Alveda King was born Alveda Celeste King on January 22, 1951, in
Atlanta, Georgia. She was the first of five children of
Alfred Daniel King, the younger brother of
Martin Luther King Jr., and his wife Naomi (Barber) King. King says her mother wanted to abort her so she could continue college, but her grandfather was able to persuade her to keep her child. When she was 12, her father became a leader of the
Birmingham campaign while serving as pastor at the First Baptist Church of Ensley in
Ensley near
Birmingham, Alabama. Later that same year, King's house was bombed by opponents to the civil rights movement. In 1969, her father, A. D. King, was found dead in the pool at his home. The cause of death was listed as an accidental drowning.
Martin Luther King Sr. wrote in his autobiography, "Alveda had been up the night before, she said, talking with her father and watching a television movie with him. He'd seemed unusually quiet... and not very interested in the film. But he had wanted to stay up and Alveda left him sitting in an easy chair, staring at the TV, when she went off to bed.... I had questions about A. D.'s death, and I still have them now. He was a good swimmer. Why did he drown? I don't know—I don't know that we will ever know what happened." ==Education==