50 Fun Facts About Martin Luther King Jr. Trivia for Kids

In which city was Martin Luther King Jr. born?

Atlanta, Georgia. He was born at home in his grandparents' house, where his parents had moved in after their wedding, and the family stayed until his grandmother died when he was 12.

What was Martin Luther King Jr.'s first name when he was born?

Michael. His father, also born Michael, began using the name Martin Luther for them both while the boy was still small, but the birth certificate wasn't corrected until 1957, when he was 28.

What was the name of Martin's older sister, who later wrote the picture book My Brother Martin?

Christine. She and Martin graduated from college on the very same day in 1948, and she went on to teach college students for 56 years.

Martin started college at just 15 without ever attending which grade of school?

Twelfth grade. With so many young men away at war, a local college opened its entrance exam to high school juniors, and Martin passed it at the end of eleventh grade.

At 13, Martin became the youngest assistant manager of a delivery station for what?

A newspaper. He had been a paperboy since he was about eight, so by 13 he was already an old hand at the job.

Where did Martin study after high school, following his father and grandfather?

Morehouse College. He was only 15 when he started, and its president, Benjamin Mays, became the mentor who showed him that a minister could also fight for change.

When Martin's home was bombed in 1956, what did he tell the angry crowd that gathered outside to do?

Stay calm and peaceful. His wife and baby daughter had been inside but were unhurt, and he told the crowd to 'be calm as I and my family are' instead of striking back.

In which city did Martin Luther King Jr. study for his doctorate?

Boston. The doctorate he finished there in 1955 is the reason he is called Dr. King, and it was in the same city that he met the woman he would marry.

Who did Martin Luther King Jr. marry?

Coretta Scott. A friend gave him her phone number, and at first she was wary of dating a preacher, but they were married the following year.

What was Martin's future wife studying when the two first met?

Music. She was training as a singer, and later put on 'Freedom Concerts' of songs, poems and stories that raised money for the movement.

Martin dreamed his four children would be judged by their what?

Character. He said 'the content of their character', and he had tried out the 'dream' refrain on a crowd in Detroit two months earlier before reaching for it again on the spur of the moment.

Martin became a pastor at just 25 at which Alabama church?

Dexter Avenue Baptist. He told his new congregation he had 'no pretense to being a great preacher', yet the next year he was leading the city's bus boycott.

Which woman was arrested in 1955 for refusing to give up her bus seat, starting a famous boycott?

Rosa Parks. She later wrote that she was no more tired than usual after work that evening: 'the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.'

What job did the woman whose arrest started the bus boycott do?

Seamstress. She altered clothes at a department store, and was riding home after a long day's work when the driver ordered her to give up her seat.

The bus boycott Martin led was planned to last one day, so how long did it actually go on?

Over a year. People walked to work or shared rides in some 300 carpool cars through all four seasons, until the Supreme Court ruled that segregated buses broke the law.

In 1959 Martin spent about a month in which country, where he said he came 'as a pilgrim'?

India. He went to meet the family and followers of Mahatma Gandhi, whose peaceful campaigns against British rule he called 'the guiding light' of his own movement.

Where did Martin Luther King Jr. give his 'I Have a Dream' speech?

The steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Early in the speech his words 'Five score years ago' echoed Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, and he said the crowd stood in that president's 'symbolic shadow'.

The 'I Have a Dream' speech was the high point of which 1963 protest?

The March on Washington. Its full title added 'for Jobs and Freedom', and it is credited with helping to win the Civil Rights Act the following year.

Which singer is said to have shouted 'Tell them about the dream!' during Martin's famous 1963 speech?

Mahalia Jackson. The 'Queen of Gospel' had sung to the crowd just before he spoke, and five years later she sang 'Precious Lord' at his funeral, as he had asked.

What did Martin do with his 1964 Nobel Peace Prize money?

Gave it to the movement. He promised that 'every penny' of the $54,000 would go to the struggle, and he shared it among several civil rights groups, not only the one he led.

Which magazine named Martin its 'Man of the Year' for 1963?

Time. It made the choice at the close of 1963, the year his 'I Have a Dream' speech cemented his fame at home and abroad.

From which city's jail did Martin Luther King Jr. write a famous open letter in 1963?

Birmingham. He had no writing paper at first, so he began on whatever scraps he could get, and his lawyers carried the pieces out to be put together like a jigsaw.

The 1965 voting rights marches from Selma ended in which Alabama city?

Montgomery. The 54-mile walk took five days and ended at the state capitol with a crowd of 25,000; less than five months later the Voting Rights Act became law.

The Selma marchers crossed a bridge named after which man?

Edmund Pettus. He was a Confederate general and reputedly a Ku Klux Klan leader in Alabama, so marchers for Black voting rights crossed a bridge honouring a man who had fought against them.

Which protest was Martin planning in 1968, to bring thousands of every race to the capital?

The Poor People's Campaign. It went ahead weeks after his death, and for six weeks a town of tents and shacks called Resurrection City stood on the National Mall.

Whom did Martin Luther King Jr. travel to Memphis to support in 1968?

Sanitation workers. They had walked out after two of them were crushed to death by a faulty garbage truck, and they marched with signs that read 'I Am a Man'.

