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Nearly 4000 people were arrested for various crimes, including looting, during the Watts riots of the 1960s.

On August 11, 1965, the atmosphere in the Watts district of Los Angeles turned white hot. A police patrol stopped Marquette Frye, suspecting he was driving while intoxicated. A crowd assembled as Frye was asked to step out of his vehicle. When the arresting officer drew his gun, the crowd erupted in a spontaneous burst of anger.

Too many times had the local citizens of Watts felt that the police department treated them with excessive force. They were tired of being turned down for jobs in Watts by white employers who lived in wealthier neighborhoods. They were troubled by the overcrowded living conditions in rundown apartments. The Frye incident was the match that lit their fire. His arrest prompted five days of rioting, looting, and burning. The governor of California ordered the National Guard to maintain order. When the smoke cleared, 34 people were killed and property damage estimates approached $40 million.

The National Guard was dispatched to Los Angeles to help quell the rioting plaguing the Watts section of the city. Here, a Guardsman helps a woman safely cross the street.

The urban uprising, part of what was often called "the long, hot summer," had actually begun in 1964. When a white policeman in Harlem shot a black youth in July 1964, a similar disturbance flared (though on a lesser scale than the Watt's riots.) Rochester, Jersey City, and Philadelphia exploded as well. From 1964 to 1966, outbreaks of violence rippled across many other northern urban areas, including Detroit, where 43 people were killed.

As youths of the counterculture celebrated the famed Summer of Love in 1967, serious racial upheaval took place in more than 150 American cities. The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968 touched off a wave of violence in 125 more urban centers.

A quarter century after the Watts riots, a bystander took a video of white Los Angeles police officers beating Rodney King, a black suspect. The event triggered a riot in L.A. that lasted six days.

At the behest of President Johnson, the Kerner Commission was created to examine the causes behind the rioting. After a six-month study, the committee declared that the source of unrest was white racism. Despite legislative gains against discriminatory policies, America was moving toward two distinct societies divided along racial lines.

As the great migration of blacks from the South to northern cities continued, white northerners began deserting the cities for the suburbs.

African Americans had been victimized by poor education, the unavailability of quality employment, slum conditions, and police brutality. The average income of a black household was only slightly more than half the income of its white counterpart. The Kerner Commission recommended a wide array of social spending programs, including housing programs, job training, and welfare. Civil rights legislation became the cornerstone of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society program.

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Nearly 4000 people were arrested for various crimes, including looting, during the Watts riots of the 1960s. On August 11, 1965, the atmosphere in the Watts district of Los Angeles turned white hot. A police patrol stopped Marquette Frye, suspecting he was driving while intoxicated.

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Image Ownership: Public Domain

On February 1, 1960, four black college students in Greensboro, North Carolina, demanded service at a Woolworth's lunch counter. When the staff refused to serve them, they stayed until the store closed. In the following days and weeks this "sit-in" idea spread through the South. At first several hundred and then several thousand students participated in protest against this form of segregation.

To support and coordinate this spontaneous movement, Ella Baker, a National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) official, called a conference at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina from April 16 to 18, 1960. It was there that the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was founded. Its first chairman was Nashville, Tennessee college student and political activist Marion Berry.

Although SNCC, or 'Snick' as it became known, continued its efforts to desegregate lunch counters through nonviolent confrontations, it had only modest success. In May 1961, SNCC expanded its focus to support local efforts in voter registration as well as public accommodations desegregation.

The high point of its efforts came in 1964 with the Mississippi Summer Project which became popularly known as " Freedom Summer." Hundreds of black and white college student volunteers joined Mississippi SNCC workers and local civil rights activists in a bold campaign to register thousands of black voters across the state for the first time. The effort drew national attention particularly when three SNCC workers, James E. Chaney of Mississippi, and Michael H. Schwerner and Andrew Goodman of New York, were killed by white supremacists.

During the fall and winter of 1964/65, SNCC went through a period of internal upheaval, becoming more radical and increasingly anti-white. One result of this development was the replacement of chairman John Lewis by Stokely Carmichael in May 1966. Soon white activists began to leave SNCC.

This trend increased when Hubert "Rap" Brown, a radical and controversial advocate for black armed self-defense, became leader of SNCC in May 1967. One year later, Rap Brown led SNCC into a public alliance with the Black Panther Party.

Although this alliance lasted only until July 1969, the damage done was irreparable. With the expulsion of whites, SNCC's annual income dropped sharply. Local direct action grassroots projects were scaled back. By 1970, SNCC had lost all of its 130 or so employees and most of its branches. Finally, in December 1973, SNCC ceased to exist as an organization.

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Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, SNCC (1960-1973) *

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On February 1, 1960, four black college students in Greensboro, North Carolina, demanded service at a Woolworth's lunch counter. When the staff refused to serve them, they stayed until the store closed. In the following days and weeks this "sit-in" idea spread through the South. ...

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Written by Charlie Cobb, SNCC Field Secretary 1962-1967

Then, on February 1, 1960, Black students in Greensboro, North Carolina launched sit-ins challenging segregation in restaurants and other public accommodations. Similar "direct action" lit by this spark in Greensboro spread like wildfire across the south. SNCC was founded just two and a half months later - on Easter weekend - at an April meeting of sit-in leaders on the campus of Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina. Ella Baker was the gathering's organizer. She had immediately recognized the potential of this new student activism and persuaded Martin Luther King, Jr. to provide $800 to bring them together at her alma mater. The sit-in movement was "bigger than a hamburger," she told the students addressing them at the Shaw conference. And in an article published a month later, she wrote of the young activists, "[They] are seeking to rid America of the scourge of racial segregation and discrimination - not only at lunch counters, but in every aspect of life."

Her network across the South was extensive; in the 1940s, she had been the NAACP Director of Branches. After the 1955-1956 Montgomery, Alabama Bus Boycott, she had been instrumental in organizing Martin Luther King, Jr's Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and was its executive director when the sit-ins erupted. "Strong people don't need strong leaders," she stressed to SNCC. She provided office space for the new organization in a corner of SCLC's Atlanta headquarters. Jane Stembridge, a white Baptist preacher's daughter who had grown up in Georgia, left her graduate studies at Union Theological Seminary and became SNCC's first staff person.

Within the year, a few other students left their college campuses to commit to full-time movement work. Although SNCC was still primarily engaged in protests aimed at desegregating lunch counters and restaurants, Ella Baker maintained a conversation about grassroots organizing, especially with Robert "Bob" Moses, a Harlem, New York native who in the summer of 1960 had come to Atlanta as an SCLC volunteer. She and Jane Stembridge sent Moses on a journey through the Deep South to recruit students to participate in a SNCC conference being planned for October 1960, in Atlanta. Ella Baker provided Moses and Stembridge with a list of her contacts, and Jane Stembridge wrote letters of introduction to them.

One of the southern leaders she sent Moses to was Amzie Moore, president of the Cleveland, Mississippi NAACP branch and vice president of Mississippi's state NAACP. Moore, a tough World War II veteran, had worked with Medgar Evers and other Black activists to form the Regional Conference of Negro Leadership (RCNL). In 1951, the RCNL held a conference that drew over 10,000 Black residents to a conference in all-Black Mound Bayou, Mississippi that focused on voter registration and police brutality. Though he admired the sit-ins, Moore did not want them in Cleveland. He wanted a voter registration campaign and introduced Moses to that idea. "Amzie," remembers Moses, "was the only one I met on that trip giving the student sit-in movement careful attention, aware of all that student energy and trying to figure out how to use it." Moses promised Moore that he would return to Mississippi the following year and work with him.

Winds of Change | Birth of SNCC | Where do we go from here? | Into the Field | Challenging White Power | The Black Panther | Legacy

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Written by Charlie Cobb, SNCC Field Secretary 1962-1967 Then, on February 1, 1960, Black students in Greensboro, North Carolina launched sit-ins challenging segregation in restaurants and other public accommodations. Similar "direct action" lit by this spark in Greensboro spread like wildfire across the south.

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This article was most recently revised and updated by

Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), interracial American organization established by James Farmer in 1942 to improve race relations and end discriminatory policies through direct-action projects. Farmer had been working as the race-relations secretary for the American branch of the pacifist group Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) but resigned over a dispute in policy; he founded CORE as a vehicle for the nonviolent approach to combating racial prejudice that was inspired by Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi.

Congress of Racial Equality march Thomas J. O'Halloran-U.S. News and World Report Magazine Photograph Collection/Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (digital file number. ppmsca-04298 -6A)

CORE's activities began with a sit-in at a coffee shop in Chicago in 1942 for the purpose of protesting segregation in public settings. The event was one of the first such demonstrations in the United States and identified CORE as an influential force in the subsequent desegregation of public facilities in Northern cities. After Southern states ignored the U.S. Supreme Court's 1946 decision regarding the unconstitutionality of segregated seating on interstate buses, CORE and FOR launched the first Freedom Ride, an interracial peaceful protest.

In the late 1950s CORE turned its attention to the South, challenging public segregation and launching voter registration drives for African Americans. It became one of the leading organizations of the civil rights movement in the early 1960s by organizing activist campaigns that tested segregation laws in the South. From this era, the Freedom Rides of 1961 and the Freedom Summer project of 1964 endure as CORE's most memorable contribution to the civil rights struggle. The group's efforts became all the more dramatic when its nonviolent demonstrations were met by vicious responses from whites. CORE volunteers were assaulted, teargassed, and jailed, and some demonstrators were killed. Farmer himself survived a Ku Klux Klan murder plot and once escaped Louisiana state troopers by hiding inside a coffin housed in a hearse. His leadership contributed to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Under the influence of Roy Innis, who became CORE's national director in 1968, the organization's political orientation began to change, moving in a direction that he characterized as "pragmatic" but that many others saw as increasingly conservative. Some accused Innis and CORE of being of overly sympathetic to the interests of big business; Farmer was critical of Innis's centralization of control and of the organization's failure to conduct annual conferences.

By the beginning of the 21st century, CORE's program emphases included worker training and equal employment opportunity, crime victim assistance, and community-oriented crisis intervention. The organization maintains its headquarters in New York City.

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Jeff Wallenfeldt, Manager, Geography and History.

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Congress of Racial Equality

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Congress of Racial Equality | American organization

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Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), interracial American organization established by James Farmer in 1942 to improve race relations and end discriminatory policies through direct-action projects. Farmer had been working as the race-relations secretary for the American branch of the pacifist group

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Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s organization, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) was best known for mobilizing large, nonviolent protests in places like Birmingham and Selma, aimed at moving the national conscience and pushing the federal government to support civil rights initiatives. Rev. King's charisma was crucial to this effort, which created confrontation between nonviolent protesters and local law enforcement but also aimed to stir up public outcry against blatant and often violent racial discrimination.

But another less well-known component of SCLC engaged in voter education work in the form of the Citizenship Education Program (CEP). The idea for a citizenship education program for potential Black voters was born during a 1954 workshop at the Highlander Folk School in the Appalachian Mountains of Tennessee. Septima Clark, a Charleston school teacher who had been fired from her job because of her NAACP activities, was leading the workshop. One of the attendees was Esau Jenkins, a Black farmer, businessman and former student of Septima Clark from the majority-Black John's Island off the coast of Charleston. He said he wanted to create a school to teach literacy to Black residents of John's Island, most of whom were unable to vote because they were illiterate or could barely read and write.

Highlander loaned Jenkins $1,500 to set up the school. By 1961, there were citizenship schools operated by seven different organizations in 21 counties in Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, and South Carolina. These citizenship schools became the roots of the Citizenship Education Program, which SCLC took over in 1961.

Unlike massive direct action protests, CEP classes became important spaces for grassroots organizing, as both teachers and students were drawn from local populations. In Mississippi, this work was important to SNCC's work, and SNCC and COFO workers helped bring participants to CEP schools. In the relatively protected spaces of classrooms located in the Black community, students and teachers discussed ways in which they could effect change and address locally-defined problems. Through these classes, students learned more than literacy; they began to craft their own understandings of first-class citizenship.

