Listen Live
Home

Little Known Facts About Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Dismiss

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