High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Reverend Martin Luther King, Sr. (December 19, 1899 November 11, 1984), born as Michael King, was a Baptist minister, an advocate for social justice, an early civil rights leader, and the father of Martin Luther King, Jr. King, Sr. led the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia and became a leader of the civil rights movement, as the head of the NAACP chapter in Atlanta and of the Civic and Political League. He encouraged his son to become active in the movement.