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50 free Martin Luther King Jr. Trivia for Kids trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Martin Luther King Jr. trivia for kids quiz is written for children aged roughly eight to twelve, and for the teachers and parents running a classroom game around MLK Day. The questions cover his life in a way kids can follow: where he was born, the name he was given at birth, the grade he skipped, the college he went to at fifteen, who he married and how many children they had, and the job he did as a minister. It also covers the big moments of the civil rights movement he led: Rosa Parks and the Montgomery bus boycott, the March on Washington and the 'I Have a Dream' speech, the Letter from Birmingham Jail, the Selma marches, the Nobel Peace Prize, and how his birthday became a national holiday and a day of service. His death is mentioned only briefly and without detail. For older students there is a full Martin Luther King Jr. trivia quiz on BrainPickle with harder questions. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia articles on Dr. King, his speeches and the holiday, and each explanation adds one more thing worth knowing.
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Q 01In which city was Martin Luther King Jr. born?
Atlanta, Georgia
He was born on January 15, 1929, the second of three children.
Q 02What was Martin Luther King Jr.'s first name when he was born?
Michael
His father later changed both their names after a trip to Germany, where he visited places linked to the reformer Martin Luther.
Q 03Martin had an older sister and a younger brother. What was his sister's name?
Christine
His little brother was Alfred Daniel, known as A.D.
Q 04Which year of school did young Martin skip entirely?
Ninth grade
He was such a strong student that he started college while still a teenager.
Q 05At 13, Martin became the youngest assistant manager of a delivery station for what?
A newspaper
The paper was the Atlanta Journal.
Q 06Where did Martin study after high school, following his father and grandfather?
Morehouse College
He earned a degree in sociology there before training to be a minister.
Q 07What job did Martin Luther King Jr. do, besides being a civil rights leader?
He was a Baptist minister
He preached at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Alabama and later at Ebenezer Baptist in Atlanta.
Q 08In which city did Martin Luther King Jr. study for his doctorate?
Boston
He studied theology at Boston University and helped out at a church there.
Q 09Who did Martin Luther King Jr. marry?
Coretta Scott
They met while he was studying for his doctorate and she was studying music.
Q 10What was his future wife studying when she met Martin?
Music
She was at the New England Conservatory of Music and was a talented singer.
Q 11How many children did Martin and Coretta have?
Four
Their names were Yolanda, Martin III, Dexter and Bernice.
Q 12How old was Martin when he took charge of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Alabama?
25
That church was at the heart of the city's Black community.
Q 13Which woman was arrested in 1955 for refusing to give up her bus seat, starting a famous boycott?
Rosa Parks
She is sometimes called the 'mother of the civil rights movement'.
Q 14What job did the woman whose arrest started the bus boycott do?
Q 21Which magazine named Martin Luther King Jr. its Person of the Year for 1963?
Time
In 2000 the same magazine's readers voted him sixth 'Person of the Century'.
Q 22From which city's jail did Martin Luther King Jr. write a famous open letter in 1963?
Birmingham
He wrote it after being arrested during peaceful protests in Alabama.
Q 23The 1965 Selma marches went from Selma to which city, the capital of Alabama?
Montgomery
The route was about 54 miles long.
Q 24The Selma marchers crossed a bridge named after which man?
Seamstress
She sewed clothes for a living in Montgomery.
Q 15During the 1955 bus boycott, what did Black residents refuse to do?
Ride the city buses
The boycott began on December 5, 1955, and lasted more than a year.
Q 16Which leader from India inspired Martin Luther King Jr.'s peaceful way of protesting?
Mahatma Gandhi
Gandhi's ideas were partly built on the American writer Henry David Thoreau.
Q 17Where did Martin Luther King Jr. give his 'I Have a Dream' speech?
The steps of the Lincoln Memorial
More than 250,000 people came to Washington, D.C., to hear it.
Q 18On what date was the 'I Have a Dream' speech given?
August 28, 1963
It was the high point of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
Q 19Which singer is said to have shouted 'Tell them about the dream!' during his speech?
Mahalia Jackson
She was his friend and later sang his favourite hymn at his funeral.
Q 20What big international award did Martin Luther King Jr. win in 1964?
The Nobel Peace Prize
He won it for fighting racial inequality without violence.
Edmund Pettus
About 600 marchers set out on March 7, 1965, a day remembered as Bloody Sunday.
Q 25What was Martin Luther King Jr. planning in 1968 to help struggling Americans of every race?
The Poor People's Campaign
It was to be a huge gathering in Washington, D.C.
Q 26Whom did Martin Luther King Jr. travel to Memphis to support in 1968?
Sanitation workers
The city's garbage collectors were on strike for better treatment.
Q 27How old was Martin Luther King Jr. when he died in 1968?
39
He was born in 1929 and died on April 4, 1968.
Q 28Which president signed the law creating Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 1983?
Ronald Reagan
The holiday was first celebrated three years later, in January 1986.
Q 29On which day is Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebrated?
The third Monday of January
It falls close to his birthday, January 15.
Q 30Which musician released the song 'Happy Birthday' in 1980 to help make Martin's birthday a holiday?
Stevie Wonder
He also hosted a Rally for Peace press conference in 1981.