Birmingham Bus Boycott
On December 5, 1955, five days after Montgomery civil rights activist Rosa Parks refused to obey the city's rules mandating segregation on buses, black residents launched a bus boycott and elected King as president of the newly-formed Montgomery Improvement Association. As the boycott continued during 1956, King gained national prominence as a result of his exceptional oratorical skills and personal courage. His house was bombed and he was convicted along with other boycott leaders on charges of conspiring to interfere with the bus company's operations. Despite these attempts to suppress the movement, Montgomery bus were desegregated in December, 1956, after the United States Supreme Court declared Alabama's segregation laws unconstitutional.
Civil Rights Movement
Martin Luther King, Charles K. Steele, and Fred L. Shuttlesworth establish the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, of which King is made the first president. The SCLC becomes a major force in organizing the civil rights movement and bases its principles on nonviolence and civil disobedience. According to King, it is essential that the civil rights movement not sink to the level of the racists and hatemongers who oppose them: "We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline," he urges.
Who was Martin Luther King?
Born
in Atlanta on Jan. 15, 1929 Went to Morehouse College in Atlanta in 1944. Attended Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pa Became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Ala. Mobilized the black community during a 382-day boycott of the city's bus lines.
Martin Luther King Jr.
A QUOTE BY MARTIN LUTHER KING
“I accept the Nobel Prize for Peace at a moment when 22 million Negroes of the United States of America are engaged in a creative battle to end the long night of racial injustice. I accept this award on behalf of a civil rights movement which is moving with determination and a majestic scorn for risk and danger to establish a reign of freedom and a rule of justice. I am mindful that only yesterday in Birmingham, Alabama, our children, crying out for brotherhood, were answered with fire hoses, snarling dogs and even death. I am mindful that only yesterday in Philadelphia, Mississippi, young people seeking to secure the right to vote were brutalized and murdered. And only yesterday more than 40 houses of worship in the state of Mississippi alone were bombed or burned because they offered a sanctuary to those who would not accept segregation. I am mindful that deliberating and grinding poverty afflicts my people and chains them to the lowest rung of the economic ladder.” Martin Luther King’s acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize for Peace on Decem Luther King was…
Laid
the groundwork for the organization now known as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference Became co-pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church. Supported to the Memphis sanitation men's strike Threatened national boycotts Death came for King on April 4, 1968