Under William Anderson, a number of local black organisations were formed in an attempt to desegregate the city. By mid-December, 500 demonstrators had been jailed. Anderson invited King’s help to maintain the movement and secure national publicity for the non-violent protest. The tactics of non-violence however did not work because the Head of Police in Albany, Laurie Pritchett, had learned from previous protests and campaigns that no violence should be used against the protestors to ensure less media coverage and less sympathy for the black protestors. Pritchett went on to arrest protestors but he made sure that the jails were not filled by them.
To co-ordinate the boycott, an organisation called the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) was created. The President of this was Martin Luther King. The Boycott lasted a year. In that time the black community organised car-pools to ensure everyone could get to work, most of the bus companies revenue came from coloured riders so this lost them a lot of money. The Boycott led to the ruling that declared segregation on the buses unconstitutional.
I believe that the contribution of Martin Luther King was huge for the Civil Rights Campaign, however many important campaigners were overshadowed by King who possibly got too much credit when it was due elsewhere. King had a giant effect on the progress of the advancement of black civil rights. The first major part he played in improving the social standing of black civilians was in his role governing the Montgomery Bus Boycott between 1955 and 1956. This boycott aimed to achieve, which it eventually did, the desegregation of public buses, which was partly initiated by Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat for a white man when asked to do so, who was then arrested. King was invited to lead the body which was coordinating the boycott, the Montgomery Improvement Association, so he was not responsible for creating and starting off this successful campaign, however his alluring personality and leadership skills helped motivate the campaign brilliantly.
How far was peaceful protest responsible for the successes of the civil rights movement in the years 1955-64? In the time period of 1955-64 there was numerous amount of civil right movements organised by groups such as NAACP, SCLC, SNCC and CORE that took place from the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955 to the Mississippi freedom summer of 1964. During this period there was major progression for African American civil rights as there were many legal and social changes, which ended certain segregations. The peaceful protests can be seen as being mainly responsible for helping to make these changes happen however there are other reasons which made legal and social changes getting achieved. Peaceful protests were an effective method of the civil rights movement and brought African Americans a lot of success.
Martin Luther King’s role in the Montgomery Bus Boycott was being a leader. The setting up of the NACCP in 1909 illustrates that rising social tensions regarding the advancement of coloured people in the sense of state endorsed racial discrimination, and public segregation had been exhausted for over half a century. This suggests, if the desire to protest didn't exist then the boycott would never have succeeded regardless of King's existence and efforts, as stated by King “There comes a time when time itself is ready for change.” So the success of the Montgomery bus boycott depended on how strong the black communities desire to keep on protesting and was not just a single man regulating them. Since desires to protest were already implemented before King’s existence, it would only be natural to exaggerate the role of ‘the single man that made it happen.’ In 1913 the NACCP showed that it could organize a respectable opposition against government policy such as the Jim Crow laws; over a decade before King was even born. As King stated “I just happened to be here” This suggests that even without King’s Existence and role, the NAACP succeeded in bringing equality to the black community.
Although it can be argued that this help from the federal government was what enabled the civil rights movement to defeat Jim Crow between the years 1960-1965, it has to be recognized that this federal government intervention was contingent to ratchet events which unfolded such as the rash of student sit-ins which occurred in the spring of 1960. This had catalyzed the movement led by Martin Luther King and his organization – the SCLC – which, after the Greensboro sit in mobilized the new grass-roots behind the encompassing struggle for federal intervention against Jim Crow in the south. To add to that, further pressure was added on the federal government to act in pursuit of Civil Rights, as white attitudes were changing in both the north and south due to the progression of technology which made the civil rights movement not only a national topic but an international topic but also in a sense America was slowly ‘growing up’. Therefore, although it could be argued that the federal government intervention was what had led to the ultimate demise of Jim Crow between the years 1960-1965, it has to be acknowledged that there were outside factors which catalyzed in a sense ratcheted up federal government intervention. It is evident that Jim Crow could not of had been defeated between
In 1951, the father of a black student named Linda Brown sued the Board of Education because a white school had prevented Brown from attending a school which was only seven blocks away, compared to the segregated black school she was attending which was more than seven blocks away from her home. Despite losing the first legal battle, Brown’s father did not give up. He found help from the NAACP, a prominent civil rights organisation which appealed on his behalf to the Supreme Court of USA. Following the appeal, in May 1954, Chief Justice Earl Warren declared the US Constitution to be ‘colour-blind’ and therefore ordered the Topeka Board of education to end segregation in its schools. This was one of the first major steps in the civil rights movement.
On the 5th December 1955 Martin Luther King officially started his campaign for equal rights in America. He was a charismatic figure head and had great success with marches in Washington & Selma, however also had some failures in Chicago & Albany. King was made president of the newly-formed Montgomery Improvement Association after an incident concerning a woman called Rosa Parks an African American woman, was arrested for refusing to surrender her seat to a white person. King organised a bus boycott in Montgomery, black citizens would no longer travel with the buses but instead use other means of transport, the boycott lasted eight months until a case Browder v. Gayle took effect, and led to a United States Supreme Court decision that declared the Alabama and Montgomery laws requiring segregated buses to be unconstitutional. Another major accomplishment of Martin Luther was the institution of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), an American civil rights organisation in 1957.
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.
CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE USA The Boston Tea Party was one of the most famous acts of civil disobedience in American history. Susan B. Anthony was arrested for illegally voting in the United States House of Representatives elections, 1872 in order to protest female disenfranchisement.Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, James Bevel, Rosa Parks, and other activists in the American Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s used civil disobedience techniques. Among the most notable civil disobedience events in the U.S. occurred when Rosa Parks refused to move on the bus when a white man tried to take her seat. Although 15-year old Claudette Colvin had done the same thing nine months earlier, Parks' action led directly to the Montgomery Bus Boycott.