Where does one even begin to write about a figure who has become as iconic in the country as Martin Luther King Jr.? There's not a child of school age or above who hasn't at least heard his name since his rise to the national stage during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.

Plenty of biographies have been written for and about him since his assassination in 1968, in everything from college-level, novel-length works down to 12-page illustrated children's books. To attempt, over the course of an article, to tell of the bredth of King's life would scarcely begin to scratch the surface. To that end, accept a writer's humble summation of King's life and works during the Civil Rights Era.

Michael King Jr. was born on January 15, 1929, to Michael and Alberta King near Atlanta, Georgia. King Sr. was a pastor and, on a mission trip to Europe in 1934, observed and summilarly abhorred the teachings in Germany as Nazism began to rise. Thereafter, upon returning from the homeland of Reformation leader Martin Luther, King Sr. changed his name to Martin Luther King and gave his son the name as well.

King Jr. and his siblings (older sister Christine and younger brother Alfred Daniel) grew up in a strict Christian home. During the 1930s, King Jr. began to observe the effects of segregation in the country. While he and his siblings continued to attend church, King Jr. also grew his vocabulary by reading dictionaries, though he lacked interest in spelling and grammar, relying on his older sister to help him in those areas.

During his preteen years, King Jr. began to feel resentment toward white people, due to the segregation and humiliation that he observed during his youth. At the age of 13, he began to question Christianity, claming that he felt he would never gain satisfaction from religion.

In ninth grade, King Jr. entered Booker T. Washington High School, Atlanta's only school for black students in the 1940s. While there, he joined the debate team, where he began to develop the baritone that has become ingrained in the minds of generations of Americans. King Jr.'s classmates recall that he enjoyed fashion, and frequently wore patent leather shoes and tweed suits. His brother recalled as well that young Martin Luther enjoyed dancing and flirting with his female classmates.

During his junior year of high school, King Jr. would win an oratorical contest in Dublin, Georgia. During his speech, he stated, “The finest negro is at the mercy of the meanest white man,” words which would be almost prophetic as, on the bus ride home, King and his teacher would be ordered to stand so that white passengers could sit down. During the hours-long trip, King fumed. He would recall later, “That night will never leave my memory. It was the angriest I have ever been in my life.”

King would go on to attend Morehouse College, like his father and grandfather before him. He began during his junior year of high school at the age of 15. It was during his time in the integrated north that King marvelled at the differences between the two halves of the country. In Connecticutt, he could go to restaurants and church with white and black people, while such things were unheard of in Atlanta.

In 1947, at the age of 18, King entered the ministry under the guidance of Baptist preacher Benjamin Mays. King said later that the church was the answer to his inner urge to serve humanity.

King graduated from Morehouse in 1948 with a BA in sociology. From there, he would attend Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania, where he attained a Bachelor of Diviinity in 1951. King pursued his doctoral degree in theology at Boston University while working as an assistant pastor at Twelfth Baptist Church in Boston. He also attended philosophy classes at Harvard in 1952 and '53. He obtained his doctorate in 1955, shortly after being called to pastor at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama.

King met his wife, Coretta Scott, during his time at Boston University. The two married in June of 1953 in Heiberger, Alabama. They would have four children together (Yolanda in 1955, Martin Luther III in 1957, Dexter in 1961, and Bernice in 1963) before King's death in 1968.

King's work in the Civil Rights Movement began in 1955 with the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Sparked by Claudette Colvin and Rosa Parks, the bus boycott lasted for more than a year as blacks in Montgomery refused to ride buses without being given the same sitting privileges as white patrons. King had just begun his pastoral duties, and was asked by other ministers to take a leadership role in the boycott due to his newness in the area. In his twenties at the time, King was initially reluctant to take on such a role, but stepped up when no one else would. Over the course of the boycott, King's house would be bombed and he would be arrested and jailed. However, his role in the boycott catapulted him into the national spotlight, cementing him as a civil-rights leader.

King and several other civil rights activitists founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1957 in order to help black churches in non-violent civil reform protests. King would lead the SCLC until his death. Scarcely a year later, King was attacked by a mentally ill woman during a book signing in Harlem. The attacker, Izola Curry, stabbed King with a letter opener, almost piercing his aorta, because she believed he was a communist and was conspiring against her.

King would participate in a series of “sit-ins” in Atlanta beginning in 1960. These were used to draw attention to the 1960 Presidential election which many felt had ignored the civil rights of black Americans. King was arrested with a group of protesters at Rich's Department Store. While the rest of the group was released, King was sentenced to four months of hard labor at a state prison. The sentence drew national attention and caused Presidential hopeful John F. Kennedy to campaign for King's release. With pressure from Kennedy, King was released within two days. In 1961, King and other black leaders declared a truce with Atlanta's businesses, and that lunch counters would desegregate with the city's schools.

Throughout the early 1960s, King would participate in the Albany and Birmingham campaigns. These included speeches and sit-ins where King led non-violent protests against every manner of segregation across Georgia. King would be arrested several times, usually as part of mass-arrests of participants. During the Birmingham campaign, Police Chief Eugene “Bull” Connor turned high-pressure fire hoses and police dogs on protesters. The images released showed the police using these tactics on children during the protest as well, sparking national outrage. Connor was fired and Birmingham was unofficially desegregated.

King, as well as other members of the “Big Six”, led a March on Washington in 1963. Thousands gathered on the National Mall, where King would deliver his famous “I Have a Dream” speech to those assembled. The most iconic lines, which are perhaps the most often quoted from any Civil Rights leader in the country, resonated with the crowd.

“I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today.”

King's speech, as well as the March on Washington, put the Civil Rights Movement at the forefront of reformist works across the country. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 owes much of its passage to the March and to the words of King. Later in 1964, King would receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

King continued his work with the movement through the mid-1960s, participating in the march across Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, after “Bloody Sunday” had shown the nation the plight of black protestors when a mob and violent police officers laid into demonstrators as they marched from Selma to Montgomery.

King would go on to lead during the rest of the 1960s, voicing objections to the Vietnam War before starting what he called the “Poor People's Campaign” in 1968. He wanted to assemble a “multiracial army of the poor” to march to Washington in order to establish a bill of rights for empoverished Americans. Many of King's contemporaries bowed out of the campaign, claiming that the goals were too broad.

During the campaign, King traveled to Memphis, Tennessee, to show support for striking sanitation workers. While there, after delivering his “I've Been to the Mountaintop” address, King was shot on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel by James Earl Ray at 6:01 p.m on April 4, 1968. The bullet hit King in the right cheek before shattering his jaw and becoming lodged in his shoulder after traveling down his spine. King died at St. Joseph's Hospital at 7:05 p.m., just over an hour after the shooting. He was interred at South View Cemetery in Atlanta, until his remains were moved to the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Park in 1977.

After King's death, he would be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977. Later, in 2004, he would also be awarded the Congressional Gols Medal. Numerous streets and schools across the country would be named in his memory.

Soon after the assassination in 1968, a nation-wide campaign began in order to establish a federal holiday in honor of King. It would be several years later, in 1983, when President Ronald Reagan would sign the holiday into law. It would be observed for the first time three years later, in 1985. For years, many states resisted the holiday, especially in the South. It was been celebrated in all 50 states since 2000.