Doctor Martin Luther King Jr was the central figure in the US civil rights movement that fought for equality for the black population.
Doctor Martin Luther King Jr was the central figure in the US civil rights movement that fought for equality for the black population.
The Baptist minister successfully steered the main body of the movement away from violence during the 1950s and 1960s when many commentators were predicting civil war between blacks and whites.
His policy of civil disobedience - essentially a refusal to obey laws and racist regulations that discriminated against black people - allowed him to win vital allies among liberal whites.
He was helped by his powerful skills as a public speaker, most famously demonstrated in his "I Have A Dream" speech delivered during the civil rights movement's March On Washington in 1963.
In the masterful 17-minute address, among the most famous in history, Dr King shared his vision of an America in which black and white would be able to live together in equality and harmony.
He began by stating that 100 years after African-Americans had won freedom from slavery during the Civil War they were still victims of racism and segregation, prejudices that in the southern states exploded into sustained campaigns of brutality and murder by whites of black people.
But, Dr King said, the time had come for America to honour the debt it owed to those whose ancestors had been forced into slavery.
In the most famous passage Dr King, his voice ringing with emotion, said: "And 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 colour of their skin but by the content of their character."
Dr King first rose to public prominence during the 1955 bus boycott in the city of Montgomery, Alabama.
It began after an African-American woman, Rosa Parks, refused to give up her bus seat to a white man, as the state's racist segregation laws required.
Dr King was among the leaders of a protest that saw Montgomery's black population boycott the city's buses for more than a year - causing severe financial damage.
Racist white groups firebombed Dr King's house as well as black churches. Those boycotting the buses were attacked.
But the campaign claimed victory when the US courts ruled that Alabama's bus laws were illegal.
Dr King became leader of the new Southern Christian Leadership Conference, a group dedicated to the non-violent promotion of civil rights.
The FBI's boss J Edgar Hoover conducted a clandestine campaign against Dr King, attempting to smear him by inventing links to communism and leaking reports alleging he cheated on his wife.
In 1963 Dr King organised a successful campaign of public demonstrations and sit-ins to protest against segregation in Birmingham, Alabama.
He was briefly jailed - but his reputation was boosted immensely when the Birmingham authorities relaxed their rules and sacked the notoriously racist police chief.
Just 18 days after his famous speech in Washington came an atrocity by the racist Ku Klux Klan organisation that exemplified the horrific campaign of violence and murder they carried out against black people in the deep south.
On September 15, four Klan members detonated dynamite under the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham during an evening service, killing four young black girls and injuring 20 more people. At the time Alabama's Governor George Wallace had been elected after an openly racist campaign.
In the mid-1960s Dr King joined the growing opposition in America to the Vietnam War. He focused on the "cruel irony" that many US troops in Vietnam were black - fighting for a country that denied them civil rights.
On April 4, 1968, Dr King was in Memphis, Tennessee, to make a series of speeches. As he stood on the balcony of his hotel room he was shot by a sniper, who fled. Dr King was pronounced dead at hospital.
The assassination stunned America and prompted race riots in Washington, Chicago and dozens of other cities.
In June, suspect James Earl Ray, an armed robber on the run from prison, was caught at London's Heathrow Airport carrying a false passport.
He was extradited to America and sentenced to 99 years in jail after admitting murder.
Ray later claimed he was innocent and only pleaded guilty to avoid the death penalty. His claim sparked numerous conspiracy theories about Dr King's death. Ray died in prison of kidney and liver failure in 1998.
Within days of Dr King's death, America passed the Civil Rights Act 1968 - making it illegal to discriminate on the basis of race or religion in matters of housing.
His wife Coretta Scott King continued his work and herself became a civil rights icon.
The house where Dr King grew up in Atlanta, Georgia, has become a national shrine.
In November 1983 President Ronald Reagan created a public holiday in Dr King's memory. Martin Luther King Jr Day is now celebrated on the third Monday of January.