Mary's Cafe Sit-In, 1950 On Sunday, June 11, 1950, King, classmate at Crozer Seminary and housemate Walter McCall, and their dates Doris Wilson and Pearl Smith attended church services in Merchantville. Afterwards they stopped at tavern Mary's Cafe in Maple Shade for beers. The foursome were left waiting without anyone approaching them for service, not unexpectedly. A friend's father and King and McCall's landlord Jesthroe Hunt had warned them Black people were not welcome at Mary's. King replied to the effect of maybe they needed to go, so they could start to go anywhere they wanted. The seminarians had opted for Mary's Cafe with full knowledge of its reputation. After waiting without service, McCall approached the bar. McCall asked bartender and Mary's Cafe owner Ernest Nichols for packaged goods (beer for takeaway). Nichols refused, explaining he could not sell packaged goods on Sundays or any day after 10pm, by law. McCall then requested 4 glasses of beer to which Nichols answered "no beer, Mr! Today is Sunday”. Patrick Duff, a South Jersey resident, discovered the police report detailing the events at Mary's after searching the archive at
The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute. In March 1955,
Claudette Colvin—a black schoolgirl in Montgomery—refused to give up her bus seat to a white man in violation of
Jim Crow laws, local laws in the Southern US that enforced
racial segregation. On December 1, 1955,
Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a city bus. These incidents led to the
Montgomery bus boycott, which was urged and planned by
Edgar Nixon and led by King. The other ministers asked him to take a leadership role because his relative newness to community leadership made it easier for him to speak out. King was hesitant but decided to do so if no one else wanted it. The boycott lasted for 385 days, and the situation became so tense that King's house was bombed. King was arrested for traveling 30 mph in a 25 mph zone and jailed, which drew the attention of national media, and increased King's public stature. The controversy ended when the US District Court issued a ruling in
Browder v. Gayle that prohibited racial segregation on Montgomery public buses. as well as the national organizing of the group In Friendship, founded by King allies
Stanley Levison and
Ella Baker. King led the SCLC until his death. The SCLC's 1957
Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom was the first time King addressed a national audience.
Harry Wachtel joined King's legal advisor
Clarence B. Jones in defending four ministers of the SCLC in the libel case
Abernathy et al. v. Sullivan; the case was litigated about the newspaper advertisement "
Heed Their Rising Voices". Wachtel founded a tax-exempt fund to cover the suit's expenses and assist the civil rights movement through more effective fundraising. King served as honorary president of this organization, named the "Gandhi Society for Human Rights". In 1962, King and the Gandhi Society produced a document that called on
President Kennedy to issue an executive order to deliver a blow for civil rights as a kind of
Second Emancipation Proclamation. Kennedy did not execute the order. The
FBI, under written directive from Attorney General
Robert F. Kennedy, began
tapping King's telephone line in the fall of 1963. Kennedy was concerned that public allegations of communists in the SCLC would derail the administration's civil rights initiatives. He warned King to discontinue these associations and felt compelled to issue the directive that authorized the FBI to wiretap King and other SCLC leaders. FBI Director
J. Edgar Hoover feared the civil rights movement and investigated the allegations of communist infiltration. When no evidence emerged to support this, the FBI used the incidental details caught on tape over the next five years, as part of its
COINTELPRO program, in attempts to force King out of his leadership position. King believed that organized, nonviolent protest against the system of southern segregation known as
Jim Crow laws would lead to extensive media coverage of the struggle for black equality. Journalistic accounts and televised footage of the daily indignities suffered by southern blacks, and of segregationist violence and harassment, produced a wave of sympathetic public opinion that convinced most Americans that the civil rights movement was the most important political issue in the early 1960s. King organized and led marches for blacks' right to
vote,
desegregation,
labor rights, and other basic civil rights. Most of these rights were successfully enacted into law with the
Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the 1965
Voting Rights Act. The SCLC used tactics of nonviolent protest with success, by strategically choosing the methods and places in which protests were carried out. There were often dramatic stand-offs with segregationist authorities, who sometimes turned violent.
