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Martin Luther King, Jr.

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Carole
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« Reply #15 on: January 15, 2008, 10:10:06 pm »



Civil Rights March on Washington, D.C. [Actor Sammy Davis, Jr. among the crowd.], 08/28/1963
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« Reply #16 on: January 15, 2008, 10:11:23 pm »



Civil Rights March on Washington, D.C. [Actor Marlon Brando ], 08/28/1963

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« Reply #17 on: January 15, 2008, 10:12:14 pm »

King, representing SCLC, was among the leaders of the so-called "Big Six" civil rights organizations who were instrumental in the organization of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963. The other leaders and organizations comprising the Big Six were: Roy Wilkins, NAACP; Whitney Young, Jr., Urban League; A. Philip Randolph, Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters; John Lewis, SNCC; and James Farmer of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). The primary logistical and strategic organizer was King's colleague Bayard Rustin. For King, this role was another which courted controversy, since he was one of the key figures who acceded to the wishes of President John F. Kennedy in changing the focus of the march. Kennedy initially opposed the march outright, because he was concerned it would negatively impact the drive for passage of civil rights legislation, but the organizers were firm that the march would proceed.

The march originally was conceived as an event to dramatize the desperate condition of blacks in the South and a very public opportunity to place organizers' concerns and grievances squarely before the seat of power in the nation's capital. Organizers intended to excoriate and then challenge the federal government for its failure to safeguard the civil rights and physical safety of civil rights workers and blacks, generally, in the South. However, the group acquiesced to presidential pressure and influence, and the event ultimately took on a far less strident tone.

As a result, some civil rights activists felt it presented an inaccurate, sanitized pageant of racial harmony; Malcolm X called it the "Farce on Washington," and members of the Nation of Islam who attended the march faced a temporary suspension.

The march did, however, make specific demands: an end to racial segregation in public school; meaningful civil rights legislation, including a law prohibiting racial discrimination in employment; protection of civil rights workers from police brutality; a $2 minimum wage for all workers; and self-government for the District of Columbia, then governed by congressional committee.

Despite tensions, the march was a resounding success. More than a quarter million people of diverse ethnicities attended the event, sprawling from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial onto the National Mall and around the reflecting pool. At the time, it was the largest gathering of protesters in Washington's history. King's "I Have a Dream" speech electrified the crowd. It is regarded, along with Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, as one of the finest speeches in the history of American oratory.

Throughout his career of service, King wrote and spoke frequently, drawing on his experience as a preacher. His "Letter from Birmingham Jail", written in 1963, is a passionate statement of his crusade for justice. On October 14, 1964, King became the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, which was awarded to him for leading non-violent resistance to end racial prejudice in the United States.

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« Reply #18 on: January 15, 2008, 10:13:19 pm »



Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. speaking at the Civil Rights March on Washington, D.C., in 1963.

Credit: National Archives and Records Administration

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« Reply #19 on: January 15, 2008, 10:14:10 pm »



King is perhaps most famous for his "I Have a Dream" speech, given in front of the Lincoln Memorial during the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
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« Reply #20 on: January 15, 2008, 10:16:00 pm »



On several occasions Martin Luther King Jr. expressed a view that black Americans, as well as other disadvantaged Americans, should be compensated for historical wrongs. Speaking to Alex Haley in 1965, he said that granting black Americans only equality could not realistically close the economic gap between them and whites. King said that he did not seek a full restitution of wages lost to slavery, which he believed impossible, but proposed a government compensatory program of US$50 billion over ten years to all disadvantaged groups. He posited that "the money spent would be more than amply justified by the benefits that would accrue to the nation through a spectacular decline in school dropouts, family breakups, crime rates, illegitimacy, swollen relief rolls, rioting and other social evils." His 1964 book Why We Can't Wait elaborated this idea further, presenting it as an application of the common law regarding settlement of unpaid labor.
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« Reply #21 on: January 15, 2008, 10:16:58 pm »



Martin Luther King leaning on a lectern.
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« Reply #22 on: January 15, 2008, 10:18:43 pm »

Selma to Montgomery marches

The Selma to Montgomery marches, which included Bloody Sunday, were three marches that marked the political and emotional peak of the American civil rights movement. They were the culmination of the voting rights movement in Selma, Alabama, launched by Amelia Boynton Robinson and her husband. Robinson brought many prominent leaders of the American Civil Rights Movement to Selma, including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Jim Bevel and Hosea Williams. "Bloody Sunday" occurred on March 7, 1965, when 600 civil rights marchers were attacked by state and local police with billy clubs and tear gas. Only the third, and last, march successfully made it into Montgomery, Alabama. The route is memorialized as the Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail.

