As we celebrate The Birthday of the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. here are some little known facts about him.
* At the age of 5 his name had to be legally changed to Martin Luther King Jr. when his family his name had been recorded wrong on his birth certificate…. it read Michael King.
*He did not formally graduate from high school.
* He skipped the 9th and 12th grades in school and entered Morehouse College at age 15.
*According to the history of the 17th-house.com website, Dr. martin Luther King Jr. was initiated into the Sigma chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. as the number 5 of his line in Spring of ‘52
* He was the youngest person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 at the age of 35.
* In 1964, King became the first black American to be honored as Time magazine’s Man of the Year.
* There are more than 730 cities that have streets named after him.
*From 1957 until his death in 1968, he traveled more than 6 million miles, gave over 2500 speeches during his travels, wrote 5 books and had published countless numbers of articles in newspapers and magazines.
* In a contest sponsored by the Discovery Channel, he was voted the 3rd Greatest American of all time.
* He was a Republican. (It is also little known that in the past, most southern blacks were Republicans due to the fact that Democrats were well-known for their racist ideals. Only recently has the Democratic party come to be known as a party that blacks and the underprivileged support)
*The Lorraine Motel, where King was assassinated, is now the site of the National Civil Rights Museum.
*He predicted he would die before age 40 and he was killed at age 39