Survived knife attack, 1958 On September 20, 1958, King was signing copies of his book
Stride Toward Freedom in Blumstein's department store in Harlem when
Izola Curry—a mentally ill black woman who thought King was conspiring against her with communists—stabbed him in the chest with a letter opener, which nearly impinged on the aorta. King received first aid by police officers
Al Howard and Philip Romano. King underwent surgery by
Aubre de Lambert Maynard,
Emil Naclerio and
John W. V. Cordice; he remained hospitalized for weeks. Curry was later found mentally incompetent to stand trial. Accepting his doctor's advice, King, along with Coretta and
Alabama State College history professor
Lawrence D. Reddick,
traveled to Europe, India and the Middle East from February to March 1959 to recuperate. Upon returning to Montgomery, King agreed with the SCLC board to fire executive director John Lee Tilley, but then hired co-founder
Bayard Rustin to manage press relations.
Atlanta sit-ins, prison sentence, and the 1960 elections in Atlanta (pulpit and sanctuary pictured). In December 1959, after being based in Montgomery for five years, King announced his return to Atlanta at the request of the SCLC. In Atlanta, King served until his death as co-pastor with his father at the
Ebenezer Baptist Church. Georgia governor
Ernest Vandiver expressed open hostility towards King's return. He claimed that "wherever M. L. King Jr., has been there has followed in his wake a wave of crimes", and vowed to keep King under surveillance. On May 4, 1960, King drove writer
Lillian Smith to
Emory University when police stopped them. King was cited for "driving without a license" because he had not yet been issued a Georgia license. King's Alabama license was still valid, and Georgia law did not mandate any time limit for issuing a local license. King paid a fine but was unaware his lawyer agreed to a plea deal that included
probation. Meanwhile, the
Atlanta Student Movement had been acting to desegregate businesses and public spaces, organizing the
Atlanta sit-ins from March 1960 onwards. In August the movement asked King to participate in a mass October sit-in, timed to highlight how
1960's Presidential election campaigns had ignored civil rights. The coordinated day of action took place on October 19. King participated in a sit-in at the restaurant inside
Rich's, Atlanta's largest department store, and was among the many arrested. The authorities released everyone over the next few days, except King. Invoking his probationary plea deal, Judge
J. Oscar Mitchell sentenced King on October 25 to four months of hard labor. Before dawn the next day, King was transported to
Georgia State Prison. The arrest and harsh sentence drew nationwide attention. Many feared for King's safety, as he started a sentence with people convicted of violent crimes, many white and hostile to his activism. Presidential candidates were asked to weigh in, at a time when parties were courting the support of Southern Whites and their political leadership including Governor Vandiver. Nixon, with whom King had a closer relationship before, declined to make a statement despite a visit from
Jackie Robinson requesting his intervention. Nixon's opponent
John F. Kennedy called the governor, enlisted his brother
Robert to exert more pressure on state authorities, and, at the request of
Sargent Shriver, called King's wife to offer his help. The pressure from Kennedy and others proved effective, and King was released two days later. King's father decided to openly endorse Kennedy's candidacy for the November 8 election which he narrowly won. After the October 19 sit-ins and following unrest, a 30-day truce was declared in Atlanta for desegregation negotiations. However, negotiations failed and sit-ins and boycotts resumed for several months. On March 7, 1961, a group of Black elders including King notified student leaders that a deal had been reached: the city's lunch counters would desegregate in fall 1961, in conjunction with the court-mandated desegregation of schools. Many students were disappointed at the compromise. In a meeting on March 10 at Warren Memorial Methodist Church, the audience was hostile and frustrated. King gave an impassioned speech calling participants to resist the "cancerous disease of disunity", helping to calm tensions.
Albany Movement, 1961 The Albany Movement was a desegregation coalition formed in
Albany, Georgia, in November 1961. In December, King and the SCLC became involved. The movement mobilized thousands of citizens for a nonviolent attack on segregation in the city and attracted nationwide attention. When King first visited on December 15, 1961, he "had planned to stay a day or so and return home after giving counsel." The following day he was swept up in a
mass arrest of peaceful demonstrators, and he declined bail until the city made concessions. According to King, "that agreement was dishonored and violated by the city" after he left. It was later acknowledged by the King Center that
Billy Graham was the one who bailed King out. After nearly a year of intense activism with few tangible results, the movement began to deteriorate. King requested a halt to all demonstrations and a "Day of Penance" to promote nonviolence and maintain the moral high ground. Divisions within the black community and the canny, low-key response by local government defeated efforts. Though the Albany effort proved a key lesson in tactics for King and the civil rights movement, the national media was highly critical of King's role in the defeat, and the SCLC's lack of results contributed to a growing gulf between the organization and the more radical
SNCC. After Albany, King sought to choose engagements for the SCLC in which he could control the circumstances, rather than entering into pre-existing situations.
