9 surprising facts about MLK

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., the slain civil rights leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner, is lionized each year at ceremonies on the federal holiday in his honor. Here’s what you may not know about him.

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1. He sang at the debut of 'Gone With The Wind'

At age 9, Martin Luther King Jr. sang in his church choir at the Dec. 15, 1939, Atlanta premiere of the Civil War-era romance. One of the film's stars, Hattie McDaniel, refused to attend because Loew's Grand Theatre had separate sections for black and white filmgoers.

/ Turner Entertainment

2. As a teen, he had doubts about his faith

At 13, he told stunned Sunday school classmates that he did not believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus. It was among the doubts he had in his youth, the minister recounted in his autobiography.

/ Family photo

3. He was persistent — and quick

King met Coretta Scott when both were students (he at Boston University's divinity school; she at the New England Conservatory of Music). They first talked by telephone, and King, charmed, invited her to lunch near his apartment. "I usually make it in 10 minutes, but tomorrow, I'll make it in seven,'' Coretta Scott King, in a 2003 interview, recalled him saying. Boston Globe: ‘When Martin met Coretta’

Gene Herrick / AP

While in Harlem signing books in a department store, he was stabbed in the chest by a black woman. He was critically wounded. <a data-xslt='_http' href='http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/encyclopedia/enc_curry_izola_ware_1916/'>RELATED: The woman who almost killed King</a>

4. He almost died in 1958

While in Harlem signing books in a department store, he was stabbed in the chest by a black woman. He was critically wounded. RELATED: The woman who almost killed King

John Lent / AP

5. He had been leaning toward Nixon in 1960

In the tight 1960 presidential race, many black Southern preachers were suspicious of John F. Kennedy and his Catholicism. In late October, Kennedy called a pregnant Coretta Scott King to express his remorse at the arrest of her husband during a lunch-counter protest in Atlanta. King, touched by the gesture, later said he voted for Kennedy and would have endorsed him in 1964, had Kennedy lived. King: ‘I had known Nixon longer’

/ AP

6. Robert F. Kennedy authorized wiretapping of King

The younger Kennedy, then U.S. attorney general, directed the FBI to begin the wiretaps to monitor possible communist infiltration of the civil rights movement. The wiretaps began weeks before John F. Kennedy's assassination in 1963. King received letters, attributed to the FBI, threatening to reveal damaging information if he did not cease his civil rights work. The FBI transcripts and audiotapes are in the National Archives but ordered sealed from public access until 2027.

William J. Smith / AP

7. 'The Farce on Washington'

Many black leaders derided what would come to be the then-largest gathering of protesters in Washington — the 1963 march that was the venue for his 17-minute ''I Have a Dream'' speech. Malcolm X had called it a farce, a sanitized version of racial harmony. The Nation of Islam forbade followers from attending.

/ AP

8. He was a Trekkie

Martin Luther King Jr. loved the TV show ''Star Trek'' and persuaded actress Nichelle Nichols, who played Lt. Uhura, to stay on the show, she said. She and William Shatner (at left) had the first interracial kiss on an American TV series. MLK’s ‘Star Trek’ connection

NBC

9. Most admired American of the century

In 1999, the polling organization Gallup listed the people Americans most admired in the 20th century. Only the Albanian-born Mother Teresa scored higher. King was more admired than John F. Kennedy, Albert Einstein and Helen Keller.

Katherine Frey / The Washington Post

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