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KING, MARTIN LUTHER, JR. 1929-1968

CIVIL RIGHTS LEADER

Symbol and Leader

Martin Luther King, Jr., became the symbol of the civil rights movement after leading the Montgomery bus boycott (1955-1956), which attracted the nation's attention to the growing dissatisfaction of southern blacks with the system of legal segregation. Along with a group of black Baptist preachers he helped form the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and in his books and sermons he laid the foundation of nonviolent direct action as a way of securing for southern blacks their rights guaranteed in the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments.

Birmingham

When the SCLC joined the campaign to desegregate Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963, King's presence attracted the television and news cameras which recorded the shocking violence of the police toward the demonstrators, including children. Those displays of racism aroused the nation and forced the Kennedy administration to introduce a civil rights bill that became the Public Accommodations Act of 1964.

Nonviolence Questioned

While King was in jail in violation of an injunction to halt the demonstrations, eight of Birmingham's leading Protestant ministers published a letter asking him why violence erupted from the tension his demonstrations caused even though he insisted his was a doctrine of nonviolence. King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" is one of his most eloquent statements of the moral and religious basis for the civil rights movement.

Confronting Sin

He said the purpose of the campaign in Birmingham was to confront the sin of racial discrimination. The ongoing confrontations between the marchers and the police came from the failure of the white establishment to negotiate, not from the demands of the black community to modify the immoral segregated system. Only raising the tensions to an intolerable level would finally lead to a resolution of the racial injustice in the community. King denied that he advocated breaking laws, but "an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and then willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community …is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law." He then expressed his great disappointment that the white church had failed to respond to the moral issue of racial discrimination and, by its silence, sanctioned the status quo, including such actions as Birmingham's efforts to maintain an unjust system.

March on Washington

King's closing speech at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in August 1963, in which he said that he had a dream that America would finally live up to its values and all citizens would be able to join in the words of the spiritual "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!" has become one of America's most famous speeches. The following year he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Voting Rights

In 1965 King and the SCLC joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in the Selma, Alabama, campaign to secure the voting rights of blacks in Alabama. As in the case of Birmingham, the success of Selma came from the news media's attention, resulting in large part from King's presence. The publicity given the violence directed at the demonstrators secured their right to march to Montgomery and, more importantly, public support for what became the Voting Rights Act of 1965. King's greatest victories were over.

Racism and Poverty

As it became clear that Jim Crow laws were systematically being repealed, King turned his attention to the problems of racism in general and of poverty. His attempts to open jobs and housing in Chicago had limited success. His growing opposition to the American role in the Vietnam War peeled away support from the embattled Johnson administration. An upsurge of black radicalism and black nationalism among young, urban blacks shifted their sympathies from nonviolent direct action to black power. Race riots in cities reflected the growing impatience of urban blacks with their situation and weakened white support for more social reform.

Poor People's March

With his influence declining, in 1968 King began plans for another march on Washington, the Poor People's March, that would show that poverty was not solely a black issue. In April he went to Memphis to support striking sanitation workers, and he was assassinated there on 4 April. The riots that erupted in over 130 cities and towns around the country were more a cry of despair than a tribute to the man who had come to represent the civil rights struggle. The Poor People's March took place to no effect. His death was the closing of a movement and an era.