Civil rights- martin luther king, jr.

Civil Rights- Martin Luther King, Jr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was born on January 15, 1929. His mother was a teacher and she taught him to read before he started school. She also tried to explain prejudice and the Jim Crow laws that separated Whites and Blacks. She explained the Civil War and how it ended slavery. He had a lot of books at his parent house. He decided he would do well in a white man’s world. His father was a preacher. He gave a great example to Martin Luther King. Jr because his father was a strong man and was helpful in having Blacks get jobs with the police department and helping black teachers get the same pay as white teachers. Martin Luther King. Jr. also remembered his father refusing to sit in the back of a shoe store because he was black. He went to the school and he was part of the debate team and had to travel to a different school for the debates. His teacher also was black. His teacher and he was sitting in the front because the bus was full of people. The driver told them to sit in the back. They refused then the driver cursed and threatened them, and only because his teacher was in tears, they moved to the back. He felt terrible , but this gave him determination to fight prejudice. When Rosa Parks was sitting in a section on a bus just behind the sign stating “ White Only. ” then the driver asked her to move the seat. She refused. The driver called a police and had arrested her. Next day Mr. E. D. Nixon, who was a civil rights activist, called Martin Luther King, Jr. and asked if he would help organize a one day bus boycott of the Montgomery buses. So he did it. Next day the boycott was a success. He was arrested with many others for his involvement with the boycott. The boycott lasted 382 days. 1956, after the Supreme Court of the United States had declared unconstitutional the laws requiring segregation on buses, blacks and whites rode the buses as equals. During these days of boycott, King was arrested. Later that night, he was at a meeting, a bomb was thrown at his home. He was fear for his family but everyone was fine. He believed that organized, nonviolent protest against the system of southern segregation know as Jim Crow laws would lead to extensive media coverage of the struggle for black equality and voting rights. Journalistic accounts and televised footage of the daily deprivation and indignities suffered by southern blacks, and of segregationist violence and harassment of civil rights workers and marchers, produced a wave of sympathetic public opinion that convinced the majority of Americans that the Civil Rights Movement was the most important issue in American politics in the early 1960s. Almost a year after Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat, the United State Supreme Court ruled that Jim Crow laws were against the laws. Jim Crow Laws would no longer stand for separation of Whites and Blacks. He had to continues on with his fight because he knew that some Whites would still do the bad things they were doing. The Montgomery Bus Boycott that he wrote a book about it, “ The Stride towards Freedom. ” he was in New York department store signing autographs. The black lady asked him if he is really Martin Luther King, Jr. he said yes. Then she grabbed something in her purse so quickly and stabbed him. He rushed to the hospital. He could have died from that if he cough or sneezed. He told the black lady that who stabbed him, is not going to the jail but needed to be treated at a mental hospital. In 1963 he led a march in Birmingham, Alabama and it became very violent. Police used fire hoses and dogs to limit the demonstration. It appeared that the police were more violent than the demonstrators. They even harmed small children who were in the march. he urged Blacks to meet violence with non- violence when something bad happened to them. Jim Crow lost in Birmingham. Blacks got to drink from the same fountains, eat at the same lunch counters, share the same bathrooms, and businesses would begin to hire Blacks. He was involved in many other marches, including the biggest one in Washington. There were 200, 000 Blacks and Whites who marched along with him. He was standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, and there he gave his famous ” I Have a Dream” speech. He was chosen as the man of the year by Time magazine. In 1964, he received the Nobel Peace Prize. . At the age of thirty-five, Martin Luther King, Jr., was the youngest man to have received the Nobel Peace Prize. When notified of his selection, he announced that he would turn over the prize money of $54, 123 to the furtherance of the civil rights movement. Along with it came a great sum of money, which he gave to charity to help Blacks be more equal with Whites. He led protests in Selma, Alabama and then a fifty-mile march from Selma to Montgomery, with Blacks and Whites to register the Blacks to vote. He also met with Presidents: Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson. These Presidents believed in getting rid of the laws that treated Blacks unfairly. Johnson helped push civil rights acts through Congress.