The extraordinary bond that existed between the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel began in 1963, ending only when King was assassinated in Memphis five years later.
King was born in 1929 in Atlanta and grew up during the violent Jim Crow era of racial segregation that impacted all aspects of King’s daily life. A third-generation Baptist minister, he received a doctorate at Boston University in 1955. Five years later, King became the co-pastor, with his father, of the prestigious Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta.