Who was alive at the same time as Martin Luther King Jr.?

American Baptist minister and civil rights leader

Martin Luther King Jr. lived 1929–1968. Here are the famous people whose lives overlapped with theirs.

Lived: 1929–1968
Lifespan: about 39 years
Born in, as it was then: Atlanta, GA
On today’s map: United States

Explore Martin Luther King Jr.’s world on the timeline →

Did you know?

When Martin Luther King Jr. was born, Adolf Hitler was already about 40 years old.
Martin Luther King Jr. was about 6 when Elvis Presley was born.
Martin Luther King Jr. and Albert Einstein (German-born theoretical physicist) shared about 26 years on Earth, one born in the United States and the other in Germany.
Pablo Picasso outlived Martin Luther King Jr. by about 5 years.

Famous contemporaries of Martin Luther King Jr.

Rulers and commanders

Adolf Hitler 1889–1945 · 16 yrs shared
Joseph Stalin 1878–1953 · 24 yrs shared
Benito Mussolini 1883–1945 · 16 yrs shared
Mao Zedong 1893–1976 · 39 yrs shared
Winston Churchill 1874–1965 · 36 yrs shared
Charles de Gaulle 1890–1970 · 39 yrs shared

Philosophers and scientists

Albert Einstein 1879–1955 · 26 yrs shared
Sigmund Freud 1856–1939 · 10 yrs shared
Thomas Edison 1847–1931 · 2 yrs shared
Marie Curie 1867–1934 · 5 yrs shared
John Maynard Keynes 1883–1946 · 17 yrs shared
Ludwig Wittgenstein 1889–1951 · 22 yrs shared

Religion

Pope John Paul II 1920–2005 · 39 yrs shared

Writers and artists

Pablo Picasso 1881–1973 · 39 yrs shared
Elvis Presley 1935–1977 · 33 yrs shared
Salvador Dalí 1904–1989 · 39 yrs shared
Marilyn Monroe 1926–1962 · 33 yrs shared
Le Corbusier 1887–1965 · 36 yrs shared
Jean-Paul Sartre 1905–1980 · 39 yrs shared

Explorers and others

Che Guevara 1928–1967 · 38 yrs shared
Mahatma Gandhi 1869–1948 · 19 yrs shared
Walt Disney 1901–1966 · 37 yrs shared
Mother Teresa 1910–1997 · 39 yrs shared
Pelé 1940–2022 · 28 yrs shared

Born within five years of Martin Luther King Jr.

Che Guevara (1928) · Marilyn Monroe (1926) · Andy Warhol (1928) · Fidel Castro (1926) · Stanley Kubrick (1928) · Gabriel García Márquez (1927) · Marlon Brando (1924) · Mikhail Gorbachev (1931)

About Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr. was an American civil rights activist and Baptist minister who was a prominent leader of the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968. He advanced civil rights in the United States through the use of nonviolence and sometimes civil disobedience against Jim Crow laws and other forms of legalized discrimination, which most commonly affected African Americans.

Text from Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.

More people

Adolf Hitler · Albert Einstein · Che Guevara · Mahatma Gandhi · Joseph Stalin · Elvis Presley · Benito Mussolini · Marilyn Monroe