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« Reply #23 on: January 15, 2008, 10:19:54 pm »


John Lewis (on right in trench coat) and Hosea Williams (on the left) lead marchers across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, March 7, 1965

On March 7, 1965, 525 to 600 civil rights marchers headed east out of Selma on U.S. Highway 80. Discrimination and intimidation had prevented Selma's black population, from registering to vote three weeks earlier. On February 18, 1965, a trooper (Corporal James Bonard Fowler) shot Jimmie Lee Jackson as he tried to protect his mother and grandfather in a café to which they had fled while being attacked by troopers during a civil rights demonstration. Jackson died of an infection at Selma's Good Samaritan Hospital eight days later. The marchers hoped to bring attention to the violations of their rights by marching to Montgomery. Dr. King asked for a march from Selma to Montgomery to ask Governor George Wallace to protect black registrants. Wallace denounced the march as a threat to public safety and declared he would take all measures necessary to prevent it. In their first march, led by John Lewis and the Reverend Hosea Williams, and followed by Bob Mants, they made it only as far as the Edmund Pettus Bridge, six blocks away. State troopers and the Dallas County Sheriff's Department, some mounted on horseback, awaited them. In the presence of the news media, the lawmen attacked the peaceful demonstrators with billy clubs, tear gas, and bull whips.

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« Reply #24 on: January 15, 2008, 10:20:57 pm »


Police attack marchers

Brutal televised images of the attack, which presented people with horrifying images of marchers left bloodied and severely injured, roused support for the U.S. civil rights movement. Amelia Boynton Robinson was beaten and gassed nearly to death — her photo appeared on the front page of newspapers and news magazines around the world. Seventeen marchers were hospitalized, leading to the naming of the day "Bloody Sunday". Rosa Parks also marched with them, along with Thomas Fitzpatrick Jones.

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« Reply #25 on: January 15, 2008, 10:23:00 pm »


Police wait for marchers to come across the Edmund Pettus Bridge

Second march

Immediately after "Bloody Sunday," Martin Luther King Jr., as leader of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, began organizing a second march to be held on Tuesday, March 9, 1965, calling for people across the country to join him. Hundreds of people responded to his call, shocked by what they had seen on television. About 2,500 people marched from Selma to Montgomery again.

To prevent another outbreak of violence, the marchers attempted to gain a court order that would prohibit the police from interfering. Instead of issuing the court order, Federal District Court Judge Frank Minis Johnson issued a restraining order, preventing the march from taking place until he could hold additional hearings later in the week. Rather than abiding by the court order the SCLC decided to hold a partial, "ceremonial," march, taking into consideration that they had gathered hundreds of marchers for the event, but did not want to alienate one of the few southern judges who was often sympathetic to their cause.

On March 9, King led the marchers out to the Edmund Pettus Bridge and held a short prayer session before turning the marchers back around, thereby not breaking the court order preventing them from marching all the way to Montgomery. Only the SCLC leaders were told of this plan, causing some consternation in the marchers who had traveled long distances to make the march, but many stayed after King asked the crowd to remain for another attempt at the march.

That day, after the second march, James Reeb, a white Unitarian Universalist minister from Boston who had come for the second march was attacked with a club in front of the Silver Moon Café, a hangout for whites. Being turned away by the small local hospital in Selma (reported to be full at the time), Reeb's companions were forced to take him to University Hospital in Birmingham, two hours away. Reeb died on Thursday, March 11 at University Hospital with his wife by his side.

Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee spokesman Stokely Carmichael was reported as saying "What you want is the nation to be upset when anybody is killed… but it almost [seems that] for this to be recognized, a white person must be killed."

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« Reply #26 on: January 15, 2008, 10:24:09 pm »

Third march

A week after Reeb's death, the federal judge ruled in favor of the SCLC, preventing the state from blocking the marchers, weighing the right of mobility against the right to march:

The law is clear that the right to petition one's government for the redress of grievances may be exercised in large groups . . . and these rights may be exercised by marching, even along public highways.


The five-day/four-night event covered a 54-mile route along state Highway 80 through not so pleasant weather and rain. The marchers reached Montgomery on March 24 and camped out at the Catholic complex City of St. Jude. That night, a "Stars for Freedom" rally was held, with singers Harry Belafonte, Tony Bennett, Frankie Laine, Peter, Paul and Mary, Sammy Davis, Jr. and Nina Simone all performing. By the next day, Thursday, March 25, their numbers had swelled to 25,000, and King delivered the speech "How Long, Not Long" beside the State Capitol Building.

Within five months of the third march, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Amelia Boynton Robinson was present during the ceremony.

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« Reply #27 on: January 15, 2008, 10:25:05 pm »

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« Reply #28 on: January 15, 2008, 10:27:10 pm »



African American civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, who had studied under Gandhi, counseled King to dedicate himself to the principles of non-violence in 1956, served as King's main adviser and mentor throughout his early activism, and was the main organizer of the 1963 March on Washington. However, Rustin's open homosexuality and support of democratic socialism and ties to the Communist Party USA caused many white and African American leaders to demand that King distance himself from Rustin.
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« Reply #29 on: January 15, 2008, 10:28:09 pm »



King with President Lyndon Johnson in 1966
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