When Martin Luther King, Sr. (above)
was asked by a New York Post reporter
in 1957 about the name “Michael Luther King, Jr.”
on his son’s birth certificate, King Sr. responded,
“I had been known as Michael Luther King or “Mike”
up until I was 22… when one day my father,
James Albert King, told me, ‘You aren’t named Mike or Michael either.
Your name is Martin Luther King. Your mother just called you Mike for short.’

Neither of my parents could read or write and they kept no record
of negro births in our backwoods county… when M.L. was born, I proudly named him Martin Luther King, Jr. But it was not until 1934, when I was seeking my first passport… that I found out that Dr. Johnson, who delivered M.L., had listed him in the city records as Michael Luther King, Jr. because he thought that was my real name.”

BOTTOM LINE:
MLK Jr. was 5 years old
when he learned that the name
on his birth certificate wasn't “Martin”
but “Michael.”