Martin Luther King, Jr. , an American activist and the leader of African-American Civil Rights Movement. He was a Baptist minister. He started his career as an advocate but he became a civil rights activist early in his career. He is also known for his role in advancement of civil rights with the help of nonviolent civil disobedience. His speech I Have a Dream established him as one of the greatest orators. He was highly influenced by Mahatma Gandhi and had visited his birthplace in 1959. He also led 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott.

As we all know that he was a very famous person and hence people know a lot about him. To us he is a source of great knowledge and quotes. He was like a saint. So here we are to discuss top ten unknown facts about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s .

10.)His last words

King’s last words were:”Ben, make sure you play: Take My Hand, Precious Lord in the meeting tonight. Play it real pretty.” to Ben Branch. It was personally his favourite song and he used to listen it a lot. His last words later on became his last wish as at his funeral, his friend Mahaila Jackson sang the same song for him.

9.)Rapid Worker

King accomplished a lot of tasks in very little time. He entered Morehouse College at the age of fifteen only without formally graduating from high school as he had skipped his ninth and twelfth grade. Then also he had bachelor degrees in sociology and theology. He received his Ph.D. degree from the Boston University in 1955. From 1957 to 1968, he travelled more than 6 million miles in less than 11 years. He wrote 5 books and published a number of articles during the same span. He gave over 2500 speeches. He was the youngest person to achieve the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 aged only 35. A lot of work done in his small lifespan of 39 years.

8.)Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive

There are more than 1,000 streets all over the world named after Martin Luther King, Jr. , 730+ belonging to American cities alone. King’s state Georgia contains 105+ streets named over him. They can be found in nearly every major metropolis in America. Only a few states in America doesn’t have any street named on him.

7.)The old young man

He was shot at his motel on April 4, 1968. An emergency chest surgery was performed after that. He was pronounced dead after 64 minutes of the incident. The intresting thing was that his autopsy revealed that he had the heart of a sixty year old man whereas he was only 39 years old. Perhaps, it was a result of the lot of stress he was gone through during the13 years of civil right movement. Also an intresting fact was that he once himself had verbally predicted that he was not going live past the age of 40.

6.)Martin and Music

Martin Luther King, Jr. have always been related to music in some way or the other. U2 band had him as a subject of their famous song Pride. In 1939, he sang with his church choir at gala premiere of the blockbuster movie Gone With The Wind in Atlanta. The movie was the highest earning movie for the next 30 years. Schmoyoho(a Youtube channel) had remixed all of the best King’s speeches as songs. They were taken down by the King estate later on.

5.)Izola Ware Curry

King was assassinated by James Earl Ray on April 4, 1968 but it was not the first assassination attempt made on his life. A black woman Izola Wale Curry tried to assassinate him on September 20, 1958 at a book signing event in New York. She approached him and asked him if he was Martin Luther King, Jr. and when he said yes, she said she had been looking for him for the past five years and then stabbed his chest with a steel letter opener. To extract the opener the whole chest had to be opened as the opener was very close to aorta of King. A slight mistake would have punctured his aorta causing his death which would have been a major setback for the civil right movement but thank god he survived and accomplished the movement.

4.)Martyr at Westminster Abbey

The Collegiate Church of St Peter at Westminster is an old large Gothic church formed in 100 A.D.. It houses the statues of the martyrs who suffers persecution and death for refusing to renounce or accept, a belief or cause, usually religious of a vast time period. King is one of the only ten 20th century martyrs who has a statue at Westminster Abbey as a Baptist. The statue was unveiled before the Queen herself.

3.)Wait for 2027

F.B.I. targeted King for investigation related to communist sympathies. Church committee quoted that from December 1963 until his death in 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. was a target of an intensive campaign of the Federal Bureau of Investigation which wanted to neutralize him as an effective civil rights leader. His calls were taped under a written directive from Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and have recorded a large amount of data which they claim to show King’s unsavoury nature. In 1986 a large amount of information was suppressed by a judge recorded while the King was under observation. It is said that the file contains near about 17,000 pages of information. The F.B.I. file is going to remain top secret till 2027. So there would be a lot of secrets which are going to be revealed in 2027. Let’s just wait.

2.)There was no dream

“I Have a Dream” is a 17 minute public speech given by Martin Luther King, Jr. which have been ranked as the best American speech of the 20th century, it was actually named as “Normalcy, Never Again”. The words “I Have a Dream” were never in the original draft, they were added right on the spot. When the speech was going to end, the famous African American gospel singer Mahaila Jackson shouted to him from the crowd to tell the public present there about the dream and after that Dr. King actually started preaching instead of delivering his original speech, supporting his points with “I Have a Dream” quotes and gifting us with one of the greatest ever speeches. Also in 1963 Twentieth Century Fox released an album of the speech and King sued the album.

1.)Michael King Jr.

King’s official name was Michael King Jr. not Martin Luther King, Jr.. His father was known as Michael King until one day he came to know that his name was Martin Luther King after the great leader of the Proestant Reformation. His father once said that none of his parents were able to read or write and no record of Negro births was used to be kept at the backwoods county. He had gladly accepted the name Martin Luther King and when M.L. was born, he named him as Martin Luther King, Jr.. But in 1934, once when he was seeking his first ever passport, he found out that Dr. Johnson, who delivered Dr. King, had listed him in the records as Michael Luther King, Jr. , as he thought of it as his real name. When Martin Luther King, Jr. came to know this he changed his name. But legally it was never changed and hence until his death he officially remained Michael King, Jr.