Martin Luther King

... was named Michael at birth, after his father. Around five years later, Michael Sr. changed both their forenames to Martin Luther.

Martin Luther King Sr. – a Baptist minister, in whose footsteps his son would follow – would later claim that 'Michael' was a mistake by the attending physician at his son's birth, and the son's birth certificate was altered in 1957 (when he was 28 years old) to read "Martin Luther King Jr.".

© Haydn Thompson 2018