whites, particularly that of Public Safety Commissioner Eugene ("Bull") Connor, who during the Birmingham crisis became an international symbol of blind, cruel Southern racism.
From "The Awful Roar"
Aug. 30, 1963

All this was the Negro revolution. Birmingham was its main battleground, and Martin Luther King Jr., the leader of the Negroes in Birmingham, became to millions, black and white, in South and North, the symbol of that revolutionÑand the Man of the Year.
From Never Again Where He Was
Jan. 3, 1964

Mississippi's standards of justice still leave something to be desired. More than a dozen Negroes and civil rights workers have either been murdered or died mysteriously there in the past three years without a single conviction by state courts and, in many cases, without even indictments.
From Act of Savagery
Mar. 10, 1967

While Martin Luther King Jr. was in Birmingham's city jail last April, a group of white clergymen wrote a public statement criticizing him for "unwise and untimely" demonstrations. King wrote a replyÑon pieces of toilet paper, the margins of newspapers, and anything else he could get his hands onÑand smuggled it out to an aide in bits and pieces.
From Letter From a Birmingham Jail
Jan. 3, 1964

The heavy-caliber bullet smashed through King's neck, exploded against his lower right jaw, severing his spinal cord and slamming him away from the rail, up against the wall, with hands drawn tautly toward his head.
From The Assassination
Apr. 12, 1968

If ever there were a transcendent Negro symbol, it was Martin Luther King. Bridging the void between black despair and white unconcern, he spoke so powerfully of and from the wretchedness of the Negro's condition that he became the moral guidon of civil rights not only to Americans but also to the world beyond. If not the actual catalyst, he was the legitimizer of progress toward racial equality. His role and reputation may have been thrust upon him, but King was amply prepared for the thrust.
From Transcendent Symbol
Apr. 12, 1968

The march King led in death through Atlanta proved grander—both in attendance and dedication to his ideals—than any he had led in life. Fully 200,000 Americans, black and white, walked the sun-beaten streets of the Peach State's capital in temperatures that reached 82° F.
From King's Last March
Apr. 19, 1968

When Mrs. King is at her best as a writer, she displays the same dignified control she first showed on television at her husband's funeral. Then her restraint underlined the horror of the days following her husband's death. Now her spare narrative has the same intensifying effect—particularly in the final section on the assassination.
From Bearing Witness
Oct. 3, 1969

Death brought Alberta Christine Williams King more public attention than she had ever received in her lifetime. A shy woman, 'Mama' King, or 'Bunch' as her husband affectionately called her, stayed quietly in the background, but many friends called her the hidden force behind her crusading son and husband.
From The Third King Tragedy
July 15, 1974

In the most recent Harris Poll, 60% of the population has expressed the opinion that there must have been a conspiracy to murder the civil rights leader. Prompted by the revelation that the late FBI director J. Edgar Hoover had conducted a vicious vendetta to discredit King, the Justice Department is probing both the FBI's harassment of him and its investigation of his death.
From The King Assassination Revisited
Jan. 26, 1976

It is a testament to the greatness of Martin Luther King Jr. that nearly every major city in the U.S. has a street or school named after him. It is a measure of how sorely his achievements are misunderstood that most of them are located in black neighborhoods.
From TIME 100: Martin Luther King
By Jack E. White
Apr. 13, 1998

The turbulence of King's final days comes vividly to life in Time's exclusive excerpts from At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years 1965-68, the final volume of Pulitzer prizewinner Taylor Branch's three-part history of the civil rights movement and its most charismatic leader. In this portrait of King as a man under siege, his passion and his rhetoric reach new levels of grace.
From "I Have Seen The Promised Land"
By Taylor Branch
Jan. 9, 2006


For more about Martin Luther King Jr. see the TIME Archive Civil Rights Collection