The motel where Martin was killed, aged 39, is now what?

A museum. When its owner went bankrupt, a local foundation bought the motel at auction to save it, and in 1991 it reopened as the National Civil Rights Museum, where visitors can still see his room.

Which president signed the law that created Martin Luther King Jr. Day?

Ronald Reagan. The first bill for the holiday was filed just four days after Martin's death, but it took 15 years and a lost vote in Congress before one reached a president's desk.

On which day is Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebrated?

The third Monday of January. That keeps it near his birthday, January 15, while always making a long weekend, so the holiday lands on his real birthday only in some years.

Which musician wrote the song 'Happy Birthday' to help make Martin's birthday a national holiday?

Stevie Wonder. He also paid for a campaign office in Washington, which helped gather more than six million signatures asking Congress for the holiday.

A 1994 law made Martin Luther King Jr. Day a national day for doing what?

Volunteering. The law was written by Senator Harris Wofford and Congressman John Lewis, who had marched with Martin, to make the holiday 'a day on, not a day off'.

What is the big granite statue of Martin at his memorial in Washington, D.C., called?

The Stone of Hope. It comes from his line 'Out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope', so visitors walk through a split granite 'mountain' to reach the statue beyond it.

Which president led the dedication of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial?

Barack Obama. The ceremony was planned for the anniversary of the 'I Have a Dream' speech, but a hurricane forced a seven-week delay before the first Black president could speak.

Which award did Jimmy Carter give Martin Luther King Jr. in 1977, after his death?

The Presidential Medal of Freedom. It is the nation's highest civilian honour, and his widow and his father stood beside the president as he read out that Martin was 'the conscience of his generation'.

Which organization did Martin's widow found to carry on his work?

The King Center. She started it in the basement of her home less than three months after he died, and today the two of them lie side by side in a tomb in its grounds.

Martin is said to have talked an actress out of quitting which 1960s TV series, a favourite in his home?

Star Trek. Nichelle Nichols, who played Lieutenant Uhura, recalled him telling her she could not leave, because Black Americans were at last being seen on screen 'as we should be seen'.

Which book did Martin write about the bus boycott?

Stride Toward Freedom. A woman stabbed him while he was signing copies in New York, and doctors said that a single sneeze before surgery could have killed him.

Which of Martin Luther King Jr.'s children became CEO of the organization his widow founded, in 2012?

Bernice. The youngest of the four, she had only just turned five when her father died, and she grew up to become a minister too, preaching her first sermon in his old church.

Which song became the unofficial anthem of the civil rights movement that Martin led?

We Shall Overcome. It is said to have grown out of a hymn strikers sang on picket lines in the 1940s, and Martin wrote that protesters sang such songs 'for the same reason the slaves sang them', to keep their spirits up.

At the age of ten, Martin sang with his church choir at a ball celebrating the premiere of which film?

Gone with the Wind. The choir from his father's church was dressed in slave costumes and sang spirituals for an all-white audience at the ball.

Which Buddhist monk, who joined Martin in 1966 to call for peace in Vietnam, did he nominate for the Nobel Peace Prize?

Thích Nhất Hạnh. Martin wrote to the Nobel committee that he knew of no one 'more worthy' than 'this gentle Buddhist monk from Vietnam', but in the end no Peace Prize was given that year.

Young Martin sang hymns at church events while which relative played the piano?

Mother. She founded the choir at the family's church and was its organist for 40 years, so Martin grew up performing beside her.

At Crozer Theological Seminary, Martin was elected to what position?

President of the student body. He was one of only 11 Black students there and at first felt everyone was watching him, yet his classmates chose him to lead them and he finished top of his class.

In which country did Martin's father attend a 1934 Baptist congress before renaming himself and his son?

Germany. The congress met in Berlin, in the homeland of the reformer Martin Luther, and the trip is usually credited with inspiring the new name he brought home.

At which church did Martin's father preach, with Martin later joining him as co-pastor?

Ebenezer Baptist. Martin was baptised there as a boy and preached his first sermon from its pulpit at 18, long before the two men shared it from 1960.

Why did six-year-old Martin lose a white playmate soon after they started school?

The boy's father forbade it. The friends had been sent to separate schools, and when Martin asked why they could no longer play, his parents had to explain racism to him, something he had never noticed before.

Martin was the first president of which group, founded by Southern ministers in 1957 to organise peaceful protests?

SCLC. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference grew out of the bus boycott's success, and Martin led it from its first meeting until his death 11 years later.

What did Martin's bride ask to have left out of their 1953 wedding ceremony?

The promise to obey. Martin's father, who led the ceremony in her parents' garden, agreed to drop the line, an unusual request for a bride in those days.

Police first jailed Martin after stopping his car for what?

Speeding. During the bus boycott he was charged with doing 30 in a 25 zone, and he was so afraid of where the police were taking him that the sight of the city jail came as a relief.

In 1966 Martin moved into a run-down apartment in which northern city to stand with the poor?

Chicago. He hoped to show that bad housing was a northern problem too, and when he marched through white neighbourhoods a rock struck him and he said he had never seen crowds so hostile, even in the South.