CEP had a strong presence in the Mississippi Delta during the early sixties and worked hand-in-hand with SNCC's voter registration organizing in the area. In 1961 and 1962, local Mississippians organized six citizenship schools in the Clarksdale area. CEP continued to expand in the Delta as James Bevel, a former SNCC field secretary turned SCLC staff member, and his wife Diane Nash worked to recruit teachers.

Citizenship schools provided an essential educational component for the emerging voter registration campaign in the Delta. They transcended organizational affiliations with NAACP members working closely with field secretaries from SNCC, CORE, and SCLC. Citizenship schools existed in every major area of movement activity, typically taught by local women who could use their established reputations, economic resources, and considerable community contacts to support local movement activity. CEP provided a vehicle for local women of varying backgrounds to become leaders within the Mississippi Movement, in charge of instilling within local people the confidence to attempt to register to vote. Citizenship schools became important politicization centers for community adults, as well as institutionalized grassroots leadership development.

Sources

Katherine Mellen Charron, Freedom's Teacher: The Life of Septima Clark (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009).

Deanna Gillespie, "'First-Class' Citizenship Education in the Mississippi Delta, 1961-1965," Journal of Southern History (2014), 109-142.

Charles Payne, I've Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995).

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Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) - SNCC Digital Gateway

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Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s organization, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) was best known for mobilizing large, nonviolent protests in places like Birmingham and Selma, aimed at moving the national conscience and pushing the federal government to support civil rights initiatives. Rev.

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Courtesy Library of Congress (95506959)

The Watts Riot, also known as the Watts Rebellion, occurred in Los Angeles, California from August 11 to August 15, 1965. The riot took 34 lives and injured 1,032 people. There were nearly 4,000 arrests and $40 million in property damage in what was until that point, the largest urban rebellion in the United States in the 1960s.

Although the riot began on August 11, 1965, its roots go back at least two decades. Following World War II, over 500,000 African Americans migrated to West Coast cities in hopes of escaping racism and discrimination. However they found both in the west. For many black Los Angeles, California residents who lived in Watts, their isolation in that community was evidence that racial equality remained a distant goal as they experienced housing, education, employment, and political discrimination. These racial injustices caused Watts' African American population to explode on August 11, 1965 in what would become the Watts Rebellion.

The rebellion began on August 11th when the Los Angeles Highway Patrol stopped black Watts resident Marquette Frye and his brother, alleging that they were speeding. Back-up was called from the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) as a crowd of African Americans gathered to watch the scene. Since the incident was close to Frye's home, his mother emerged to find her son resisting arrest. Fearful that his arrest may ignite a riot, one LAPD officer drew his firearm. Catching a glimpse of the gun, Mrs. Frye jumped onto the officer's back, causing the crowd to begin cheering. Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officers arrested all three of the Fryes. Enraged by the family's arrests, Watts' residents protested as the police cars drove away. Less than an hour later, black Angelenos took to the streets.

The five day revolt which involved some 30,000 people served as stark testimony to the inequality and poverty that dominated the lives of thousands of Watts's residents. Many of those engaged in the uprising looted items from local groceries and clothing stores, acquiring what they wanted and needed but often could not afford. Others battled the LAPD which they held immediately responsible for their poverty and alienation.

By August 15 the riot ended when 14,000 National Guard troops arrived and patrolled the streets. The following day most African Americans retired to their homes. In spite of the protest, the Watts Rebellion did not significantly improve the lives of the community's black population. While the revolt inspired the federal government to implement programs to address unemployment, education, healthcare, and housing under Lyndon B. Johnson's " War on Poverty," much of the money allocated for these programs was eventually absorbed by the Vietnam War.

Today most of the population of Watts is Latino with many residents from the Central American countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. Although the population has changed, many of the issues of poverty, alienation, and discrimination still plague the community today.

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The Watts Riot, also known as the Watts Rebellion, occurred in Los Angeles, California from August 11 to August 15, 1965. The riot took 34 lives and injured 1,032 people. There were nearly 4,000 arrests and $40 million in property damage in what was until ...

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Summer 1964

In 1963, violence aimed at halting civil rights struggle in Mississippi was intensifying. The federal government continued its reluctance to intervene. And most of the nation was largely unaware of the terror and denial unfolding in Mississippi. Therefore, COFO decided to bring attention to conditions by bringing the nation's children to Mississippi. For its part, the state responded, that if they came, they would be treated as invaders.

For many whites in Mississippi, like Jackson Mayor Allen Thompson, the prospect of hundreds of mainly white volunteers coming to the state signaled a second "War of Northern Aggression." And as Mayor Thompson put it, "They won't have a chance." So before the summer began, the number of state troopers doubled. The state legislature passed dawn-to-dusk curfews, and Ku Klux Klan numbers expanded. The legislature tried to outlaw planned Freedom Schools. Crosses were burned in 64 of the state's 82 counties on a single night.

The ten weeks that comprised the "long hot summer" centered around several goals: to establish Freedom Schools and community centers throughout the state, to increase black voter registration, and to ultimately challenge the all-white delegation that would represent the state at the Democratic National Convention in August.

Project director Bob Moses had no grand premonitions about what the summer project might accomplish. "Maybe we're not going to get many people registered this summer. Maybe, even, we're not going to get very many people into Freedom Schools. Maybe all we're going to do is live this summer. In Mississippi, that will be so much."

Freedom Summer included more than 44 projects, grouped by congressional districts across the state. These projects ranged in size and scope. For example, Hattiesburg had more than 50 volunteers and staff while some projects had as few as two workers. Most projects built upon existing movement activity and relationships with local Black leaders.

Yet other aspects of the summer project, such as the establishment of Freedom Schools marked a new element in the Mississippi Movement. In a state where funding for white schools sometimes quadrupled the amount spent on Black schools, all but three summer projects had Freedom Schools. Work-shop style courses ranged from basic reading and math, civics, African-American history to modern Africa and French.

The summer project also made it possible for the Movement to expand into areas of the state that had experienced little civil rights activity in the past. Issaquena County, located in the southern Delta region, had no registered Black voters despite being a majority Black population. Unita Blackwell was one of several local women who attempted to register at the courthouse that summer. "I was just starting to learn about myself and history in a brand-new way," she said after her registration was denied. The experience marked the beginning of her development as a SNCC organizer.

Midway through the summer, the project's emphasis shifted from voter registration towards challenging the Mississippi Democrat's all-white delegation. Local people began attempting-without success- to attend delegate selection meetings. A Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) had been formed in April and a delegation of MFDP members was selected to challenge the so-called "regular" delegates at the national Democratic Party convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey in August.

By the end of Freedom Summer, there had been 6 known murders, 35 known shootings, 4 people critically wounded, at least 80 volunteers beaten, and more than 1,000 people arrested. Except for the case of Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman, the FBI failed to take further action when it came to state violence towards civil rights workers and local communities.

For many volunteers, the summer would mark the beginning of a life dedicated to social justice. More than 200 volunteers decided to stay in Mississippi at the end of the summer, some quitting their jobs or dropping out of school. As a state, Mississippi became linked to the nation.

Sources

John Dittmer, Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 250-281.

Wesley Hogan, Many Minds, One Heart: SNCC's Dream for America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 156, 167, 269-71.

Laura Visser-Maessen, Robert Parris Moses: A Life in Civil Rights and Leadership at the Grassroots (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016).

Bruce Watson, Freedom Summer: The Savage Season That Made Mississippi Burn and Made America a Democracy (New York: Penguin Group, 2010), 11-14, 171-76, 183-85.

Freedom Summer, Directed by Stanley Nelson Jr., Firelight Media, January 2014.

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In 1963, violence aimed at halting civil rights struggle in Mississippi was intensifying. The federal government continued its reluctance to intervene. And most of the nation was largely unaware of the terror and denial unfolding in Mississippi. Therefore, COFO decided to bring attention to conditions by bringing the nation's children to Mississippi.

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The Selma Marches were a series of three marches that took place in 1965 between Selma and Montgomery, Alabama. These marches were organized to protest the blocking of Black Americans' right to vote by the systematic racist structure of the Jim Crow South.

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Table of Contents

This article was most recently revised and updated by

March on Washington, in full March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, political demonstration held in Washington, D.C., in 1963 by civil rights leaders to protest racial discrimination and to show support for major civil rights legislation that was pending in Congress.

On August 28, 1963, an interracial assembly of more than 200,000 people gathered peaceably in the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial to demand equal justice for all citizens under the law. The crowd was uplifted by the emotional strength and prophetic quality of the address given by Martin Luther King, Jr., that came to be known as the " I Have a Dream" speech, in which he emphasized his faith that all men, someday, would be brothers and his hope that one day his children would live in a nation where they would "not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." The rising tide of civil rights agitation greatly influenced national opinion and resulted in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, guaranteeing equal voting rights, outlawing discrimination in restaurants, theatres, and other public accommodations involved in interstate commerce, and encouraging school desegregation.

American civil rights movement Events

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Jeff Wallenfeldt.

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March on Washington | Date, Summary, Significance, & Facts

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March on Washington, in full March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, political demonstration held in Washington, D.C., in 1963 by civil rights leaders to protest racial discrimination and to show support for major civil rights legislation that was pending in Congress.

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Students from across the country came together to form the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and organize sit-ins at counters throughout the South. This front page is from the North Carolina A&T University student newspaper.

By 1960, the Civil Rights Movement had gained strong momentum. The nonviolent measures employed by Martin Luther King Jr. helped African American activists win supporters across the country and throughout the world.

On February 1, 1960, a new tactic was added to the peaceful activists' strategy. Four African American college students walked up to a whites-only lunch counter at the local Woolworth's store in Greensboro, North Carolina, and asked for coffee. When service was refused, the students sat patiently. Despite threats and intimidation, the students sat quietly and waited to be served.

The civil rights sit-in was born.

No one participated in a sit-in of this sort without seriousness of purpose. The instructions were simple: sit quietly and wait to be served. Often the participants would be jeered and threatened by local customers. Sometimes they would be pelted with food or ketchup. Angry onlookers tried to provoke fights that never came. In the event of a physical attack, the student would curl up into a ball on the floor and take the punishment. Any violent reprisal would undermine the spirit of the sit-in. When the local police came to arrest the demonstrators, another line of students would take the vacated seats.

To challenge laws that kept interstate bus trips segregated, black and white students organized freedom rides through the South. The first such ride was interrupted when an angry mob attacked riders and destroyed their bus during a stop in Alabama.

Sit-in organizers believed that if the violence were only on the part of the white community, the world would see the righteousness of their cause. Before the end of the school year, over 1500 black demonstrators were arrested. But their sacrifice brought results. Slowly, but surely, restaurants throughout the South began to abandon their policies of segregation.

In April 1960, Martin Luther King Jr. sponsored a conference to discuss strategy. Students from the North and the South came together and formed the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Early leaders included Stokely Carmichael and Fannie Lou Hamer. The Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) was a northern group of students led by James Farmer, which also endorsed direct action. These groups became the grassroots organizers of future sit-ins at lunch counters, wade-ins at segregated swimming pools, and pray-ins at white-only churches.

By sitting in protest at an all-white lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, four college students sparked national interest in the push for civil rights.

Bolstered by the success of direct action, CORE activists planned the first freedom ride in 1961. To challenge laws mandating segregated interstate transportation, busloads of integrated black and white students rode through the South. The first freedom riders left Washington, D.C., in May 1961 en route to New Orleans. Several participants were arrested in bus stations. When the buses reached Anniston, Alabama, an angry mob slashed the tires on one bus and set it aflame. The riders on the other bus were violently attacked, and the freedom riders had to complete their journey by plane.

New Attorney General Robert Kennedy ordered federal marshals to protect future freedom rides. Bowing to political and public pressure, the Interstate Commerce Commission soon banned segregation on interstate travel. Progress was slow indeed, but the wall between the races was gradually being eroded.

Student Nonviolent Coordination Committee (1960-66)
Formed in response to the Greensboro sit-ins, the mission of the Student Nonviolent Coordination Committee (better known as SNCC, pronounced "snick") was to organize passive resistance measures, including marches, freedom rides, and sit-ins. This well-researched, well-illustrated website introduces the people, issues, and events surrounding SNCC.

