If you wanted to protest something, how would you go about it? What's the best strategy? The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. believed in the use of peaceful demonstrations, acting with love and calm. Born on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia, King became 20th century America's most compelling and effective civil rights leader. He entered the civil rights movement, which worked toward political and social equality for people of all races, in 1955. By that time, he was already a Baptist minister, a husband, and a father. Domestic servants waiting for the streetcar on their way to work early in the morning in Atlanta, Georgia, 1939 |
During that same year, 1955, civil rights activists asked King, the young, newly married pastor of a Montgomery, Alabama, church, to lead a bus boycott aimed at ending segregation (a separation of facilities by race) on public transportation in Montgomery. The boycott was initiated by the refusal of a woman named Rosa Parks to give up her bus seat to a white passenger; she was arrested. For more than a year, African Americans, a majority of the bus riders in the city, stayed off the bus in protest of Parks's arrest. Finally the boycott brought about the desegregation King and the protesters sought when, in December 1956, the Supreme Court banned segregation on public transportation, and the boycott ended.
|
That was just the beginning. King asked civil rights activists to remain nonviolent as they worked to lift racial oppression. His advice was to use sit-ins, marches, and peaceful demonstrations to bring attention to issues of inequality. The commitment and moral integrity of activists who remained calm in the face of violent opposition inspired national admiration. Even in jail, King continued preaching this message. He was arrested while protesting in Alabama to desegregate lunch counters. A sit-down strike at a Woolworth luncheon counter in Greensboro, North Carolina in 1960
|
In 1963, King participated in the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. From the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, he delivered his famous "I Have A Dream" speech to a crowd of 250,000. You've probably heard some of this powerful speech. It emphasized King's belief that the movement would create a society in which character, rather than color, prevailed. For his efforts, Martin Luther King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. Tragically, King was assassinated in 1968, but his ideals live on and his words continue to inspire. Do you think America has come any closer to creating the society that King envisioned? People gathered at the Lincoln Memorial where Martin Luther King delivered his "I Have A Dream" speech in 1963
|
Quelle: Fotos und Text: http://www.americaslibrary.gov Foto 1: Wolcott, Marion Post, photographer. "Domestic Servants Waiting for Streetcar on Way to Work Early in the Morning. Mitchell Street, Atlanta, Georgia." May 1939. America from the Great Depression to World War II: Photographs from the FSA-OWI, 1935-1945, Library of Congress. Foto 2: "5,000 at Meeting Outline Boycott; Bullet Clips Bus." Montgomery, Alabama, Bus Boycott, Montgomery Advertiser, December 6, 1955. Courtesy of the Montgomery Advertiser. The African American Odyssey: A Quest for Full Citizenship, Library of Congress. Foto 3: "Ronald Martin, Robert Patterson, and Mark Martin Stage Sit-Down Strike After Being Refused Service at an F.W. Woolworth Luncheon Counter, Greensboro, N.C." 1960. Courtesy CORBIS. New York World-Telegram & Sun Photograph Collection, The African American Odyssey: A Quest for Full Citizenship, Library of Congress. Foto 4: "March on Washington, August 28, 1963." 1963. U.S. News and World Report Photograph Collection. The African American Odyssey: A Quest for Full Citizenship, Library of Congress. |