Martin Luther King – leading the fight for civil rights

In mid-1955, Martin Luther King was preparing for a settled, domestic life. He had become pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. His wife Coretta was pregnant with their first child. Little did he know how much his life was about to change. Yolanda was born on the 17th of November 1955, and as any new parent knows the arrival of a baby is quite a shock to the system. But, if this were not change enough, King’s life was about to change in a way he could not possibly have imagined.

Rosa Parks

On the 1st of December 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man on Montgomery’s segregated public bus system. The blacks (“colored” or “negros” as they were referred to at the time) had their own section of the bus. But if the white section was full, a white person could demand a seat in the “colored” section, requiring a black person to give up his or her seat. Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat, and was promptly arrested for breaking the law.

The local president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was E.D. Nixon. In a meeting within days of Rosa Parks’ arrest, an organisation called the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) was formed, and Nixon saw to it that the charismatic 27-year old King was appointed the leader of the movement which would oversee a boycott of the Montgomery public bus system.

This propelled King to local and soon national prominence. The boycott was a huge success. Between the 1st of December 1955 and the 20th of December 1956 there was an almost complete boycott of the city’s public transport system by the city’s blacks. The boycott came to an end when the US Supreme Court declared Montgomery and Alabama’s laws on segregated buses to be unconstitutional.

King’s role in the successful Montgomery Bus Boycott made him into a national figure, the best known spokesman and the de-facto leader of the civil right’s movement.

Rosa Parks, with MLK in the background

In mid 1955

King is stabbed

In 1957, together with most of the prominent civil rights activists of the day, King co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). This organisation became the
vehicle for much of the civil rights protests in the segregated south of the late 1950s and early 1960s.

In 1958 King was signing copies of his book “Stride Towards Freedom” in a shop in Harlem, New York City, when he was stabbed in the chest by a deranged black woman, Izola Curry. King’s survival was touch and go, the knife had pierced his chest and was within fractions of a centimetre of his aorta. It is said that he was told that had he sneezed, with the knife in his chest, his aorta would have been severed and he would have died.

MLK in hospital after he was stabbed at a book signing. Coretta Scott King is on the right

De-segregating Birmingham Alabama

In the spring of 1963 the SCLC decided to wage a campaign to de-segregate Birmingham, the industrial capital of the south. The protests were in many forms, including occupying public spaces with sit-ins and marches, and defying the City’s segregation policies by deliberately breaking laws the protestors deemed to be unjust and racists. The City’s Police commissioner was a Eugene “Bull” Connor, and he ordered his department to break up any protests with any force necessary. Soon the nation’s television screens were filled with horrific images of passive protestors being attacked by police dogs, by police with their truncheons, and with high pressure water hoses.

Fire hoses being used on the campaigners trying to de-segregate Birmingham, Alabama

Eugene “Bull” Connor addressing protestors during the campain to de-segregate Birmingham, Alabama

Protestors being blasted by high pressure water hoses during the campaign to de-segregate Birmingham, Alabama

Hundreds of protestors were arrested. With so many going to jail, King felt compelled to join his fellow campaigners in jail. He took part in a peaceful sit-in, and deliberately got himself arrested by refusing to move when asked by the Police. It was the thirteenth of a total of twenty nine arrests in his lifetime, and during his time in jail during this campaign he wrote his now famous book “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”. Here is an interesting short video about the “Birmingham campaign”.

The campaign was an overwhelming success. On the 8th of May the City caved in to the unrelenting pressure. Bull Connor was sacked, and the City tore down most of its segregational signs and became integrated. It was a huge success for the civil rights movement, and propelled King to international fame.

With the success of the “Birmingham campaign” behind him, King became involved in a “march on Washington”, planned for the 28th of August 1963, where he would be amongst a number of speakers and performers. As I will discuss in tomorrow’s blog, his speech that day has gone down in history as one of the greatest speeches of all time.