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Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael)
Kwame Ture (born Stokely Carmichael) was a fiery and controversial leader in the Civil Rights Movement. This 1998 obituary from the Los Angeles Times traces his life from nonviolent resistance to advocacy of "black power" to self-imposed exile. Included is a statement by the Rev. Jesse Jackson.

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Civil Rights Leaders and the President
The John F. Kennedy Library in Boston, Massachusetts, has assembled this collection of letters and telegrams sent to President Kennedy from noted civil rights leaders such as Roy Wilkins, and Martin Luther King Jr. Read a short synopsis, then click to view full-sized scans of these often-scathing documents including James Farmer's telegram to Kennedy on the violence in Alabama: "Even if guns of Alabama succeed in quelling nonviolent struggle in Birmingham it will rise up again in place after place until such time as the President of the United States overcomes his fear of speaking out and decides to act forcefully to secure freedom of Negro Americans."

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The only thing they could do to me was to kill me, and it seemed like they'd been trying to do that a little bit at a time ever since I could remember.
-Fannie Lou Hamer, on why she participated in the Civil Rights Movement
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If any one man inspired the methods of CORE and SNCC, it was one who lived halfway across the globe from the United States.
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President Eisenhower sent the 101st Airborne to Little Rock, Arkansas, to ensure the integration of Central High School in 1957.

Three years after the Supreme Court declared race-based segregation illegal, a military showdown took place in Little Rock, Arkansas. On September 3, 1957, nine black students attempted to attend the all-white Central High School.

Under the pretext of maintaining order, Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus mobilized the Arkansas National Guard to prevent the students, known as the Little Rock Nine, from entering the school. After a federal judge declared the action illegal, Faubus removed the troops. When the students tried to enter again on September 24, they were taken into the school through a back door. Word of this spread throughout the community, and a thousand irate citizens stormed the school grounds. The police desperately tried to keep the angry crowd under control as concerned onlookers whisked the students to safety.

The nation watched all of this on television. President Eisenhower was compelled to act.

To ensure their safety, African American students were escorted to Central High School in a U.S. Army car.

Eisenhower was not a strong proponent of civil rights. He feared that the Brown decision could lead to an impasse between the federal government and the states. Now that very stalemate had come. The rest of the country seemed to side with the black students, and the Arkansas state government was defying a federal decree. The situation hearkened back to the dangerous federal-state conflicts of the 19th century that followed the end of the Civil War.

On September 25, Eisenhower ordered the troops of the 101st Airborne Division into Little Rock, marking the first time United States troops were dispatched to the South since Reconstruction. He federalized the Arkansas National Guard in order to remove the soldiers from Faubus's control. For the next few months, the African American students attended school under armed supervision.

Can You Meet the Challenge?

The following year, Little Rock officials closed the schools to prevent integration. But in 1959, the schools were open again. Both black and white children were in attendance.

The tide was slowly turning in favor of those advocating civil rights for African Americans. An astonished America watched footage of brutish, white southerners mercilessly harassing clean-cut, respectful African American children trying to get an education. Television swayed public opinion toward integration.

In 1959, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act, the first such measure since Reconstruction. The law created a permanent civil rights commission to assist black suffrage. The measure had little teeth and proved ineffective, but it paved the way for more powerful legislation in the years to come.

Buses and schools had come under attack. Next on the menu: a luncheonette counter.

Dwight Eisenhower
President Dwight "Ike" Eisenhower was in office during one of the most prosperous times in the 20th century. But his term was marked by some extreme events, such as the McCarthy trials and the Little Rock crisis of 1957. Read about one of the most popular presidents of recent times at PBS's website companion to its series The American President.

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X's and O's: A History of the Voting Rights Act and African Americans
From the Georgetown Law Library comes this comprehensive history of the Voting Rights Act. Go back in time to the post-Civil War South to see the methods used to deny African Americans the right to vote, even though it was rightfully theirs. Then zip forward to the 1950s to learn how, through protest and legislation, African Americans finally were able to vote without interference. Its gutting by the decision in Shelby County v. Holder in 2013 has led to more restrictive voting laws in at least 7 states.

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Please, God, let me learn how to stop being a warrior. Sometimes I just need to be a girl.
-Melba Patillo Beals, one of the Little Rock Nine
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In 1997, former Arkansas governor Bill Clinton and the original Little Rock Nine marked the 40th anniversary of the crisis.
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President Eisenhower sent the 101st Airborne to Little Rock, Arkansas, to ensure the integration of Central High School in 1957. Three years after the Supreme Court declared race-based segregation illegal, a military showdown took place in Little Rock, Arkansas. On September 3, 1957, nine black students attempted to attend the all-white Central High School.

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Courtesy Birmingham Civil Rights Institute

Following the momentum of student-led sit-ins in Greensboro, North Carolina and Nashville, Tennesssee in early 1960, an interracial group of activists, led by Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) Executive Director James Farmer, decided to continue to challenge Jim Crow segregation in the South by organizing "freedom rides" through the region. They used as their model CORE's 1946 "Journey of Reconciliation" where an interracial group rode interstate buses to test the enforcement of the Supreme Court's decision in Morgan v. the Commonwealth of Virginia which outlawed segregation in interstate travel. White southern segregationists resisted CORE's efforts. When most of the demonstrators were arrested in North Carolina, the police effectively aborted the Journey of Reconciliation.

Recalling that failed effort 15 years earlier, James Farmer organized a new generation of black and white activists to travel on interstate buses to test the 1960 United States Supreme Court decision in Boynton v. Virginia which reiterated the earlier ruling prohibiting racial segregation in interstate transportation.

This time CORE organized a dozen activists who were paired into two interracial sets of Freedom Riders who would travel on Greyhound and Trailways buses, respectively, from Washington, D.C. to New Orleans, Louisiana. The Freedom Riders left Washington on May 4, 1961 and traveled without incident across Virginia and North Carolina. They encountered violence for the first time at the bus terminal in Rock Hill, South Carolina when several young white males beat black riders who attempted to use a "whites only" restroom.

The Freedom Riders continued, however, and crossed Georgia without incident. When the activists reached Alabama on May 14 the attacks intensified. The Greyhound riders were met in Anniston by a mob whose members threw rocks and slashed the bus's tires. The driver managed to drive the bus a few miles out of town. When he stopped to repair the tires, white supremacists firebombed the vehicle. For that group the Freedom Ride had ended.

The riders in the Trailways bus were also assaulted by Anniston whites. They managed to get to Birmingham where they encountered a larger mob who beat them with baseball bats, lead pipes and bicycle chains.

Infuriated by the news of the vicious assaults, Diane Nash, a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), organized a new contingent of Freedom Riders in Nashville. The second group departed from Nashville on May 14 to reinforce the beleaguered CORE Riders in Alabama.

Upon their arrival in Birmingham on May 17, Public Safety Commissioner Eugene "Bull" Conner ordered his police officers to place the activists in protective custody. The following morning law officials transported the riders back to the Tennessee state line, leaving them on the side of the highway. Instead of abandoning the campaign, Nash led the resilient activists 100 miles back to Nashville to regroup.

On May 20, the Nashville riders were back in Birmingham where there were no incidents. Then all of the Freedom Riders traveled on to Montgomery where a mob of men, women and children carrying baseball bats, tire irons and bricks met them at the terminal. As the riders departed from the bus, the angry gang swarmed, beating the passengers. They attacked SNCC activists John Lewis and Jim Zwerg, who both sustained severe injuries. When White House observer John Seigenthaler attempted to protect two of the Freedom Riders, Susan Wilbur and Susan Hermann, an attacker knocked him unconscious.

The nationally televised attack strengthened the resolve of the Freedom Riders. James Farmer arrived to personally lead the rest of the group to Jackson, Mississippi. Law enforcement officials protected them as they traveled across the state. Once in the bus terminal in the Mississippi capital, Jackson city police arrested all of the demonstrators for violating a recently passed breach of the peace statute. They were convicted and fined $200 each. When the riders refused to pay, the judge sentenced them to 90 days in jail.

In an effort to intimidate the marchers, Mississippi officials transferred the now nearly one hundred men and women freedom riders to the state penitentiary at Parchman where they were subject to beatings and inedible food and repeatedly strip searched. Prison officials confiscated the blankets and mattresses of all of the activists. When other demonstrators arrived in Jackson they were also arrested and sent to Parchman where they faced similar conditions. By the end of the summer over 300 women and men were incarcerated there.

The Freedom Riders failed to reach New Orleans, Louisiana. However the international attention their efforts received forced Attorney General Robert Kennedy to petition the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) to outlaw segregation in interstate travel. Unlike the earlier Supreme Court rulings which segregationists largely ignored, the ICC immediately imposed sanctions and penalties for the violation of its order. On November 1, 1961, the new order went into effect across the nation.

The Freedom Rides illuminated the courage of black and white youth and highlighted the leadership of Diane Nash. The Freedom Rides also inspired rural southern blacks to embrace civil disobedience as a strategy for regaining their civil rights. That inspiration would be seen in subsequent campaigns such as Mississippi's Freedom Summer in 1964 and the Selma Movement in 1965 as well as in dozens of much less heralded efforts to register to vote or to integrate the region's public schools.

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Following the momentum of student-led sit-ins in Greensboro, North Carolina and Nashville, Tennesssee in early 1960, an interracial group of activists, led by Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) Executive Director James Farmer, decided to continue to challenge Jim Crow segregation in the South by organizing ... Read MoreFreedom Rides (1961)

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Malcolm X, (born May 19, 1925, Omaha, Nebraska, U.S.-died February 21, 1965, New York, New York), African American leader and prominent figure in the Nation of Islam who articulated concepts of race pride and Black nationalism in the early 1960s. After his assassination, the widespread distribution of his life story-The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965)-made him an ideological hero, especially among Black youth.

Early years and conversion to Islam

Born in Nebraska, while an infant Malcolm moved with his family to Lansing, Michigan. When Malcolm was six years old, his father, the Rev. Earl Little, a Baptist minister and former supporter of the early Black nationalist leader Marcus Garvey, died after being hit by a streetcar, quite possibly the victim of murder by whites. The surviving family was so poor that Malcolm's mother, Louise Little, resorted to cooking dandelion greens from the street to feed her children. After she was committed to an insane asylum in 1939, Malcolm and his siblings were sent to foster homes or to live with family members.

Malcolm excelled in school, but after one of his eighth-grade teachers told him that he should become a carpenter instead of a lawyer, he lost interest and soon ended his formal education. As a rebellious youngster, Malcolm moved from the Michigan State Detention Home, a juvenile home in Mason, Michigan, to the Roxbury section of Boston to live with an older half sister, Ella, from his father's first marriage. There he became involved in petty criminal activities in his teenage years. Known as "Detroit Red" for the reddish tinge in his hair, he developed into a street hustler, drug dealer, and leader of a gang of thieves in Roxbury and Harlem (in New York City).

While in prison for robbery from 1946 to 1952, he underwent a conversion that eventually led him to join the Nation of Islam, an African American movement that combined elements of Islam with Black nationalism. His decision to join the Nation also was influenced by discussions with his brother Reginald, who had become a member in Detroit and who was incarcerated with Malcolm in the Norfolk Prison Colony in Massachusetts in 1948. Malcolm quit smoking and gambling and refused to eat pork in keeping with the Nation's dietary restrictions. In order to educate himself, he spent long hours reading books in the prison library, even memorizing a dictionary. He also sharpened his forensic skills by participating in debate classes. Following Nation tradition, he replaced his surname, "Little," with an "X," a custom among Nation of Islam followers who considered their family names to have originated with white slaveholders.

Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam

After his release from prison Malcolm helped to lead the Nation of Islam during the period of its greatest growth and influence. He met Elijah Muhammad in Chicago in 1952 and then began organizing temples for the Nation in New York, Philadelphia, and Boston and in cities in the South. He founded the Nation's newspaper, Muhammad Speaks, which he printed in the basement of his home, and initiated the practice of requiring every male member of the Nation to sell an assigned number of newspapers on the street as a recruiting and fund-raising technique. He also articulated the Nation's racial doctrines on the inherent evil of whites and the natural superiority of Blacks.

