Martin Luther King Jr. Biography Part- 2

The Southern Christian Leadership Conference

Flush with victory, African-American civil rights leader the need for a national organization to help coordinate their efforts recognized. In January 1957, Martin Luther King Jr., Ralph Abernathy, 60 ministers and civil rights activist, moral authority and organizing power of black churches to harness the Southern Christian Leadership Conference founded. They promote the reform of non-violent civil rights demonstrations will help to manage. King's part of a base of operations throughout the south, as well as has a national platform. To give them a voice vote in the process of organizing African Americans were given the freedom felt the best place to start. In February 1958, SCLC Southern black voter registration is the key southern city of more than 20 mass meetings sponsored. The king met with the leaders of religious and civil rights and race-related issues and lectured all over the country.
In 1959, with the help of the American Friends Service Committee, and with the non-violent activism inspired by the success with Gandhi, Martin Luther King's birthplace has visited India. A deeply affected him deeply trip, the United States is increasing its commitment to the civil rights struggle. African-American civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, who had studied Gandhi's teachings, he became one of his associates, and advised him to devote himself to the principles of non-violence. Rustin's mentor and advisor throughout his early activism in Washington in 1963 and served as the chief organizer of the march. Rustin also controversial figure, but at the time was the Communist Party, alleged ties with the United States being a lesbian. Although his advice was invaluable to the king, and many of his other supporters to distance himself from Rustin insist.

In February 1960, a group of African-American students in Greensboro began to "sit-in" movement, became known as North Carolina. Students racially segregated lunch counters of stores sit. When asked to leave or sit in the colored section, they just sit in their own subject to verbal and sometimes physical abuse. The movement quickly gained traction in several other cities. In April 1960, SCLC leaders of the local program with the Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina at the conference. Martin Luther King Jr. during a non-violent methods to be used for students to continue their protest. Out of these meetings, the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee and for a time, SCLC work closely with. In August 1960, the lunch counter sit-27 South in the city has been successful in ending segregation.

By 1960, Martin Luther King Jr. gained national notoriety. Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, he returned with his father to become co-pastor, but his civil rights efforts. October 19, 1960, the king and the 75 students at a local department store and lunch counter service, but the request was denied. When they refused to leave the counter area, King and 36 others were detained. Realizing that hit the city's reputation, Atlanta Mayor ceasefire talks and eventually dropped the charges. But soon after, he was imprisoned for violating his probation on a conviction that traffic. News of his imprisonment, when entered into the 1960 presidential campaign, candidate John F. Kennedy made a phone call from Coretta Scott King. Kennedy expressed his concern for the traffic ticket for the King's harsh treatment of political pressure, and were quickly set in motion. King was released soon.

"I have a dream '

In the spring of 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. in downtown Birmingham, Alabama organized a demonstration. He joined the family. City police dogs and fire hoses turned on. Martin Luther King was jailed along with large numbers of supporters, but the incident drew attention nationwide. However, the King personally accept the risk of endangering children who attended the protest was criticized by black and white clergy. "Nonviolent direct action to create such a crisis and such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate, it is forced to deal seeks to foster: From Birmingham Jail, King eloquently spelled out his theory of non-violence."

At the end of the Birmingham campaign, Martin Luther King Jr. and his supporters in the capital, a massive demonstration was designed to consist of more than one organization, all asking for peaceful change. August 28, 1963, on Washington's Lincoln Memorial in the shadow of the historic march attracted more than 200,000 people. It is here that the King's famous "I Have a Dream" speech, he emphasized the belief that one day all men were brothers could be.

"I have seen in a dream, that one day my four children in a nation where the color of their skin but by the content of their character will be judged by the will to live." - Martin Luther King, Jr. / speech "I have a dream", August 28, 1963

The rising tide of the civil rights movement produced a strong impact on public opinion. Do not pull the racist Jim Crow laws, many cities experienced African-American citizens and second-class treatment of the century began to be questioned. This allowed the federal government to enforce the desegregation of public housing and publicly owned facilities discrimination outlawing 1964 as a result of the passage of the Civil Rights Act. In addition, in 1964, under the leadership of Martin Luther King receives the Nobel Peace Prize.

King's struggle continued throughout the 1960s. Often, it seemed as if there was progress in the pattern of two steps forward and one step back. March 7, 1965 in a civil rights march, from Selma to Montgomery in Alabama's capital plan, as violent protesters met police nightsticks and tear gas Edmund Pettus Bridge as they tried to cross. The king was in March, but the tragic attack on the procession on television was showing images of bloody and seriously injured. Seventeen protesters were hospitalized leading event named "Bloody Sunday." The second took place in March for a restraining order to prevent the march was canceled. The third march was planned and this time he was sure he had it. Do not violate the restraining order is transferred to the south of judges, was taken a different tact. March 9, 1965, 2,500 marchers, both black and white, in a procession, again set to face Pettus Bridge and cross the barricades and military state. Instead of forcing a confrontation, the king kneel in prayer with his followers, and they turned away. The king caused the loss of support among younger African-American leaders, but it is nonetheless Voting Rights Act of 1965, support for the passage aroused.


From late 1965 through 1967, Martin Luther King Jr. and other large American cities, including Chicago and Los Angeles, to expand its Civil Rights Movement. But he's young black power and public criticism from the leaders met with challenges. Kings patient, apply non-violent approach and a lot of white, middle-class citizens are too weak and too late black militant in its methods considered isolated. Sharp-tongued, blue jean young urban black eyes, the Kings were passive and irresponsible manner deemed to be non-functional. To address the criticism starts to create a link between the discrimination and poverty. Extend his civil rights efforts against the Vietnam War. He believed that the American involvement in the Vietnam war politically untenable and discriminatory to the poor was the government's behavior. He disadvantaged people in order to address the problem of unemployment in the economy and a multi-nation alliance wanted to expand his base.

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