Birmingham campaign, 1963 and Attorney General
Robert F. Kennedy with King,
Benjamin Mays, and other civil rights leaders, June 22, 1963 In April 1963, the SCLC began a campaign against racial segregation and economic injustice in
Birmingham, Alabama. The campaign used nonviolent but intentionally confrontational tactics, developed in part by
Wyatt Tee Walker. Black people in Birmingham, organizing with the SCLC, occupied public spaces with marches and sit-ins, openly violating laws that they considered unjust. King's intent was to provoke mass arrests and "create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation." The campaign's early volunteers did not succeed in shutting down the city, or in drawing media attention to the police's actions. Over the concerns of an uncertain King, SCLC strategist
James Bevel changed the course of the campaign by recruiting children and young adults to join the demonstrations.
Newsweek called this strategy a
Children's Crusade. The Birmingham Police Department, led by
Eugene "Bull" Connor, used high-pressure water jets and police dogs against protesters, including children. Footage of the police response was broadcast on national television, shocking many white Americans and consolidating black Americans behind the movement. Not all demonstrators were peaceful, despite the avowed intentions of the SCLC. In some cases, bystanders attacked the police, who responded with force. King and the SCLC were criticized for putting children in harm's way. But the campaign was a success: Connor lost his job, the "Jim Crow" signs came down, and public places became more open to blacks. King's reputation improved immensely. out of 29. From his cell, he composed the now-famous "
Letter from Birmingham Jail" that responds to
calls to pursue legal channels for social change. The letter has been described as "one of the most important historical documents penned by a modern
political prisoner". King argues that the crisis of racism is too urgent, and the current system too entrenched: "We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed."
March on Washington, 1963 King, representing the
SCLC, was among the leaders of the "
Big Six" civil rights organizations who were instrumental in the organization of the
March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, which took place on August 28, 1963. The other leaders and organizations comprising the Big Six were
Roy Wilkins from the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People;
Whitney Young,
National Urban League;
A. Philip Randolph,
Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters;
John Lewis,
SNCC; and
James L. Farmer Jr.,
Congress of Racial Equality.
Bayard Rustin's open homosexuality, support of
socialism, and former ties to the
Communist Party USA caused many white and African-American leaders to demand King distance himself, which King agreed to do. However, he did collaborate in the 1963 March on Washington, for which Rustin was the primary organizer. For King, this role was another which courted controversy, since he was a key figure who acceded to the wishes of President 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. However, the organizers were firm the march would proceed. With the march going forward, the Kennedys decided it was important to ensure its success. President Kennedy was concerned the turnout would be less than 100,000 and enlisted the aid of additional church leaders and
Walter Reuther, president of the
United Automobile Workers, to help mobilize demonstrators. '', a 1964 documentary film produced by the
United States Information Agency. King's speech has been redacted from this video because of the
copyright held by King's estate. The march originally was planned to dramatize the desperate condition of blacks in the southern US and place organizers' concerns and grievances squarely before the seat of power in the capital. Organizers intended to denounce the federal government for its failure to safeguard the civil rights and physical safety of civil rights workers and blacks. The group acquiesced to presidential pressure, and the event ultimately took on a 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 the Nation of Islam forbade its members from attending. during the 1963
March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The march made specific demands: an end to racial segregation in public schools; 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 Washington, D.C., then governed by congressional committee. Despite tensions, the march was a resounding success. More than a quarter of a million people of diverse ethnicities attended, sprawling from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial onto the
National Mall. At the time, it was the largest gathering of protesters in Washington, D.C.'s history.King said: "I Have a Dream" came to be regarded as one of the finest speeches in the history of oratory. The March, and especially King's speech, helped put civil rights at the top of the agenda of reformers and facilitated passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
St. Augustine, Florida, 1964 In March 1964, King and the SCLC joined forces with Robert Hayling's then-controversial movement in St. Augustine, Florida. Hayling's group had been affiliated with the NAACP but was forced out of the organization for advocating armed self-defense alongside nonviolent tactics. However, the pacifist SCLC accepted them. King and the SCLC worked to bring white Northern activists to
St. Augustine, including a delegation of rabbis and the 72-year-old mother of the governor of Massachusetts, all of whom were arrested. During June, the movement marched nightly through the city, "often facing counter demonstrations by the Klan, and provoking violence that garnered national media attention." Hundreds of the marchers were arrested and jailed. During this movement, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed.