Malcolm rose rapidly to become the minister of Boston Temple No. 11, which he founded; he was later rewarded with the post of minister of Temple No. 7 in Harlem, the largest and most prestigious temple in the Nation after the Chicago headquarters. Recognizing his talent and ability, Elijah Muhammad, who had a special affection for Malcolm, named him the National Representative of the Nation of Islam, second in rank to Muhammad himself. Under Malcolm's lieutenancy, the Nation claimed a membership of 500,000. The actual number of members fluctuated, however, and the influence of the organization, refracted through the public persona of Malcolm X, always greatly exceeded its size.

An articulate public speaker, a charismatic personality, and an indefatigable organizer, Malcolm X expressed the pent-up anger, frustration, and bitterness of African Americans during the major phase of the civil rights movement from 1955 to 1965. He preached on the streets of Harlem and spoke at major universities such as Harvard University and the University of Oxford. His keen intellect, incisive wit, and ardent radicalism made him a formidable critic of American society. He also criticized the mainstream civil rights movement, challenging Martin Luther King, Jr.'s central notions of integration and nonviolence. Malcolm argued that more was at stake than the civil right to sit in a restaurant or even to vote-the most important issues were Black identity, integrity, and independence. In contrast to King's strategy of nonviolence, civil disobedience, and redemptive suffering, Malcolm urged his followers to defend themselves "by any means necessary." His biting critique of the "so-called Negro" provided the intellectual foundations for the Black Power and Black consciousness movements in the United States in the late 1960s and '70s ( see Black nationalism). Through the influence of the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X helped to change the terms used to refer to African Americans from "Negro" and "coloured" to "Black" and "Afro-American."

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Malcolm X | Biography, Nation of Islam, Assassination, & Facts

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Malcolm X, a prominent civil rights activist and advocate for Black empowerment, challenged societal norms with his powerful speeches and played a crucial role in the fight against racial injustice.

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Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), also called (after 1969) Student National Coordinating Committee, American political organization that played a central role in the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Begun as an interracial group advocating nonviolence, it adopted greater militancy late in the decade, reflecting nationwide trends in black activism.

The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was founded in early 1960 in Raleigh, North Carolina, to capitalize on the success of a surge of sit-ins in Southern college towns, where black students refused to leave restaurants in which they were denied service based on their race. This form of nonviolent protest brought SNCC to national attention, throwing a harsh public light on white racism in the South. In the years following, SNCC strengthened its efforts in community organization and supported Freedom Rides in 1961, along with the March on Washington in 1963, and agitated for the Civil Rights Act (1964). In 1966 SNCC officially threw its support behind the broader protest of the Vietnam War.

As SNCC became more active politically, its members faced increased violence. In response, SNCC migrated from a philosophy of nonviolence to one of greater militancy after the mid-1960s, as an advocate of the burgeoning " black power" movement, a facet of late 20th-century black nationalism. The shift was personified by Stokely Carmichael, who replaced John Lewis as SNCC chairman in 1966-67. While many early SNCC members were white, the newfound emphasis on African American identity led to greater racial separatism, which unnerved portions of the white community. More-radical elements of SNCC, such as Carmichael's successor H. Rap Brown, gravitated toward new groups, such as the Black Panther Party. SNCC was disbanded by the early 1970s.

Other notable figures in SNCC included Ella Baker, Julian Bond, Rubye Robinson, and Fannie Lou Hamer.

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Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee | History & Civil Rights Activism

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Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), also called (after 1969) Student National Coordinating Committee, American political organization that played a central role in the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Begun as an interracial group advocating nonviolence, it adopted greater militancy late in the decade, reflecting nationwide trends in black activism.

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The Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute

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Founded in 1942 by an interracial group of students in Chicago, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) pioneered the use of nonviolent direct action in America's civil rights struggle. Along with its parent organization, the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), CORE members provided advice and support to Martin Luther King during the Montgomery bus boycott. King worked with CORE throughout the late 1950s and into the mid-1960s, when CORE abandoned its dedication to nonviolence and adopted black separatist policies.

Early CORE activists James Farmer, Bayard Rustin, Homer Jack, and George Houser had all been affiliated with FOR, an international peace and justice organization. Influenced by Gandhi, in the 1940s CORE used sit-ins and other nonviolent direct actions to integrate Chicago restaurants and businesses. In 1947 CORE organized the Journey of Reconciliation, a multi-state integrated bus ride through the upper South in order to test the previous year's Supreme Court ruling against segregation in interstate travel. This precursor to the 1961 Freedom Rides was met with minimal violence, although several of the riders were arrested, and two were sentenced to work on a chain gang in North Carolina.

In the first weeks after the start of the Montgomery bus boycott, CORE-affiliated activists such as James Peck, Rustin, and Jack visited King. Jack wrote to his colleagues, "I never expected to see such a disciplined, effective protest in the South in 1956," and suggested CORE send field workers to support the movement (Jack, 9 March 1956). During the Montgomery bus boycott, CORE publicized King's work in its pamphlets. In October 1957 King agreed to serve on CORE's Advisory Committee.

In the following years, King's organization, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), worked with CORE on several projects, including the 1959 and 1960 Prayer Pilgrimage for Public Schools in support of integrated education, the Voter Education Project, and the Chicago Campaign. CORE supported southern blacks during the sit-in movement of 1960; CORE field secretaries traveled through the South, advising student activists on nonviolent methods.

CORE organized the Freedom Rides in the spring of 1961. Modeled after the earlier Journey of Reconciliation, the rides took an integrated group through the Deep South. Although King supported the rides, he considered them too dangerous to participate in himself. In Anniston, Alabama, one bus was firebombed, and its fleeing passengers were forced into an angry white mob. As the violence against the Freedom Rides increased, CORE considered halting the project. A Freedom Ride Coordinating Committee was formed by representatives of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, CORE, and SCLC to sustain the rides.

Following the Freedom Rides, CORE concentrated on voter registration. In 1962, along with other civil rights groups, CORE joined the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO), which coordinated the activities of local and national civil rights organizations in Mississippi. COFO's efforts culminated in the 1964 Freedom Summer and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), which challenged the state's all-white official delegation at the Democratic National Convention of 1964.

The murder of three CORE workers, Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney, in Mississippi in the summer of 1964, coupled with the limited success of MFDP, led many activists, including some in CORE, to become disenchanted with nonviolence. By 1966 a power struggle within CORE forced Farmer to step down as national director, leaving the more militant Floyd McKissick in his place. After King worked with McKissick during the summer of 1966 on the Meredith March Against Fear, CORE adopted a platform based on Black Power and limited white involvement in the organization.

Following King's assassination, McKissick called him "the last prince of nonviolence" and declared that nonviolence was "a dead philosophy" ("McKissick Says Nonviolence"). From this point, CORE focused its efforts on black nationalism and political self-determination in the black community.

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Founded in 1942 by an interracial group of students in Chicago, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) pioneered the use of nonviolent direct action in America's civil rights struggle. Along with its parent organization, the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), CORE members provided advice and support to Martin Luther King during the Montgomery bus boycott.

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Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), nonsectarian American agency with headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, established by the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., and other civil rights activists in 1957 to coordinate and assist local organizations working for the full equality of African Americans in all aspects of American life. The organization operated primarily in the South and some border states, conducting leadership-training programs, citizen-education projects, and voter-registration drives. The SCLC played a major part in the civil rights march on Washington, D.C., in 1963 and in notable antidiscrimination and voter-registration efforts in Albany, Georgia, and Birmingham and Selma, Alabama, in the early 1960s-campaigns that spurred passage of the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

After King was assassinated in April 1968, his place as president was taken by the Reverend Ralph David Abernathy. The SCLC maintained its philosophy of nonviolent social change, but, having lost its founder, it soon ceased to mount giant demonstrations and confined itself to smaller campaigns, predominantly in the South. The organization was further weakened by several schisms, including the departure in 1971 of the Reverend Jesse L. Jackson and his followers who had staffed Operation Breadbasket in Chicago, which was directed toward economic goals.

The SCLC nonetheless sustained its mission by organizing voter drives and cultivating African American political candidates. It also lobbied for the designation of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday as a national holiday ( see Martin Luther King, Jr., Day). The SCLC has published the SCLC Magazine since 1971.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Amy Tikkanen.

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Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) | Facts, History, & Significance

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Southern Christian Leadership Conference, nonsectarian American agency established by the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., and other civil rights activists in 1957 to coordinate and assist local organizations working for the full equality of African Americans in all aspects of American life.

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The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica • Edit History

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Fair Housing Act, also called Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act of 1968, U.S. federal legislation that protects individuals and families from discrimination in the sale, rental, financing, or advertising of housing. The Fair Housing Act, as amended in 1988, prohibits discrimination on the basis of…

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In the summer of 1964 the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) began organizing a movement regarding voting rights. COFO was a group of Mississippi branches of the four major civil rights organizations: the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). One thousand out-of-state volunteers came together with thousands of Black Mississippians that summer.

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Selma March, political march from Selma, Alabama, to the state's capital, Montgomery, that occurred March 21-25, 1965. Led by Martin Luther King, Jr., the march was the culminating event of several tumultuous weeks during which demonstrators twice attempted to march but were stopped, once violently, by local police. As many as 25,000 people participated in the roughly 50-mile (80-km) march. Together, these events became a landmark in the American civil rights movement and directly led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Voter registration in Selma

In 1963 the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) endeavoured to register African American voters in Dallas county in central Alabama. The focus of those efforts was the county seat, Selma, where only about 1 or 2 percent of eligible Black voters were registered. Not only was the registration office open just two days per month, but cumbersome four-page forms and arbitrarily applied literacy tests were used to deter and prevent African Americans from obtaining the vote. In late 1964, as SNCC intensified its registration campaign in response to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, local law enforcement-led by the county's militant segregationist sheriff, Jim Clark (who wore a button that read "Never!")-resisted with increasing violence (including the use of electric cattle prods against demonstrators). When the Dallas County Voters League, the principal local civil rights organization, requested help from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and its leader, Martin Luther King, Jr., Selma's recently elected mayor, Joseph Smitherman, sought to prevent local law-enforcement officers from employing violence, fearing that bad publicity would work against his attempt to lure new industry to Selma.

Clark, however, failed to heed Smitherman's directive. By early February 1965, with the SCLC's organizing efforts in full swing, police violence had escalated and at least 2,000 demonstrators had been jailed in Dallas county. In January and February King pointed to the situation in Selma when he sought to persuade Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson to push for a voting rights act. Johnson, however, remained largely noncommittal. He hoped that court enforcement of the Civil Rights Act would bring about the necessary change, he doubted that there would be sufficient congressional support for a voting rights bill, and he was hesitant to further provoke white Southerners who were already up in arms over desegregation legislation.

On February 18, 1965, in Marion, the county seat of Perry county, near Selma, a state trooper shot Jimmie Lee Jackson, a young African American man, during a nighttime demonstration. After Jackson died of his wounds just over a week later in Selma, leaders called for a march to the state capital, Montgomery, to bring attention to the injustice of Jackson's death, the ongoing police violence, and the sweeping violations of African Americans' civil rights. On March 6, George C. Wallace, Alabama's segregationist governor, forbade the march and ordered state troopers to "take whatever means necessary" to prevent it.

Bloody Sunday

In unilaterally scheduling the action for Sunday, March 7, King alienated a number of SNCC leaders, who resented the lack of a joint decision. Ultimately, they allowed their members to participate in the march as individuals, led by SNCC chairman John Lewis. When King's father persuaded him to preach at Ebenezer Baptist Church (his home church) in Atlanta on Sunday, King initially rescheduled the march for Monday, March 8. He then chose to allow it to take place as originally planned so as not to discourage those who had already arrived on Sunday. His intention was to join the march later.

