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Exceptional vintage glossy 6.5 x 10 publicity photo of Martin Luther King, Jr. wearing a suit and tie in a handsome half-length pose, signed in blue ballpoint, “Best wishes, Martin Luther King, Jr.” Text to the lower border reads: “Montgomery, Alabama’s Rev. Martin Luther King.” In very good to fine condition, with scattered light creasing. Encapsulated and graded by PSA/DNA as "NM-MT 8."
Martin Luther King, Jr. earned the formal title of ‘Reverend’ after he was ordained as a Baptist minister on February 25, 1948, at the age of 19, while he was still a student at Morehouse College; his Bachelor of Divinity degree from Crozer Theological Seminary in 1951 further cemented his clerical standing. In 1954, while studying for his doctorate at Boston University, King was called as pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, where he served for roughly six years. He resigned in 1959 to concentrate on the civil rights movement and his relocation to Atlanta to direct the activities of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which he had become president of two years earlier. During his time at Dexter Avenue, King rose to national prominence for his role in the successful 1955-56 Montgomery Bus Boycott, the first successful large-scale application of nonviolent resistance, which led to the Supreme Court ruling that segregation on public buses was unconstitutional.
