A Biography on Martin Luther King Jr.

Their names are Dexter Scott King, Bernice King, Yolanda King, and Martin Luther King III. The King family has been living in Montgomery for only a year and the city was highly segregated and became the epicenter of the burgeoning struggle for civil rights in America. It was galvanized by the land mark of Brown vs. board of education. Another big change in the city was Rosa Parks not giving her seat up to a white passenger on a Montgomery bus and was later arrested. Activist then coordinated a bus boycott that continued for 381 days.

21 May 2014 paragraph 1) King led the important bus boycott in 1959. (Martin Luther King, Jr “Britannica school Back then if you were an African American you had to give up your seat for whites to sit down. On December 1, 1955 a black woman named Rosa Parks stood up for herself and did not give up her seat to a white man. She was arrested for not following the city’s segregation law. (Martin Luther King, Jr “Britannica School 6-7) Activist formed a group to boycott the buses and they chose King as their leader.

The Montgomery Bus Boycott, urged and planned by E. D. Nixon (head of the Montgomery NAACP chapter and a member of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters) and led by King, soon followed. (In March 1955, a 15-year-old school girl, Claudette Colvin, had to give up her seat, but King did not then become involved. [4]) The boycott lasted for 385 days, the situation becoming so tense that King's house was bombed. King was arrested during this campaign, which ended with a United States District Court ruling in Browder v. Gayle that ended racial segregation on all Montgomery public buses. Southern Christian Leadership Conference King was instrumental in the founding of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957, a group created to harness the moral authority and organizing power of black churches to conduct non-violent protests in the service of civil rights reform.

The CORE is for the Congress of Racial Equality and started the first series of Freedom Riders in May of 1961. They traveled on two interstate buses starting in Washington D.C. and traveling to New Orleans. The people who disagreed with this movement threw stones and burnt these traveling buses in order to show their dislikeness of the blacks. All of these programs promoted rights for African Americans. The Black Panthers was organized by the SNCC and became popular in the late 60's.

(Smith 2). Five days after Rosa Parks refused to obey the city's rules concerning bus segregation, African-American residents of Montgomery, Alabama launched a bus boycott. They elected Martin Luther King, Jr. as president of the Montgomery Improvement Association. (Phillips 3). King received national prominence as the boycott continued, due to his personal courage and exceptional oratical skills.

King and the activists of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to join their protest to gain the right for African-Americans to vote. There were 3 Selma to Montgomery marches held along a 54 mile long highway from Selma, Alabama to the state capital of Montgomery between January and March of 1965. The marches were enacted by nonviolent protesters to show the desire of African-American citizens to exercise their constitutional right to vote, in defiance of discrimination and segregation. Many violent activities took place during the time of the marches, which were denied by the police and other Alabama officials. Protestors were beaten, sprayed with tear gas, and a few were even shot and killed.

Marching for Freedom On a grey Sunday morning in March of 1965, Alabama State Troopers at the orders of Governor George Wallace advanced on a group of African-Americans leading a march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. Using bull-whips, Billy clubs and tear gas, the armed troopers made short work of the defenseless protestors, injuring 57 of them while enforcing the strict segregation of the South. The march which was supposed to start in Selma and end at the state capitol in Montgomery was organized by voting rights leaders after a civil rights activist, Jimmie Lee Jackson, had been killed during a protest. Those who organized the march included chairman of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) John Lewis and Hosea William, an assistant to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Voting rights campaign led by the SNCC had targeted Selma because it had one of the lowest ratios of African-American voters to white voters. Out of an eligible 15,000 Selmans, only 200 were registered to vote.

When Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white person in 1955 she was arrested. When the Supreme Court ruled segregated seating on public buses unconstitutional in 1956, King was highly influenced by Mahatma Gandhi and also Bayard Rustin who was a activist. Martin Luther King Jr’s role was the SCLC president and has his position he traveled around the world giving lectures on non-violent protest and civil rights. King Jr would meet with religious figures, activist and political leaders. One family who Martin Luther King Jr met had describe him as “the guiding light of our technique of non-violent social change.” (MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. 2017).

Martin Luther King Jr. went on to lead many marches, boycotts, and sit-ins. One key boycott was the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955. The boycott resulted from an incident involving a now famous African American woman by the name of Rosa Parks. Parks refused to give up her bus seat to a Caucasian American. Her refusal to move resulted in her arrest for violating the city’s segregation laws.

By the end of the meeting, the leaders agreed to call a one-day boycott of all the city buses for Monday Dec.5. On Monday, the buses began their run through the black neighborhood and came back empty. The boycott was a sucess. They set up the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) and named Martin Luther King Jr., it's leader. Rosa Parks went to court and was charged with violating a 1947 segregation law.