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Martin luther king during black power movement
Critical analysis of the montgomery bus boycott
Martin Luther King's role in the civil rights movement
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One of the most significant results of the Montgomery bus boycott was the emergence of Martin Luther King, a Baptist minister, as a leader of the civil rights movement. King was brought to the forefront of the movement by development of the alliance of the churches with the NAACP. Historians Alan Farmer and Vivienne Sanders give the church as one of the most influential organisations for blacks and whites alike. Whites, (mainly Christians) found it hard to persecute or ignore a black Christian organisation that was so committed and provided such an inspirational leader. According to historian Vivienne Sanders , the boycott was a result of meticulous planning by black organisations that had been developing for years. The NAACP was still effective in its strategy of working through the law courts and it demonstrated the power of the whole black community. King’s speech shortly after the boycott began emphasises how the black community were acting within the law’ and that they were only using the tools of justice. As a Christian man, King would have wanted the protest to remain as legal and peaceful as possible. The insistence of doing it through these means it encouraged white support due to the ‘discipline of the black community’ . Vivienne Sanders describes how whites could not believe that local blacks had Joanne De Pennington takes the view that the black community was willing to forego personal comforts and stand up when confronted with the utmost hatred in order to assert their rights. This is reiterated by David Patterson, Doug and Susan Willoughby who explain one instance where 70 year old Mother Pollard summed up the determination and religious fervor of the boycott with the words “My feet are tired but my soul is
To stifle the spread of the ‘contagion,’ the article, “Four Students Spark Spreading Drive,”sites how the “good performance of the Southern police” is what “prevented chaos.” [v] By using a favorable term to describe the white institutions, the article works to label police as an admirable unit who selflessly suppressed anarchy. This is contrasted with the ‘chaos’ utilized to describe the sit-in protestors. In making this comment, the article implies that the protests harm society rather than help it. Moreover, words like “contagion” and “chaos” are also utilized to condemn the black’s entitlement to protests; once again, the media plays on white fears that whites might stand to lose their sense of entitlements if they allow minorities to have the same rights as they do. The diction used by the Chicago Defender’s article parallels the word choice of Harold L. Keith’s article, “Are White Supremacists Killing Labor?”, which is about the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Triggered by the arrest of Rosa Parks, the NAACP organized the Boycott to change segregation laws regarding bus seats and driver courtesy toward people of color. Emerging Civil Rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. was primarily responsible for coordinating the Bus boycott movement.[vii]. Keith’s article
success and desegregated several facilities, but also demonstrated. clearly to blacks and whites alike that young blacks were determined. to reject segregation openly. But the whites violently attacked the black people. King had told his followers to take the beating and not fight back; his philosophy was that the black protest would wear the black.
On the date May 26, 1956, two female students from Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University, Wilhelmina Jakes and Carrie Patterson, had taken a seat down in the whites only section of a segregated bus in the city of Tallahassee, Florida. When these women refused to move to the colored section at the very back of the bus, the driver had decided to pull over into a service station and call the police on them. Tallahassee police arrested them and charged them with the accusation of them placing themselves in a position to incite a riot. In the days after that immediately followed these arrests, students at the Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University organized a huge campus-wide boycott of all of the city buses. Their inspiring stand against segregation set an example and an intriguing idea that had spread to tons of Tallahassee citizens who were thinking the same things and brought a change of these segregating ways into action. Soon, news of the this boycott spread throughout the whole entire community rapidly. Reverend C.K. Steele composed the formation of an organization known as the Inter-Civic Council (ICC) to manage the logic and other events happening behind the boycott. C.K. Steele and the other leaders created the ICC because of the unfounded negative publicity surrounding the National Associat...
The author, Dr. Martian Luther King Jr., makes a statement “Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue.” He uses this concept to convey the point of the Negros hard work to negotiate the issue has failed, but now they must confront it. The March on Good Friday, 1963, 53 blacks, led by Reverend Martian Luther King, Jr., was his first physical protest to segregation laws that had taken place after several efforts to simply negotiate. The author uses several phrases that describe his nonviolent efforts and his devotion to the issue of segregation that makes the reader believe his how seriously King takes this issue. “Conversely, one has the moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.” Dr. Martian Luther King, Jr. explains with this that an “unjust law is no law at all.” King does not feel like he has broken any laws in his protest against segregation. In his eyes, laws are made to protect the people, not degrade and punish. “The Negro has many pent up resentments and latent frustrations, and he must release them. So let him March.” As far as King is concerned, the Negros will continue to do whatever is necessary, preferably non-violently, to obtain the moral and legal right that is theirs. If they are not allowe...
