Google Doodle/Xia Gordon

Google celebrated Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Monday with a Doodle depicting the late civil rights leader studying at home.

King was born Jan. 15, 1929, in Atlanta, and rose to prominence by advocating for civil rights through nonviolence and civil disobedience.

He led the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott against the policy of racial segregation in the Alabama city's public transit system. In 1963, he delivered his iconic I Have a Dream speech, calling for an end to racism, during the March on Washington.

In the years that followed, his activism won him the Nobel Peace Prize and he helped organize the Selma to Montgomery civil rights marches. He was killed by assassin's bullet at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968.

However, his legacy continues in legislation like the 1956 Supreme Court ruling against segregation on buses, the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, Google noted. President Ronald Reagan signed Martin Luther King Jr. Day into law as a US federal holiday in 1983, and it's observed on the third Monday of January each year.

"Life's most persistent and urgent question is, 'What are you doing for others?' " King told an audience in Montgomery in 1957.

Monday's Doodle was done by Brooklyn-based artist Xia Gordon, who wanted to depict King "studying, writing and preparing to appear at the events that we are already so familiar with."

It's not the first time Google Doodle has paid tribute to King. Last year, it depicted a girl among a crowd listening to one of his speeches. It offered an image of King taking part in the Selma march in 2015, after a peaceful image the previous year. In 2013, a Doodle marked the 50th anniversary of I Have a Dream speech.

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