Before departing Brown Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Selma on Sunday morning, marchers were reminded of their nonviolent tactics-that if they were halted, they should sit and pray until tear gassed or arrested. Led by Hosea Williams, one of King's SCLC lieutenants, and Lewis, some 600 demonstrators walked, two by two, the six blocks to the Edmund Pettus Bridge that crossed the Alabama River and led out of Selma. At the east end of the bridge, the demonstrators encountered a force of sheriff's deputies, deputized "possemen" (some on horseback), and dozens of state troopers. The marchers were told that they had two minutes to disperse. Williams asked to speak with the officer who had given the command. The officer responded that there was nothing to talk about, and moments later he ordered the state troopers to advance. In the tear-gas-shrouded melee that followed, marchers were spat upon, overrun by horses, and attacked with billy clubs and bullwhips. More than 50 marchers, including Lewis, were hospitalized.

Television cameras recorded the brutal assault and brought it into millions of American homes. Significantly, the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) interrupted its telecast of Judgment at Nuremburg (1961), a film about the prosecuting of Nazi war criminals, to show the events in Selma, which became known as "Bloody Sunday." Over the next 48 hours, demonstrations were held in some 80 U.S. cities in support of the marchers.

Turnaround Tuesday

King called on Americans of conscience to go to Selma to join the protest and restart the march. Thousands answered his call. Meanwhile, lawyers for the SCLC went to court in an attempt to prevent Wallace and the state from intervening again in the demonstration. While U.S. District Court Judge Frank Johnson, Jr., agreed to hear the petition, he also issued a restraining order forbidding any further demonstrations in the interim. On March 9 King led more than 2,000 individuals on a march to the bridge. Reluctant to violate the restraining order, however, he turned the procession around, after leading it in prayer, when state troopers ordered it to halt. That was not the last dramatic event of "Turnaround Tuesday." That night three white clergymen who had traveled to Selma to join the protest were assaulted. One of them, Massachusetts Unitarian minister James J. Reeb, died of his wounds.

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Selma March | Date, Route, Bloody Sunday, & Facts

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Selma March, political march led by Martin Luther King, Jr., from Selma, Alabama, to the state's capital, Montgomery, that occurred March 21-25, 1965. The march became a landmark in the American civil rights movement and directly led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

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Monday marks Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Below is a transcript of his celebrated "I Have a Dream" speech, delivered on Aug. 28, 1963, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. NPR's Talk of the Nation aired the speech in 2010 - listen to that broadcast at the audio link above.

Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.: Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

But 100 years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself in exile in his own land. And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition. In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check.

When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men - yes, Black men as well as white men - would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked insufficient funds.

But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt.

We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.

We have also come to his hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism.

Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quick sands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. 1963 is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual.

There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.

We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny.

And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone. And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back.

There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, when will you be satisfied? We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities.

We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating: for whites only.

We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote.

No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our Northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.

Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.

So even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day down in Alabama with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, one day right down in Alabama little Black boys and Black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning: My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrims' pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania. Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado. Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California. But not only that, let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia. Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee. Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, Black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: Free at last. Free at last. Thank God almighty, we are free at last.

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Read Martin Luther King Jr.'s 'I Have a Dream' speech in its entirety

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Americans across the U.S. are celebrating King's legacy this weekend. One way to reflect on his life and message is by revisiting his celebrated 1963 speech delivered at the Lincoln Memorial.

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sit-in movement, nonviolent movement of the U.S. civil rights era that began in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1960. The sit-in, an act of civil disobedience, was a tactic that aroused sympathy for the demonstrators among moderates and uninvolved individuals. African Americans (later joined by white activists), usually students, would go to segregated lunch counters (luncheonettes), sit in all available spaces, request service, and then refuse to leave when denied service because of their race. In addition to creating disruptions and drawing unwanted publicity, the action caused economic hardship for the owners of the businesses, because the sit-in participants took up spaces that normally were filled by paying customers. Although the first lunch-counter sit-in began with just four participants, the attention paid to the protest created a movement that spread across the South in 1960 and 1961 to include 70,000 Black and white participants. It affected 20 states and resulted in the desegregation of many local businesses in those communities.

Origins of the sit-in movement

During the Indian struggle for independence from the British, followers of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi's teaching employed the sit-in to great advantage. A tactic similar to the sit-in, the sit-down strike, has been used by unions to occupy plants of companies that they were on strike against. The sit-down was first used on a large scale in the United States during the United Automobile Workers' strike against the General Motors Corporation in 1937. An early antisegregation sit-in was staged by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) at a Chicago coffee shop in 1942, and similar actions took place around the South.

The lunch-counter sit-in that began the movement, however, took place in Greensboro, North Carolina, on the afternoon of February 1, 1960. Four freshmen from the Agricultural and Technical College of North Carolina (North Carolina A&T; now North Carolina A&T State University), a historically Black college, made some purchases at the local F.W. Woolworth department store. They then sat down at the "whites only" lunch counter and placed an order but were refused service. They remained seated and were eventually asked to leave the premises; instead, they stayed until closing and returned the next day with more than a dozen other students. One of the students, David Richmond, acknowledged later that the action began "on impulse"-though the group, who were familiar with Gandhi's nonviolent protests against the British, had previously discussed taking action against Jim Crow laws-and that the students were surprised at the impact their local initiative had on the entire civil rights movement.

Interest in participating in the sit-in spread quickly among the students of North Carolina A&T. The large supply of local students increased the effectiveness of the tactic; as demonstrators were arrested by local law enforcement and removed from the counter, others would take their place. Soon, as word about the Greensboro movement spread across the upper South, African American students from other historically Black campuses began their own protests. In places such as Salisbury, North Carolina; San Antonio, Texas; and Chattanooga, Tennessee, local officials and business owners agreed to desegregate facilities after local sit-in movements took hold. The Woolworth in Greensboro was desegregated in July 1960.

The sit-in movement destroyed a number of myths and stereotypes about Southern Blacks that white segregationists had commonly used to support the Jim Crow system. For example, with widespread and spontaneous demonstrations across the South, it became clear to observers that Southern Blacks were not content with Jim Crow segregation. The grassroots nature of the protest, arising locally from local Black populations, also crushed the myth that all civil rights agitation came from outside the South. Moreover, the nonviolent and courteous behaviour of the Black sit-in protesters played well on local and national television and showed them to be responsible people. The cruelty of the segregated system was further exposed when local ruffians attempted to break up the sit-ins with verbal abuse, assault, and violence. The local people who cooperated in sit-ins provided a community of Black citizens willing to agitate for change and to suffer violence for a greater cause.

Growth of the sit-in movement

As the movement grew and more students, both Black and white, became involved, civil rights organizations such as CORE and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) organized training sessions in nonviolence for participants. Expecting violence from whites, arrest, and abuse, CORE held workshops to instruct the students in the tactics and ideas of nonviolence so as to increase the power and scope of the movement.

Key to the success of the sit-in movement was the moral high ground that the participants took. Their peaceful demonstrations for basic legal rights and respect increased favourable public opinion of their cause. Facing violence with nonviolent resistance required that the students take no action against white aggressors and police who physically harassed and assaulted them and arrested them on spurious charges. Student participants came to understand the higher moral purpose of their own movement, and they practiced those principles in hundreds of small encounters across the upper and middle South.

Knowledge of the sit-in movements spread rapidly across the South as the local nonviolent action took on a regional character. By the end of February 1960, lunch-counter sit-ins had occurred in North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Maryland, Kentucky, Alabama, Virginia, and Florida. They spread in March to Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Georgia and later to West Virginia, Ohio, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Illinois, Kansas, and Missouri.

At nearly every historically Black college, students organized and met with local officials from CORE and SCLC in workshops and conferences on nonviolence. Those meetings often brought together hundreds of students from communities in several states, who then began to form coordinated efforts at civil rights action. The creation of such communities of students led to greater coordination in the civil rights movement as the sit-ins phased out.

In April 1960 Ella Baker, former executive director of the SCLC, organized a student leadership conference at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina, that resulted in the formation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Baker had long been active as a local leader in the civil rights movement, but she gained a new prominence with the student-led sit-in movement. Martin Luther King, Jr., spoke at the conference, emphasizing his philosophy of nonviolence. Demonstrating through nonviolence would force federal intervention, he argued, yet would permit the ultimate reconciliation between the races after the scourge of segregation had passed away.

In an article published shortly after the conference, Baker crystallized the message of the students when she stated that those who participated in sit-ins were concerned with something "bigger than a hamburger." She encapsulated their goals by quoting a student newsletter of the historically Black Barber-Scotia College (Concord, North Carolina):

We want the world to know that we no longer accept the inferior position of second-class citizenship. We are willing to go to jail, be ridiculed, spat upon, and even suffer physical violence to obtain First Class Citizenship.

Although the sit-in movement demonstrated success, the participants at the Raleigh conference clashed about the proper strategies for the civil rights movement. Activist and minister James Lawson argued that the legal strategy of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was too slow to effect the major social change needed to bring about justice. CORE and SCLC had assisted in the sit-in movement, but mostly after the fact, and Lawson saw the need for an organization focused on developing local leaders in local communities that could operate outside the mainstream organizations.

SNCC was formed with Lawson's advice serving as its founding principles. It began working to organize students and local Black communities to advance the civil rights movement, often in tandem but sometimes at odds with the other civil rights movements and leaders.

The legacy of the sit-in movement

The sit-in movement produced a new sense of pride and power for African Americans. By rising up on their own and achieving substantial success protesting against segregation in the society in which they lived, Blacks realized that they could change their communities with local coordinated action. For many white Southerners, the sit-in movement demonstrated Blacks' dissatisfaction with the status quo and showed that economic harm could come to white-owned businesses unless they desegregated peacefully. The sit-in movement proved the inevitability of the end of the Jim Crow system. Most of the success in actual desegregation came in the upper Southern states, such as in cities in Arkansas, Maryland, North Carolina, and Tennessee. On the other hand, no cities in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, or South Carolina desegregated as a result of the sit-in movement.

The sit-in movement marked the first major effort by thousands of local Blacks in civil rights activism. However, the sit-ins failed to create the kind of national attention necessary for any federal intervention. Although SNCC did develop out of the sit-in movement, becoming a permanent organization separate from CORE and the SCLC, the sit-ins faded out by the end of 1960. A new phase of Black protest arose in the form of Freedom Rides, and new coordinated white resistance changed the tactics of civil rights leaders, dramatically raising the level and degree of violence by white civil rights opponents.

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Sit-in movement | history & impact on civil rights movement

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Sit-in movement, nonviolent movement of the U.S. civil rights era that began in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1960. The sit-in, an act of civil disobedience, aroused sympathy among moderates and uninvolved individuals. African Americans (later joined by white activists) would go to segregated lunch counters.

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Little Rock Nine, group of African American high-school students who challenged racial segregation in the public schools of Little Rock, Arkansas. The group-consisting of Melba Pattillo, Ernest Green, Elizabeth Eckford, Minnijean Brown, Terrence Roberts, Carlotta Walls, Jefferson Thomas, Gloria Ray, and Thelma Mothershed-became the centre of the struggle to desegregate public schools in the United States, especially in the South. The events that followed their enrollment in Little Rock Central High School provoked intense national debate about racial segregation and civil rights.

During the summer of 1957, the Little Rock Nine enrolled at Little Rock Central High School, which until then had been all white. The students' effort to enroll was supported by the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), which had declared segregated schooling to be unconstitutional.

Warned by the Little Rock board of education not to attend the first day of school, the nine African American students arrived on the second day accompanied by a small interracial group of ministers. They encountered a large white mob in front of the school, who began shouting, throwing stones, and threatening to kill the students. In addition, about 270 soldiers of the Arkansas National Guard, sent by Arkansas Gov. Orval Eugene Faubus, blocked the school's entrance. Faubus had declared his opposition to integration and his intention to defy a federal court order requiring desegregation.

The confrontation in Little Rock drew international attention to racism and civil rights in the United States as well as to the battle between federal and state power. Television and newspaper reporters devoted substantial coverage to the "Little Rock Nine," as the African American students were called.

