The truth was, Martin Luther King Jr. was a pastor before he became a famous civil rights activist and spokesperson.
Martin Luther King Jr. was officially ordained as a minister in 1947. Shortly thereafter, King began fulfilling his duties as a minister at the Dexter Avenue Baptist church in 1954.
He then left the church to begin pursuing civil rights change through nonviolent means in 1959, returning to his hometown of Atlanta, Georgia. As he was working on the civil rights movement throughout the 60's, he also continued to act as a pastor at the same church his father was a pastor at: the Ebenezer Baptist Church.
Although Martin Luther King Jr. did become an ordained minister and pastor in 1947, when many people think of Martin Luther King Jr. they don’t first think of the man as a minister nor do they wonder when Martin Luther King became a pastor.
Instead, King is best known for being the most recognized civil rights spokesman in history to date, or even the Nobel Peace Prize winner, who was assassinated in the year 1968.
Most also recognize Martin Luther King Jr. as the man who gave the “I have a dream” speech outside the Lincoln Memorial in August of 1963.
The truth is King was a pastor first, his training and time as a pastor helped him to become the speaker he was. King, although he became a pastor in 1947, first stepped into the public eye in 1955, when he pioneered the Montgomery, Alabama city bus boycott after an uproar occurred over the arrest of Rosa Parks, an African American woman who was persecuted for refusing to give her bus seat up to a white woman. He remained in the public eye as the civil rights leader we still recognize today until his untimely death in 1968.