Martin Luther King, Jr. grew up in Atlanta, Georgia , the son of an adoring mother and a Baptist minister, Mike King, who had a strong interest in civil rights. Both father and son were named after the German priest Martin Luther, who had spearheaded the Protestant Reformation in Europe. "It was relatively strict [growing] up in a minister's home," King once said. "I faced the discipline that you would face in a very fervent religious background.... I didn't start out with an interest to enter the ministry. At first, after finishing high school, I was interested in going into law, and also medicine at one point.... But I finally decided to enter the ministry."

By 1954, Martin Luther King had finished college and seminary, and had earned a Ph.D. from Boston University's School of Theology. When he graduated he was ready to put his faith and principles into action. In 1954 he headed back South, where segregation ruled and blacks were intimidated as part of daily life. He took a job at a small church in Montgomery, Alabama.

"Well, I started out as a pastor in Montgomery, Alabama," he said. "I had no idea that I would be catapulted into a position of leadership in the civil rights struggle in the United States."

In 1955, buses in all the southern states were segregated . Laws said that the seats in front were for whites, those in the back for blacks . Suddenly this issue flared up into prominence. Martin Luther King later narrated the key incident of a new movement: "On the 1st of December, 1955 a Negro woman was arrested, Mrs. Rosa Parks, for refusing to give up her seat to a boarding white passenger ."

Rosa Parks was a tailor's assistant in a department store in Montgomery, Alabama. A small, soft-voiced, forty-two year old woman, she was also a civil rights activist—secretary of the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP (the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) . But on the evening of December 1, 1955, Mrs. Parks was mostly just plain tired. She had put in a full day at her job. She got on a bus and headed home .

When all the seats on the bus filled up, the driver asked Rosa to stand and give her seat to a white man. Rosa Parks wouldn't budge . She knew she might get into trouble, but suddenly she found herself filled with determination. She stayed in her seat. Later she wrote: "People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was tired of giving in."

Rosa Parks is soon on her way to jail . She knows that blacks are beaten and abused in Montgomery's jail. It doesn't seem to matter to her. She is tired of riding on segregated buses. She is tired of being pushed around.