Pres. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Governor Faubus, and Little Rock's mayor, Woodrow Mann, discussed the situation over the course of 18 days, during which time the nine students stayed home. The students returned to the high school on September 23, entering through a side door to avoid the protesters' attention and wrath.

They were eventually discovered, however, and white protesters became violent, attacking African American bystanders as well as reporters for northern newspapers. The students were sent home, but they returned on September 25, protected by U.S. soldiers. Despite Eisenhower's publicly stated reluctance to use federal troops to enforce desegregation, he recognized the potential for violence and state insubordination. He thus sent the elite 101st Airborne Division, called the "Screaming Eagles," to Little Rock and placed the Arkansas National Guard under federal command.

The Little Rock Nine continued to face physical and verbal attacks from white students throughout their studies at Central High. One of the students, Minnijean Brown, fought back and was expelled. The remaining eight students, however, attended the school for the rest of the academic year. At the end of the year, in 1958, senior Ernest Green became the first African American to graduate from Little Rock Central High School.

Governor Faubus was reelected in 1958, and, rather than permit desegregation, he closed all of Little Rock's schools. Many school districts in the South followed Little Rock's example, closing schools or implementing "school-choice" programs that subsidized white students' attendance at private segregated academies, which were not covered by the Supreme Court's decision. Little Rock Central High School did not reopen with a desegregated student body until 1960, and efforts to integrate schools and other public areas throughout the country continued through the 1960s.

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Little Rock Nine | Names, Significance, Facts, & Segregation

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Little Rock Nine, group of African American high-school students who challenged racial segregation in the public schools of Little Rock, Arkansas. The group became the center of the struggle to desegregate public schools in the United States, and their actions provoked intense national debate about civil rights.

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Freedom Rides, in U.S. history, a series of political protests against segregation by Blacks and whites who rode buses together through the American South in 1961.

In 1946 the U.S. Supreme Court banned segregation in interstate bus travel. A year later the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the Fellowship of Reconciliation tested the ruling by staging the Journey of Reconciliation, on which an interracial group of activists rode together on a bus through the upper South, though fearful of journeying to the Deep South. Following this example and responding to the Supreme Court's Boynton v. Virginia decision of 1960, which extended the earlier ruling to include bus terminals, restrooms, and other facilities associated with interstate travel, a group of seven African Americans and six whites left Washington, D.C., on May 4, 1961, on a Freedom Ride in two buses bound for New Orleans. Convinced that segregationists in the South would violently protest this exercise of their constitutional right, the Freedom Riders hoped to provoke the federal government into enforcing the Boynton decision. When they stopped along the way, white riders used facilities designated for Blacks and vice versa.

The Freedom Riders encountered violence in South Carolina, but in Alabama the reaction was much more severe. On May 14, upon stopping outside Anniston to change a slashed tire, one bus was firebombed and the Freedom Riders were beaten. Arriving in Birmingham, the second bus was similarly attacked and the passengers beaten. In both cases law enforcement was suspiciously late in responding, and there were suspicions of collusion in that late response. Although the original Riders were unable to find a bus line to carry them farther, a second group of 10, originating in Nashville and partly organized by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), renewed the effort. Undeterred by being arrested in Birmingham and transported back to Tennessee, the new Freedom Riders returned to Birmingham and, at the behest of U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, secured a bus and protection from the State Highway Patrol as they traveled to Montgomery, where, when local police failed to protect them, they were again beaten.

Thereafter National Guard support was provided when 27 Freedom Riders continued on to Jackson, Mississippi, only to be arrested and jailed. On May 29 Kennedy ordered the Interstate Commerce Commission to enforce even stricter guidelines banning segregation in interstate travel. Still, Freedom Riders continued to travel by public transportation in the South until that dictate took effect in September.

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Freedom Rides | History, Definition, Map, Facts, & Significance

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Freedom Rides, political protests against segregation by Blacks and whites who rode buses together through the U.S. South in 1961. Convinced that segregationists would violently protest this action, the Freedom Riders hoped to provoke the federal enforcement of the Supreme Court's Boynton v. Virginia decision.

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As the leader of the nonviolent Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, Martin Luther King Jr. traversed the country in his quest for freedom. His involvement in the movement began during the bus boycotts of 1955 and was ended by an assassin's bullet in 1968.

As the unquestioned leader of the peaceful Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was at the same time one of the most beloved and one of the most hated men of his time. From his involvement in the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955 until his untimely death in 1968, King's message of change through peaceful means added to the movement's numbers and gave it its moral strength. The legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. is embodied in these two simple words: equality and nonviolence.

King was raised in an activist family. His father was deeply influenced by Marcus Garvey's Back to Africa Movement in the 1920s. His mother was the daughter of one of Atlanta's most influential African American ministers. As a student, King excelled. He easily moved through grade levels and entered Morehouse College, his father's alma mater, at the age of fifteen. Next, he attended Crozer Theological Seminary, where he received a Bachelor of Divinity degree. While he was pursuing his doctorate at Boston University, he met and married Coretta Scott. After receiving his Ph.D. in 1955, King accepted an appointment to the Dexter Street Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama.

Birmingham, Alabama, police commissioner Bull Connor ordered that fire hoses and dogs be used to subdue protesters. The violence that ensued was broadcast across the nation galvanized the Civil Rights Movement.

After his organization of the bus boycott, King formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which dedicated itself to the advancement of rights for African Americans. In April 1963, King organized a protest in Birmingham, Alabama, a city King called "the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States." Since the end of World War II, there had been 60 unsolved bombings of African American churches and homes.

Boycotts, sit-ins and marches were conducted. When Bull Connor, head of the Birmingham police department, used fire hoses and dogs on the demonstrators, millions saw the images on television. King was arrested. But support came from around the nation and the world for King and his family. Later in 1963, he delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech to thousands in Washington, D.C.

In March 1965, Dr. King led protestors on a 50-mile, voting-rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. It took three attempts for the protestors to complete the march, battling tear gas, cattle prods, and police batons, but the national attention drawn by their efforts ultimately led to the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

After the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, King turned his efforts to registering African American voters in the South. In 1965, he led a march in Selma, Alabama, to increase the percentage of African American voters in Alabama. Again, King was arrested. Again, the marchers faced attacks by the police. Tear gas, cattle prods, and billy clubs fell on the peaceful demonstrators. Public opinion weighed predominantly on the side of King and the protesters. Finally, President Johnson ordered the National Guard to protect the demonstrators from attack, and King was able to complete the long march from Selma to the state capital of Montgomery. The action in Selma led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Early in the morning of April 4, 1968, King was shot by James Earl Ray. Spontaneous violence spread through urban areas as mourners unleashed their rage at the loss of their leader. Rioting burst forth in many American cities.

RFK on MLK

But the world never forgot his contributions. Time magazine had named him "Man of the Year" in 1963. In 1964, he won the Nobel Peace Prize and was described as "the first person in the Western world to have shown us that a struggle can be waged without violence." In 1977, he was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest award a civilian American can earn. In the 1980s, his birthday became a national holiday, creating an annual opportunity for Americans to reflect on the two values he dedicated his life to advancing: equality and nonviolence.

Nobel Peace Prize Presentation Speech
Martin Luther King Jr. was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 for his crusade for civil rights in the United States. Read the full text of the presentation speech given by chairman of the Nobel Committee, Gunnar Jahns, then follow the link for a biography of King.

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National Voting Rights Museum
The National Voting Rights Museum was founded by survivors of Selma, Alabama's Bloody Sunday to commemorate the long struggle that finally ended in voting rights for African Americans. Here are plenty of pictures from the Civil Rights Movement, as well as newspapers from the era. Listen to a protest song that helped propel the movement through the turbulent and often violent '60s.

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The Martin Luther King Jr. Papers Project
A thoroughly in-depth and captivating archive of many of Martin Luther King Jr.'s speeches, sermons, and works. This indispensable resource helps visitors better understand one of the great men of the 20th century. Be sure to check out the audio excerpts provided with some of the speeches and sermons.

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As the leader of the nonviolent Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, Martin Luther King Jr. traversed the country in his quest for freedom. His involvement in the movement began during the bus boycotts of 1955 and was ended by an assassin's bullet in 1968.

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Though Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X were both influential figures in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, the two met only once and exchanged just a few words.

When Malcolm Little was growing up in Lansing, Michigan, he developed a mistrust for white Americans. Ku Klux Klan terrorists burned his house, and his father was later murdered - an act young Malcolm attributed to local whites. After moving to Harlem, Malcolm turned to crime. Soon he was arrested and sent to jail.

The prison experience was eye-opening for the young man, and he soon made some decisions that altered the course of his life. He began to read and educate himself. Influenced by other inmates, he converted to Islam. Upon his release, he was a changed man with a new identity.

Believing his true lineage to be lost when his ancestors were forced into slavery, he took the last name of a variable: X.

Malcolm X was a practitioner of the Black Muslim faith, which combines the religious aspects of Islam with the ideas of both black power and black nationalism.

Wallace Fard founded the Nation of Islam in the 1930s. Christianity was the white man's religion, declared Fard. It was forced on African Americans during the slave experience. Islam was closer to African roots and identity. Members of the Nation of Islam read the Koran, worship Allah as their God, and accept Mohammed as their chief prophet. Mixed with the religious tenets of Islam were black pride and black nationalism. The followers of Fard became known as Black Muslims.

When Fard mysteriously disappeared, Elijah Muhammad became the leader of the movement. The Nation of Islam attracted many followers, especially in prisons, where lost African Americans most looked for guidance. They preached adherence to a strict moral code and reliance on other African Americans. Integration was not a goal. Rather, the Nation of Islam wanted blacks to set up their own schools, churches, and support networks. When Malcolm X made his personal conversion, Elijah Muhammad soon recognized his talents and made him a leading spokesperson for the Black Muslims.

Martin and Malcolm

As Martin Luther King preached his gospel of peaceful change and integration in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Malcolm X delivered a different message: whites were not to be trusted. He called on African Americans to be proud of their heritage and to set up strong communities without the help of white Americans. He promoted the establishment of a separate state for African Americans in which they could rely on themselves to provide solutions to their own problems. Violence was not the only answer, but violence was justified in self-defense. Blacks should achieve what was rightfully theirs "by any means necessary."

Cartoonist Jimmy Margulies's satire of police profiling - the practice of pulling motorists over simply because of their race - won him an award for excellence in journalism. Caption: "Not only does this have dynamic performance, but think of the oohs and aahs you'll get when you're pulled over on the turnpike."

Malcolm X electrified urban audiences with his eloquent prose and inspirational style. In 1963, he split with the Nation of Islam; in 1964, he made the pilgrimage to Mecca. Later that year, he showed signs of softening his stand on violence and even met with Martin Luther King Jr. to exchange remarks. What direction he might have ultimately taken is lost to a history that can never be written. As Malcolm X led a mass rally in Harlem on February 21, 1965, rival Black Muslims gunned him down.

Although his life was ended, the ideas he preached lived on in the Black Power Movement.

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Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam [ushistory.org]

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Though Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X were both influential figures in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, the two met only once and exchanged just a few words. When Malcolm Little was growing up in Lansing, Michigan, he developed a mistrust for white Americans.

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Martin Luther King, Jr. (born January 15, 1929, Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.-died April 4, 1968, Memphis, Tennessee) Baptist minister and social activist who led the civil rights movement in the United States from the mid-1950s until his death by assassination in 1968. His leadership was fundamental to that movement's success in ending the legal segregation of African Americans in the South and other parts of the United States. King rose to national prominence as head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which promoted nonviolent tactics, such as the massive March on Washington (1963), to achieve civil rights. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.

Early years

King came from a comfortable middle-class family steeped in the tradition of the Southern Black ministry: both his father and maternal grandfather were Baptist preachers. His parents were college-educated, and King's father had succeeded his father-in-law as pastor of the prestigious Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. The family lived on Auburn Avenue, otherwise known as "Sweet Auburn," the bustling "Black Wall Street," home to some of the country's largest and most prosperous Black businesses and Black churches in the years before the civil rights movement. Young Martin received a solid education and grew up in a loving extended family.

