On October 14, 1964, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was awarded the Nobel Peace -The Nobel Prize. At 35 years of age, the Georgia-born minister was the youngest person ever to receive the award. The focus was on his nonviolent resistance to racial injustice.He donated the prize money, valued at $54,600, to the civil rights movement.Martin Luther King Jr., was born in Atlanta in 1929, the son of a Baptist minister. He received a doctorate degree in theology and in 1955 organized the first major protest of the civil rights movement: the successful Montgomery Bus Boycott. Influenced by Mohandas Gandhi, he advocated nonviolent civil disobedience to racial segregation. The peaceful protests he led throughout the American South were often met with violence, but King and his followers persisted, and their nonviolent movement gained momentum.
