In ’56 King was arrested on charges of controlling operational buses illegally without a cause. After all he went through, I would have to respect him greatly for what he did because this didn’t stop him from reaching his goal. In the year 1958, he published a book called “Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story” which told many of such goals he was striving or reaching for. Later in 1960, King moved to Atlanta and became a co-pastor and soon led a march
During this time Rosa Parks was arrested for failure to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery city bus. In 1955, the incident regarding the bus lite a fire under the Civil Rights Movement. Kings experience, passion for the cause and position in the community gave him the credentials to become a leader of the 381 day boycott of the city buses. On December 20, 1956, the Supreme Court ruled segregated buses to be unconstitutional this was a major victory for the Civil Rights cause and also proved that Kings non-violent methods of protest could yield
Firstly, Martin Luther King’s campaigns for desegregation were mainly a success. The Montgomery bus boycott was King’s first major success; he became the leader of the civil rights movement after giving a spell bounding speech in a church where the boycott meeting was held. The end result of the 382 day campaign was the bus company and the city authorities finally accepting a Supreme Court decision (Browder v Gayle) that bus segregation was unconstitutional. As well as this, the lunch counter sit-ins in 1960 led to the desegregation of public facilities in cities all over the South. Furthermore success of the Birmingham campaign in 1961 and the March on Washington in 1963 (including the significant “I have a dream” speech) led to the passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act in 1964 and perhaps marked the high point of King’s career.
On October 14 1964, King received the Nobel Peace Prize for combating racial inequality through nonviolence. King was brutally assassinated on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee. After his death, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977 and Congressional Gold Medal in 2004. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was established as a U.S. federal holiday in 1986. Hundreds of streets in the U.S. and beyond have been renamed in his honor.
King’s first leadership role in the civil rights movement was as an executive in the National Association for the Advancement of colored people where he lead and organized the year long Montgomery Bus Boycott. Later the Boycott would lead to the U.S Supreme Court to rule that segregated buses were unconstitutional. He also became President of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. The group was different because they only used nonviolent strategies to get their point across and expose the evils of oppression. Martin Luther King spoke over 2,500 times and led marches and nonviolent demonstrations for black people to vote, desegregation, labor and other basic civil rights for all.
As a leader of the American civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, Martin Luther King argues for the urgency of changing segregation laws. In his “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” it addresses the public statement made by the Eight Alabama Clergymen. King effectively proves that his demonstration in Alabama was not “unwise and untimely” as his fellow clergyman has stated through the use of sentence structures, an anaphora, and some metaphors. To demonstrate his desperation for change, King stresses on the amount of time the Africans in the United States had waited through a well-planned use of sentence structures. He repeats “wait” in paragraph 13 to build up tension and to place more emphasis to the word.
I believe the Montgomery bus boycott was the most important event in the 1950s -1960s in changing the civil rights for African-Americans, because this event gained internationally attention. On the 1st of December 1955 a white man requested for Rosa Parks’ seat however she refused as it seemed unreasonable. Leading her to be arrested, this act was very important because it went against the Jim Crow which was created to force segregation in public school systems, kept many African-Americans from moving out of segregated neighbourhoods and often made it difficult for African-Americans to vote. Overall it was very unfair to the black community, as a result the black community in Alabama started a non-violent boycott of the buses, leaving buses only half full this had a major financial impact on bus companies as it was the black community who used buses the most and the event was lead by Martin Luther King. This event was important because it gained international attention which put pressure on the different structures of the American government to make changes, and finally in 1965 the Supreme Court ruled that segregation on buses was illegal.
His autopsy revealed that though he was only 39 years old, he had the heart of a 60 year old man which includes the stress of being a human right activist Martin Luther King fought for racial discrimination in America. During Martin Luther King’s time on earth, there were so many laws passed at that time that includes, blacks and whites if in a public bus; the blacks should be seated at the rear while the whites in front. Whites should be paid more than black when the same job is done by both of them. Whites and blacks should not be given the same type of education. In general, blacks were seen as
Martin Luther King Jr. was an African American man who protested for the rights of freedom and equality for all the African American's present in the United States of America. He lead the Civil Rights Movement for all the black American's who were being treated unfairly during the period of 1950 to 1970. Formerly named Michael King, his father changed his name to MKL in honor of the German reformer Martin Luther. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 for his fight against racial in-equality using non-violence. He gave the speech "I Have a Dream" in 1963 on the "March to Washington" after which he established himself as one of the greatest orators in the history of America.
Born Malcolm Little in Omaha, Nebraska on May 19, 1925, he converted to Islam while serving time in prison from 1946 to 1952. Upon his release from prison he joined the Nation of Islam (NoI) and dropped his surname of “Little” and replaced it with “X” as was common practice of members of the Nation of Islam. Malcolm X preached of the evil that white society represented and the superiority of black over whites. He urged his followers to defend themselves “by any means necessary” which included and endorsed the use of violence. These ideals later served as the foundation for Black Nationalism and the Back Power movements.