This secure upbringing, however, did not prevent King from experiencing the prejudices then common in the South. He never forgot the time when, at about age six, one of his white playmates announced that his parents would no longer allow him to play with King, because the children were now attending segregated schools. Dearest to King in these early years was his maternal grandmother, whose death in 1941 left him shaken and unstable. Upset because he had learned of her fatal heart attack while attending a parade without his parents' permission, the 12-year-old King attempted suicide by jumping from a second-story window.

In 1944, at age 15, King entered Morehouse College in Atlanta under a special wartime program intended to boost enrollment by admitting promising high-school students like King. Before beginning college, however, King spent the summer on a tobacco farm in Connecticut; it was his first extended stay away from home and his first substantial experience of race relations outside the segregated South. He was shocked by how peacefully the races mixed in the North. "Negroes and whites go [to] the same church," he noted in a letter to his parents. "I never [thought] that a person of my race could eat anywhere." This summer experience in the North only deepened King's growing hatred of racial segregation.

At Morehouse, King favoured studies in medicine and law, but these were eclipsed in his senior year by a decision to enter the ministry, as his father had urged. King's mentor at Morehouse was the college president, Benjamin Mays, a social gospel activist whose rich oratory and progressive ideas had left an indelible imprint on King's father. Committed to fighting racial inequality, Mays accused the African American community of complacency in the face of oppression, and he prodded the Black church into social action by criticizing its emphasis on the hereafter instead of the here and now; it was a call to service that was not lost on the teenage King. He graduated from Morehouse in 1948.

King spent the next three years at Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania, where he became acquainted with Mohandas Gandhi's philosophy of nonviolence as well as with the thought of contemporary Protestant theologians. He earned a bachelor of divinity degree in 1951. Renowned for his oratorical skills, King was elected president of Crozer's student body, which was composed almost exclusively of white students. As a professor at Crozer wrote in a letter of recommendation for King, "The fact that with our student body largely Southern in constitution a colored man should be elected to and be popular [in] such a position is in itself no mean recommendation." From Crozer, King went to Boston University, where, in seeking a firm foundation for his own theological and ethical inclinations, he studied man's relationship to God and received a doctorate (1955) for a dissertation titled "A Comparison of the Conceptions of God in the Thinking of Paul Tillich and Henry Nelson Wieman."

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Martin Luther King, Jr. | Biography, Speeches, Facts, & Assassination

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Martin Luther King, Jr., a visionary leader and advocate for equality, spearheaded the civil rights movement in America through nonviolent protests, inspiring lasting change and leaving an enduring legacy.

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SNCC and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) worked closely together throughout the South, and especially in Mississippi. CORE began in Chicago in 1942 when James Farmer, who would become its first national director, proposed the creation of an organization that would use "Gandhi-like techniques of nonviolent resistance - including civil disobedience, non-cooperation, and the whole bit - in the battle against segregation."

Until the 1960s, it was largely northern, mostly white, and led by grown-ups. The outbreak of sit-ins in 1960, however, began to move CORE southward and saw the emergence of young people into the ranks of its leadership. Projects began in various southern states, most notably Louisiana. In 1961, CORE began the Freedom Rides through the South to test federally-ordered desegregation of buses and bus stations. The Freedom Rides offered many young activists, including those in SNCC, their first experience in organized activism in the South, as well as helped CORE expand its southern presence, especially in Mississippi.

CORE occupied a unique position within the Mississippi Movement. Officially, the organization had its own distinct territory-the Fourth Congressional District-mainly for its national office, which wanted the visibility to support its fundraising efforts. However, on the ground, the organization played a more organic role in the Movement. Under the direction of young leaders, like Tom Gaither and Dave Dennis, CORE's Mississippi project worked within the same organizing tradition as SNCC. Both organizations focused on developing local leadership and building local movements through voter education and registration. In Madison County, CORE's project looked much like SNCC's in Leflore, Bolivar, and Sunflower counties in the Delta. Young and energetic field workers, like George Raymond, Anne Moody, and Mateo "Flukie" Suarez, worked hand-in-hand with a local, older generation of movement stalwarts like C.O. Chinn and Annie Devine to build a strong local movement.

C.O. Chinn and George Raymond in particular had a strong working relationship, which was important to gaining local support for the voter registration struggle. Anne Moody, a CORE field worker from Centreville, Mississippi described Chinn as "the type of person that didn't take sh*t from anyone." In the summer of 1963, Chinn and Raymond worked closely together, making rounds and speaking to people in Canton and Madison County strengthening the budding local movement. As was also true in SNCC's work, intergenerational relationships characterized CORE's work in Mississippi, as local adults nurtured, protected, and legitimized the work of younger civil rights activists.

CORE workers in the state also had a strong relationship with their SNCC peers. According to many movement veterans, the only difference between CORE and SNCC at the local level was whether or not one wore a blue or red shirt. Dave Dennis, CORE's Mississippi project director was also the assistant program director of COFO. This brought CORE in close collaboration with the other organizations under COFO's umbrella, including SNCC and the state NAACP. This type of relationship modeled how to transcend organizational divides and create a cohesive, statewide effort to secure voting rights.

Sources

John Dittmer, Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994).

Howell Raines, My Soul is Rested: Movement Days in the Deep South Remembered (New York: Putnam, 1977).

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Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) - SNCC Digital Gateway

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SNCC and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) worked closely together throughout the South, and especially in Mississippi. CORE began in Chicago in 1942 when James Farmer, who would become... Read More

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The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute

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Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)

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SCLC's first major campaign, the Crusade for Citizenship, began in late 1957, sparked by the civil rights bill then pending in Congress. The idea for the crusade was developed at SCLC's August 1957 conference, where 115 African American leaders laid the groundwork for the crusade.

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In late 1965, Martin Luther King Jr. brought his crusade for civil rights to Chicago. He came at the invitation of the Chicago Freedom Movement, a coalition of 44 civil rights organizations working to end slums and improve living conditions for blacks in the city. The campaign offered King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) an opportunity to move the civil rights struggle into a new phase, one that addressed entrenched racial discrimination in urban cities which kept blacks locked in ghettos, overcrowded schools, and low-paying jobs.

In the early months of the movement, King and his family moved into a West Side ghetto apartment in the 1500 block of South Hamlin. The move grabbed national headlines and illuminated deplorable housing conditions that King called "typical" for blacks in Northern cities. King pushed for fair and open housing and used the non-violent strategies of the civil rights movement to try and bring about change. Rallies, boycotts, and grassroots lobbying drove the 17-month campaign, but it was the marches in hostile white territory that forced the city to respond.

News cameras captured the depths of racial tension during an open housing march into the all-white neighborhood of Marquette Park. Mobs of angry whites screamed obscenities and hurled rocks, bricks, and bottles toward the protesters. As the marchers walked peacefully, King was struck in the back of the head with a rock, which knocked him to the ground. After recovering, King commented, "I have seen many demonstrations in the South, but I have never seen anything so hostile and so hateful as I've seen here today."

Conflict and tension continued to rise until Mayor Richard J. Daley succumbed to pressure and came to the negotiating table. The result was a "Summit Agreement" which King called "the most significant program ever conceived to make open housing a reality in a metropolitan area." Though the agreement resulted in some positive concessions and benefits, the campaign did not achieve the full impact desired by the Chicago Freedom Movement.

Former U.S. Senator Carol Moseley-Braun describes her experience as a young girl in 1966 marching with Dr. King through Gage Park in Chicago.

During the Chicago Freedom Movement, King faced cynicism he had not seen before. He remarked, "The only time I have been booed was one night in a Chicago mass meeting by some young members of the Black Power movement. I went home that night with an ugly feeling. I had urged them to have faith in American and in white society. Their hopes had soared. They were now booing because they felt we were unable to deliver on our promises."

Author and social historian, Lerone Bennett, talks about how Dr. King had to develop new tactics to confront northern racism.

Rev. Jesse Jackson describes the many victories of the Chicago Freedom Movement.

Civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was struck in head by a rock hurled by from a crowd of angry whites.

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Power, Politics, & Pride: Dr. King's Chicago Crusade

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In late 1965, Martin Luther King Jr. brought his crusade for civil rights to Chicago. He came at the invitation of the Chicago Freedom Movement, a coalition of 44 civil rights organizations working to end slums and improve living conditions for blacks in the city.

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Watts Riots of 1965 | Causes, Impact & Legacy

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Watts Riots of 1965, series of violent confrontations between Los Angeles police and residents of Watts and other predominantly African American neighbourhoods of South-Central Los Angeles that began August 11, 1965, and lasted for six days. The immediate cause of the disturbances was the arrest of

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Freedom Summer (June-August, 1964) was a nonviolent effort by civil rights activists to integrate Mississippi's segregated political system. It began late in 1963 when the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) decided to recruit several hundred northern college students, mostly white, to work in Mississippi during the summer. They helped African American residents try to register to vote, establish a new political party, and learn about history and politics in newly-formed Freedom Schools.

Because black Mississippians were barred from Democratic Party primaries and caucuses, they challenged the right of the party's all-white delegation to represent the state at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in August in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Ineligible to vote in the Democratic Party primaries in what was a one-party state effectively meant they were barred from participating in politics.

In response, they held a parallel "Freedom Election" in November and challenged the right of the all-white Mississippi congressional delegation to represent the state in Washington, D.C. More than sixty thousand black Mississippi residents risked their lives to attend local meetings, choose candidates, and vote in the "Freedom Election" that ran parallel to the regular 1964 national elections. Several hundred African-American families also hosted northern volunteers in their homes.

Nearly one thousand five hundred volunteers worked in project offices scattered across Mississippi. They were directed by 122 SNCC and CORE paid staff working alongside them or at headquarters in Jackson and Greenwood. Most volunteers were white students from northern colleges, but 254 were clergy sponsored by the National Council of Churches, 169 were attorneys recruited by the National Lawyers Guild and the Lawyers Constitutional Defense Committee, and 50 were medical professionals from the Medical Committee for Human Rights.

Some key figures that participated in Freedom Summer included Robert Moses, who proposed the idea of Freedom Summer to SNCC and COFO leaders in the fall of 1963 and was chosen to direct it early in 1964. Another was Dave Dennis who was a veteran of earlier sit-ins and freedom rides; he was the leader of CORE's operations in Mississippi and Louisiana and assistant director of COFO (Council of Federated Organizations). Julian Bond and Mary King ran the SNCC Communications Section, making sure that the national media was available to cover events and that project staff stayed informed and in touch about the constant dangers.

Those who opposed this movement were mainly Mississippi's elected officials, who at all levels denounced the Summer Project. The state's senators and governor publicly refused to obey federal integration laws, the state police nearly doubled in size, legislators passed new laws prohibiting picketing and leafleting, and local sheriffs and police chiefs expanded their forces and acquired new weapons. Business leaders banded together in white Citizens Councils to coordinate punishment of African-Americans who participated in Freedom Summer. They foreclosed mortgages on black residents' homes, fired workers from jobs, banned customers from shopping in stores, and shut down food pantries for the poor. And white supremacy groups such as the Ku Klux Klan inflicted violence on black residents and civil rights workers. Between June 16 and September 30, 1964, there were at least six murders, including James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, who were killed on June 21 near Philadelphia, Mississippi. There were also twenty-nine shootings, fifty bombings, more than sixty beatings, and over four hundred arrests of project workers and local residents.

Residents and volunteers were met by extraordinary violence, including murders, bombings, kidnappings, and torture. Much of this was covered on national television and focused the country's attention on civil rights issues for the first time. Public outrage helped spur the U.S. Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. "Freedom Summer" is a term invented after these events occurred. At the time, participants usually called it the Mississippi Summer Project.

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Freedom Summer (June-August, 1964) was a nonviolent effort by civil rights activists to integrate Mississippi's segregated political system. It began late in 1963 when the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) decided to recruit several hundred northern college students, mostly white, to work in Mississippi during the summer.

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In the 1960s Birmingham, Alabama was the largest industrial city in the South and according to Martin Luther King Jr. the most segregated city in America.