In the book, Colaiaco presents the successes that Dr. King achieves throughout his work for Civil Rights. The beginning of Dr. King’s nonviolent civil rights movements started in Montgomery, Alabama when Rosa Parks refused to move for a white person, violating city’s transportation rules. After Parks was convicted Dr. King, who was 26 at the time, was elected president of the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA). “For 381 days, thousands of blacks walked to work, some as many as 12 miles a day, rather than continue to submit to segregated public transportation” (18). This boycott ended up costing the bus company more than $250,000 in revenue. The bus boycott in Montgomery made King a symbol of racial justice overnight. This boycott helped organize others in Birmingham, Mobile, and Tallahassee. During the 1940s and 1950s the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) won a series of cases that helped put it ahead in the civil rights movement. One of these advancements was achieved in 1944, when the United States Supreme Court banned all-white primaries. Other achievements made were the banning of interstate bus seating segregating, the outlawing of racially restraining covenants in housing, and publicly supporting the advancement of black’s education Even though these advancements meant quite a lot to the African Americans of this time, the NAACP’s greatest accomplishment came in 1954 with the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Brown vs. Board of Education case, which overturned the Plessy vs.
According to Hari Sharma, Martin Luther King was a leader of peaceful protests against the segregation of African-Americans. In 1963, the city of Birmingham passed a legal provision banning street protests without permission (Sharma, 2007). Hence, the black people of Birmingham felt that they are not allow
After Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger, king wanted to end the humiliating treatment of blacks on city bus liners. He decided to start the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which lasted 382 days. Eventually, the U.S. Supreme Court declared Montgomery bus segregation laws illegal. King showed great inspiration despite receiving several threatening phone calls, being arrested and having his house being bombed, he still firmly believed in nonviolence. The boycott was the first step to end segregation, king displayed great leadership and educated the whole nation that nonviolence was the best possible was to end a problem, even if it took a while for people to notice your protest.
The Montgomery Bus Boycott can be viewed as a symbol of the Civil Rights Movement as a whole, as neither one’s success was due solely to the work of the political system; a transformation in the consciousness of America was the most impactful success of both. Passionate racism ran in the veins of 1950s America, primarily in the south, and no integration law would influence the widespread belief that African Americans were the same level of human as Caucasians. The abolition of racism as a political norm had to start with a unanimous belief among blacks that they had power as American citizens; once they believed that to be true, there was no limit to the successes they could see.
The Civil Rights Movement is one of the most important events of the history of the United States. Although many people contributed to this movement, Martin Luther King, Jr., is widely regarded as the leader of the movement for racial equality. Growing up in the Deep South, King saw the injustices of segregation first hand. King’s studies of Mahatma Ghandi teachings influenced his views on effective ways of protesting and achieving equality. Martin Luther King’s view on nonviolence and equality and his enormous effect on the citizens of America makes him the most influential person of the twentieth century.
Board decision and the 1955-1956 Montgomery Bus Boycott both had equally significant impacts on other civil rights campaigns. The Brown Vs. Board decision showed the black population of America that the Supreme Court was finally on their side and this may have encouraged the black community to continue fighting for their rights as it showed them that if they kept fighting they could destroy segregation as a whole. On the other hand the Montgomery Bus Boycott allowed Martin Luther King Jr. to grow into the man that drove the black civil rights movement as the black community of Montgomery made him the leader of their boycott which therefore would have given him the courage and the determination to keep fighting for what he believed as he may have seen the results of the boycott and this could have proven to him that segregation can be stopped. Therefore both events had equally significant impact on other Civil rights
Although the boycott was long, gruesome, and almost 400 days Parks made it through but was exhausted by the end. (biography.com) The leader that started the boycott was Rosa Parks, and without her and the NAACP there would have been no boycott at all. It all started on December 1, 1955, when Rosa Parks was on her way home from a long day at work. After she sat down and the bus was ready to depart, the bus driver asked the first row of African Americans to get up because there was a white man who didn't have a seat.
In the letter, Dr. King defended the legitimacy of using protests and demonstrations and even breaking the law in nonviolent demonstrations against segregation and racism. His organization had attempted to negotiate with white business owners with little result. He insisted that
Parks was immediately arrested, which sparked “…a yearlong bus boycott, [which was] the beginning of the mass phase of the civil rights movement in the South” (Foner 954). Her arrest resulted in the meeting of hundreds of blacks, all of which gathered in local churches, who called for a boycott. After “…381 days” (Foner 955) of blacks choosing to walk to their destinations rather than ride the bus, the boycott ended and in November of 1956, the Supreme Court called for the end of segregation on public transportation, deeming it as unconstitutional. During the Montgomery bus boycott, the Civil Rights Movement also witnesses the rise of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and the pastor soon became the face of the movement. King used Christian values and beliefs in his calls for action, stressing that no violence must be used. He quickly became an influential figure, for he “…presented the case for black rights in a vocabulary that merged the black experience with that of the nation” (Foner 956). He called for a Christian movement, which “…resonated deeply in both black communities and the broader culture” (Foner 956), and became an important leader of the Civil Rights Movement during the 1950s. Overall, the 1950s led to the growing momentum of the Civil Rights Movement in the due
...o instrumental in making progress. The famous Montgomery bus boycott took almost a year, but finally broke the large white-run service, and gave blacks a sense of how their importance in America could be displayed and proven.
Blacks walked miles to work, organized carpools, and despite efforts from the police to discourage this new spark of independence, the boycotts continued for more than a year until in November 1956 the Supreme Court ruled that the Montgomery bus company must desegregate it's busses. Were it not for the leadership of Rosa Parks and Jo Ann Robinson, and the support the black community through church congregations, these events may have not happened for many years to come.