Claim profile

Martin Luther King Jr.

American Baptist minister and civil rights leader (1929–1968)

  • Fame91.8
  • Momentum17.7
  • Global rank#40
Source-basedStable
  • Fame91.8
  • Momentum17.7
  • Global rank#40
  • United States rank#11
  • Writers rank#4
  • Wikipedia252.3K
Lived 1929–1968, aged 39United States
United States flagUnited StatesWritersWriter / Author
  • Wikipedia
    186 languages
    Cross-language footprint
  • Global rank
    #40
    Fame.am leaderboard
  • Era
    1929–1968
    Aged 39
  • Known for
    J. Edgar
    2011
Summary
Updated 2026-08-30

The Baptist minister who turned American civil disobedience into a sustained mass movement, delivering the "I Have a Dream" speech at the 1963 March on Washington and forcing the nation to dismantle Jim Crow through nonviolent pressure that met state violence head-on.

Biography

About

Born Michael King Jr. on January 15, 1929, he became the face of the civil rights movement beginning with the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott, which he oversaw as a young Black church leader. As first president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, he led marches for voting rights, desegregation, and labor protections—Birmingham in 1963, the Selma to Montgomery marches in 1965—each met with segregationist crackdown that exposed the machinery of oppression to a watching country. The campaigns produced the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act o…

Voice

In their own words

Sourced, dated quotes from Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr.
said
The apparent apathy of the Negro ministers presented a special problem.
— Stride Toward Freedom (1958), pp. 28-29
Martin Luther King Jr.
said
Let no man pull you so low as to hate him.
— Sermon at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church (Montgomory, Alabama 6 Nov 1956)
Martin Luther King Jr.
said
If you have weapons, take them home; if you do not have them, please do not seek to get them. We cannot solve this problem through retaliatory violence.
— King's words after a bomb was thrown into his house in Alabama, on 30 January 1956, in Stride Toward Freedom (1958)
Martin Luther King Jr.
said
You know my friends, there comes a time when people get tired of being trampled by the iron feet of oppression.
— Montgomery Bus Boycott speech, at Holt Street Baptist Church (5 December 1955)
Martin Luther King Jr.
said
We, the disinherited of this land, we who have been oppressed so long, are tired of going through the long night of captivity.
— Montgomery Bus Boycott speech, at Holt Street Baptist Church (5 December 1955)
via Wikiquote · CC BY-SA
By the numbers

Score breakdown

The six component signals behind the Fame score, and their ranks across the leaderboards.

Fame
Stable
91.8
Composite of search demand, mentions, audience & graph footprint.
Score components
Momentum17.7
Historical33.1
Now attention47.5
Source confidence70.0
Completeness80.0
Global rank
#40
Country rank
#11
Category rank
#4
Receipts

Sources

  • Wikidata
    wikidata · wikidata.org
    High confidence
  • Wikipedia
    wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org
    High confidence
  • Pantheon 2.0
    database · pantheon.world
    High confidence