The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) joined the local Birmingham movement, the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR), to direct a campaign against segregation by putting pressure on Birmingham downtown merchants. Its leaders, Martin Luther King Jr. and Fred Shuttlesworth were determined to raise national awareness by testing Supreme Court desegregation laws. After careful planning, strategizing and fundraising they conceived a plan called Project C.

They started by approaching the newly elected mayor, Albert Boutwell, with a list of grievances and calling for an immediate end to segregation in lunch counters, stores, restrooms and racist hiring practices.

Demonstrations

Demonstrations started on April 3 with protesters staging sit-ins at various lunch counters, followed by marches to city hall and voter registration efforts. As expected all demonstrators ended up in Birmingham jails. On April 6 Dr. King led a prayer march in downtown Birmingham that mobilized a large number of people, police moved in with dogs and sticks colliding with protesters in front of a large media presence. Dr. King's marches were peaceful and activists were trained to not react violently when police hit or picked at them. The attack on peaceful protesters was televised nationwide on evening news programs and on newspapers.

A court injunction was issued against all future demonstrations and prohibited 133 civil rights leaders from encouraging or participating in protests.

King and the rest of the Southern Christian Leadership Congress (SCLC) leaders decided to break the law as they thought that the order was designed to perpetuate tyranny under the guise of maintaining law and order. King, Alberny and Hibbler along with 50 other activists were arrested and sent to jail.

During his time in jail King wrote Letter from a Birmingham Jail in response to an advertisement by a group of white clergymen that appeared in the Birmingham News. The clergymen attacked the protests as unwise and untimely and not justified. King defended his non violent resistance as a catalyst for negotiations with the authorities but because authorities failed to negotiate they had no option but to protest. He wrote the letter on the margin of a newspaper, it was first published by The Liberator in May 1963. Letter from a Birmingham Jail became an important text in the African American Civil Rights Movement.

Children's march

As the number of black adults willing to go to jail and sacrifice their jobs diminished the SCLC decided to use students instead as demonstrators. On May 2 nd over 1,000 students ranging from 6 to 18 years old marched on the streets of Birmingham to a large crowd of cheering adults. Police loaded them in school buses and took them to jail.

The following day about 1,000 students assembled at the Sixteen Street Baptist Church were barricaded by police using high pressure fire hoses and loose dogs to keep them inside. These images were broadcast across the nation and internationally bringing publicity to King's cause. Many criticized his tactic but he argued that "by demonstrating children are gaining a sense of their own stake in freedom and justice".

Demonstrations gradually grew in size as well as police reaction. As many as 2000 people had been jailed before negotiations started.

Negotiations

The Justice Department sent an envoy to encourage negotiations between the city of Birmingham and Martin Luther King. The settlement, known as the Birmingham truce agreement consisted in:

1. Desegregation of lunch counters, fitting rooms, restrooms and drinking fountains in all downtown stores within 90 days.

2. Hiring of blacks in clerical and sales positions within 60 days.

3. Release of prisoners.

4. Establishment of permanent communication between black and white leaders.

Reactions

Some black critics believed King had given up their protest weapon in exchange for mere promises. The governor disavowed the settlement and called for a boycott of stores that desegregate. The Ku Klux Klan threatened with violence and bombed the house of King's brother, Alfred Daniel King, and the Gaston Motel where civil right leaders were staying. Police were randomly beating blacks and stores were set on fire. To avoid further violence President Kennedy sent 3,000 federal troops to restore peace. Eventually Mayor Albert Boutwell honoured the settlement.

The events at Birmingham were a turning point in African American civil rights, the beginning of the end of the struggle for freedom.

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In the 1960s Birmingham, Alabama was the largest industrial city in the South and according to Martin Luther King Jr. the most segregated city in America. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) joined the local Birmingham movement, the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR), to direct a campaign against segregation by putting pressure on Birmingham downtown merchants.

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The Congress of Racial Equality or CORE is an African American Civil Rights group that played a major role in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. It was founded in Chicago in 1942 by Bayar Rustin, George Houser, Homer Jack and James Farmer as Committee on Racial Equality. Of the 50 original members 28 were men and 22 were women, about one third were black and two thirds white.

The success of CORE inspired Sit-ins naturally led to another form of peaceful protest known as Freedom Rides. CORE, under the direction of James Farmer, played a pivotal role in the 1961 Freedom Rides by providing volunteers to participate in interracial bus rides testing discrimination in bus stations and terminals. The goal was to test the authority's compliance of the Boynton v. Virginia Supreme Court ruling against segregation in buses, trains and terminals. They also tested Jim Crow laws in restaurants, bathrooms and sitting rooms using Gandhi's non-violence resistance.

In 1963 James Farmer of CORE, Martin Luther King Jr. of SCLC, Roy Wilkins of the NAACP, John Lewis of SNCC and Whitney Young of the National Urban League participated in the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom to protest for equal job opportunity for African Americans. The march was attended by more than 250,000 people and accelerated the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

CORE and all other civil rights groups agreed on the significance of the ballot in real freedom for African Americans so they decided to concentrate on voter registration drives in the communities with low rate of registrations. In the summer of 1964 a campaign known as Mississippi Freedom Summer was launched by SNCC, CORE and SCLC. Close to 700 white and black students were involved. Mississippians considered it as an invasion and received students with hostility. On June 20, 1964 three CORE civil rights workers disappeared and were found dead in early August.

Currently CORE headquarters is located in Las Vegas, Nevada. Its objective is to bring non-violent political, social and economic change for the underprivileged and provide equal opportunity for all.

Other major civil rights organizations

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People - NAACP, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee - SNCC and Southern Christian Leadership Congress - SCLC

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The Congress of Racial Equality or CORE is an African American Civil Rights group that played a major role in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. It was founded in Chicago in 1942 by Bayar Rustin, George Houser, Homer Jack and James Farmer as Committee on Racial Equality.

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The Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute

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In April 1963 King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) joined with Birmingham, Alabama's existing local movement, the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR), in a massive direct action campaign to attack the city's segregation system by putting pressure on Birmingham's merchants during the Easter season, the second biggest shopping season of the year. As ACMHR founder Fred Shuttlesworth stated in the group's "Birmingham Manifesto," the campaign was "a moral witness to give our community a chance to survive" (ACMHR, 3 April 1963).

The campaign was originally scheduled to begin in early March 1963, but was postponed until 2 April when the relatively moderate Albert Boutwell defeated Birmingham's segregationist commissioner of public safety, Eugene "Bull" Connor, in a run-off mayoral election. On 3 April the desegregation campaign was launched with a series of mass meetings, direct actions, lunch counter sit-ins, marches on City Hall, and a boycott of downtown merchants. King spoke to black citizens about the philosophy of nonviolence and its methods, and extended appeals for volunteers at the end of the mass meetings. With the number of volunteers increasing daily, actions soon expanded to kneel-ins at churches, sit-ins at the library, and a march on the county building to register voters. Hundreds were arrested.

On 10 April the city government obtained a state circuit court injunction against the protests. After heavy debate, campaign leaders decided to disobey the court order. King declared: "We cannot in all good conscience obey such an injunction which is an unjust, undemocratic and unconstitutional misuse of the legal process" (ACMHR, 11 April 1963). Plans to continue to submit to arrest were threatened, however, because the money available for cash bonds was depleted, so leaders could no longer guarantee that arrested protesters would be released. King contemplated whether he and Ralph Abernathy should be arrested. Given the lack of bail funds, King's services as a fundraiser were desperately needed, but King also worried that his failure to submit to arrests might undermine his credibility. King concluded that he must risk going to jail in Birmingham. He told his colleagues: "I don't know what will happen; I don't know where the money will come from. But I have to make a faith act" (King, 73).

On Good Friday, 12 April, King was arrested in Birmingham after violating the anti-protest injunction and was kept in solitary confinement. During this time King penned the" Letter from Birmingham Jail" on the margins of the Birmingham News, in reaction to a statement published in that newspaper by eight Birmingham clergymen condemning the protests. King's request to call his wife, Coretta Scott King, who was at home in Atlanta recovering from the birth of their fourth child, was denied. After she communicated her concern to the Kennedy administration, Birmingham officials permitted King to call home. Bail money was made available, and he was released on 20 April 1963.

In order to sustain the campaign, SCLC organizer James Bevel proposed using young children in demonstrations. Bevel's rationale for the Children's Crusade was that young people represented an untapped source of freedom fighters without the prohibitive responsibilities of older activists. On 2 May more than 1,000 African American students attempted to march into downtown Birmingham, and hundreds were arrested. When hundreds more gathered the following day, Commissioner Connor directed local police and fire departments to use force to halt the demonstrations. During the next few days images of children being blasted by high-pressure fire hoses, clubbed by police officers, and attacked by police dogs appeared on television and in newspapers, triggering international outrage. While leading a group of child marchers, Shuttlesworth himself was hit with the full force of a fire hose and had to be hospitalized. King offered encouragement to parents of the young protesters: "Don't worry about your children, they're going to be alright. Don't hold them back if they want to go to jail. For they are doing a job for not only themselves, but for all of America and for all mankind" (King, 6 May 1963).

In the meantime, the white business structure was weakening under adverse publicity and the unexpected decline in business due to the boycott, but many business owners and city officials were reluctant to negotiate with the protesters. With national pressure on the White House also mounting, Attorney General Robert Kennedy sent Burke Marshall, his chief civil rights assistant, to facilitate negotiations between prominent black citizens and representatives of Birmingham's Senior Citizen's Council, the city's business leadership.

The Senior Citizen's Council sought a moratorium on street protests as an act of good faith before any final settlement was declared, and Marshall encouraged campaign leaders to halt demonstrations, accept an interim compromise that would provide partial success, and negotiate the rest of their demands afterward. Some black negotiators were open to the idea, and although the hospitalized Shuttlesworth was not present at the negotiations, on 8 May King told the negotiators he would accept the compromise and call the demonstrations to a halt.

When Shuttlesworth learned that King intended to announce a moratorium he was furious-about both the decision to ease pressure off white business owners and the fact that he, as the acknowledged leader of the local movement, had not been consulted. Feeling betrayed, Shuttlesworth reminded King that he could not legitimately speak for the black population of Birmingham on his own: "Go ahead and call it off ... When I see it on TV, that you have called it off, I will get up out of this, my sickbed, with what little ounce of strength I have, and lead them back into the street. And your name'll be Mud" (Hampton and Fayer, 136). King made the announcement anyway, but indicated that demonstrations might be resumed if negotiations did not resolve the situation shortly.

By 10 May negotiators had reached an agreement, and despite his falling out with King, Shuttlesworth joined him and Abernathy to read the prepared statement that detailed the compromise: the removal of "Whites Only" and "Blacks Only" signs in restrooms and on drinking fountains, a plan to desegregate lunch counters, an ongoing "program of upgrading Negro employment," the formation of a biracial committee to monitor the progress of the agreement, and the release of jailed protesters on bond ("The Birmingham Truce Agreement," 10 May 1963).

Birmingham segregationists responded to the agreement with a series of violent attacks. That night an explosive went off near the Gaston Motel room where King and SCLC leaders had previously stayed, and the next day the home of King's brother Alfred Daniel King was bombed. President John F. Kennedy responded by ordering 3,000 federal troops into position near Birmingham and making preparations to federalize the Alabama National Guard. Four months later, on 15 September, Ku Klux Klan members bombed Birmingham's Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, killing four young girls. King delivered the eulogy at the 18 September joint funeral of three of the victims, preaching that the girls were "the martyred heroines of a holy crusade for freedom and human dignity" (King, " Eulogy for the Martyred Children," 18 September 1963).

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In April 1963 King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) joined with Birmingham, Alabama's existing local movement, the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR), in a massive direct action campaign to attack the city's segregation system by putting pressure on Birmingham's merchants during the Easter season, the second biggest shopping season of the year.

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Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site, Arkansas

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The maps in the Map Collections materials were either published prior to 1922, produced by the United States government, or both (see catalogue records that accompany each map for information regarding date of publication and source). The Library of Congress is providing access to these materials for educational and research purposes and is not aware of any U.S.

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MODEL for Civil Rights Movement Presentation (Team S) (1)