Biddeford, Maine, 1964 On May 7, 1964, King spoke at
Saint Francis College's "The Negro and the Quest for Identity", in
Biddeford, Maine. This was a symposium that brought together many civil rights leaders. King spoke about how "We must get rid of the idea of superior and inferior races," through nonviolent tactics.
New York City, 1964 On February 6, 1964, King delivered the inaugural speech of a lecture series initiated at the
New School called "The American Race Crisis". In his remarks, King referred to a conversation he had recently had with
Jawaharlal Nehru in which he compared the sad condition of many African Americans to that of India's
untouchables. In his March 18, 1964, interview with
Robert Penn Warren, King compared his activism to his father's, citing his training in non-violence as a key difference. He also discusses the next phase of the civil rights movement and integration.
Scripto strike in Atlanta, 1964 Starting in November 1964, King supported a
labor strike by several hundred workers at the
Scripto factory in Atlanta, just a few blocks from Ebenezer Baptist. Many of the strikers were congregants of his church, and the strike was supported by other civil rights leaders. A local judge issued an injunction that barred any gathering of three or more people affiliated with the SNCC, SCLC, DCVL, or any of 41 named civil rights leaders. This injunction temporarily halted civil rights activity until King defied it by speaking at
Brown Chapel on January 2, 1965. During the 1965 march to
Montgomery, Alabama, violence by state police and others against the peaceful marchers resulted in much publicity, which made racism in Alabama visible nationwide. Acting on
James Bevel's call for a march from Selma to Montgomery, Bevel and other SCLC members, in partial collaboration with SNCC, attempted to organize a march to the state's capital. The first attempt to march on March 7, 1965, at which King was not present, was aborted because of mob and police violence against the demonstrators. This day has become known as
Bloody Sunday and was a turning point in the effort to gain public support for the civil rights movement. It was the clearest demonstration up to that time of the dramatic potential of King and Bevel's nonviolence strategy. On March 5, King met with officials in the
Johnson Administration to request an
injunction against any prosecution of the demonstrators. He did not attend the march due to church duties, but later wrote, "If I had any idea that the state troopers would use the kind of brutality they did, I would have felt compelled to give up my church duties altogether to lead the line." Footage of
police brutality against the protesters was broadcast extensively and aroused public outrage. King next attempted to organize a march for March 9. The SCLC petitioned for an injunction in federal court against Alabama; this was denied and the judge issued an order blocking the march until after a hearing. Nonetheless, King led marchers on March 9 to the
Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, then held a prayer session before turning the marchers around and asking them to disperse so as not to violate the court order. The unexpected ending of this second march aroused the surprise and anger of many within the local movement. The march finally went ahead fully on March 25, 1965. At the conclusion of the march on the steps of the
state capitol, King delivered a speech that became known as "
How Long, Not Long". King stated that equal rights for African Americans could not be far away, "because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice" and "you shall reap what you sow".
Chicago open housing movement, 1966 In 1966, after several successes in the south, King, Bevel, and others in the civil rights organizations took the movement to the North. King and Ralph Abernathy, both from the middle class, moved into a building at 1550 S. Hamlin Avenue, in the slums of
North Lawndale on Chicago's West Side, as an educational experience and to demonstrate their support and empathy for the poor. The SCLC formed a coalition with Coordinating Council of Community Organizations (CCCO), an organization founded by
Albert Raby, and the combined organizations' efforts were fostered under the aegis of the
Chicago Freedom Movement. During that spring, several white couple/black couple tests of real estate offices uncovered
racial steering, discriminatory processing of housing requests by couples who were exact matches in income and background. Larger marches were planned and executed: in Bogan,
Belmont Cragin,
Jefferson Park,
Evergreen Park,
Gage Park,
Marquette Park, and others. meeting with King in the
White House Cabinet Room in 1966 King later stated and Abernathy wrote that the movement received a worse reception in Chicago than in the South. Marches, especially the one through Marquette Park on August 5, 1966, were met by thrown bottles and screaming throngs. Rioting seemed very possible. King's beliefs militated against his staging a violent event, and he negotiated an agreement with Mayor
Richard J. Daley to cancel a march to avoid the violence he feared would result. King was hit by a brick during one march, but continued to lead marches in the face of personal danger. When King and his allies returned to the South, they left
Jesse Jackson, a seminary student who had previously joined the movement in the South, in charge of their organization. Jackson continued their struggle for civil rights by organizing the
Operation Breadbasket movement that targeted chain stores that did not deal fairly with blacks. A 1967
CIA document declassified in 2017 downplayed King's role in the "black militant situation" in Chicago, with a source stating that King "sought at least constructive, positive projects."
Opposition to the Vietnam War King was long opposed to
American involvement in the Vietnam War, At the urging of SCLC's former Director of Direct Action and now the head of the
Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, James Bevel, and inspired by the outspokenness of
Muhammad Ali, King eventually agreed to publicly oppose the war, as opposition was growing among the public. He spoke against America's role in the war, arguing the US was in Vietnam "to occupy it as an American colony" and calling the US government "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today". He connected the war with economic injustice, arguing that the country needed serious moral change: King opposed the war because it took resources away
from social welfare at home: "A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death." He stated that
North Vietnam "did not begin to send in any large number of supplies or men until American forces had arrived in the tens of thousands", and accused the U.S. of having killed a million Vietnamese, "mostly children". King also criticized American opposition to North Vietnam's land reforms. King's opposition cost him significant support among white allies including Johnson,
Billy Graham, union leaders, and powerful publishers. "The press is being stacked against me", King said, complaining of what he described as a double standard that applauded his nonviolence at home, but deplored it when applied "toward little brown Vietnamese children".
Life magazine called the speech "demagogic slander that sounded like a script for
Radio Hanoi", and
The Washington Post declared that King had "diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people." King began to speak of the need for fundamental changes in the American political and economic situation, and more frequently expressed his opposition to the war and his desire to see a redistribution of resources to correct injustice. He guarded his language in public to avoid being linked to
communism, but in private sometimes spoke of his support for
democratic socialism. King stated in "Beyond Vietnam" that "true compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar ... it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring." King quoted a US official who said that from Vietnam to Latin America, the country was "on the wrong side of a world revolution." On April 15, 1967, King spoke at an anti-war march from Manhattan's Central Park to the UN. The march was organized by the
Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam under chairman James Bevel. At the UN King brought up issues of civil rights and the draft: Seeing an opportunity to unite civil rights and anti-war activists, In his 1967
Massey Lecture, King stated: On January 13, 1968, King called for a large march on Washington against "one of history's most cruel and senseless wars":
Correspondence with Thích Nhất Hạnh Thích Nhất Hạnh was an influential Vietnamese
Buddhist who wrote a letter to King in 1965 entitled: "In Search of the Enemy of Man". It was during his 1966 stay in the US that Nhất Hạnh met with King and urged him to publicly denounce the war. On 4 April 1967, King gave a speech in New York City, his first to publicly question U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Later that year, King nominated Nhất Hạnh for the
Nobel Peace Prize. In his nomination, King said, "I do not personally know of anyone more worthy of [this prize] than this gentle monk from Vietnam. His ideas for peace, if applied, would build a monument to
ecumenism, to world brotherhood, to humanity".
Poor People's Campaign, 1968 In 1968, King and the SCLC organized the "
Poor People's Campaign" to address economic justice. King traveled the country to assemble "a multiracial army of the poor" that would march on Washington to engage in nonviolent
civil disobedience at the Capitol until Congress created an "economic bill of rights". The campaign was preceded by King's final book,
Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? which laid out his view of how to address social issues and poverty. King quoted from
Henry George's book
Progress and Poverty, particularly in support of a
guaranteed basic income. The campaign culminated in a march on Washington, D.C., demanding economic aid to the poorest communities of the U.S. King and the SCLC called on the government to invest in rebuilding America's cities. He felt that Congress had shown "hostility to the poor" by spending "military funds with alacrity and generosity". He contrasted this with the situation faced by poor Americans, claiming that Congress had merely provided "poverty funds with miserliness".
Global policy King was one of the signatories of the agreement to convene a convention for drafting a
world constitution. As a result, in 1968 a
World Constituent Assembly convened to draft and adopt the
Constitution for the Federation of Earth. == Assassination and aftermath ==