Martin Luther King College Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Martin Luther King College - Essay Examplestood by the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. Much to the knowledge of everyone, he delivered what is regarded as one of the greatest speeches in American history. King himself seemed to sense the historic importance of the moment as he opened his I be in possession of a Dream speech by calling the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation. The limit protest, which drew more than 200,000 people, announced a turning point in the civil rights movement and set the stage for the movements two most important legislative achievements, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (Microsoft Encarta 2005).It is interesting to speculate on what the course of American history might have been, if Martin Luther King, Jr. had not done for(p) to Montgomery, Alabama in 1954. But he did go, and the America he had grown up in was forever changed. The histor ic bus boycott that began there in late 1955 brought him national recognition and triggered a decade of direct-action protest that permanently altered the status of dense Americans. Andrew Young once said that Rosa position thrust greatness upon King. Rosa Parks is a leading member of the local branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), who was renowned for her refusal to give her bus seat to a face cloth man. Certainly she shaped the setting in which he emerged as a national figure and challenged him to register his theory of nonviolence into practice. King had no intention of initiating a major campaign in Montgomery, but Mrs. Parks refusal to yield her bus seat to a white man on December 1, 1955 forced the first serious test of Kings willingness to undergo personal sacrifice for the sake of Negro freedom. She has never claimed much computer address for what happened in Montgomery, but Rosa Parks action was a catalyst in Kings rise to p rominence and the emergence of the southern civil rights movement that dominated American social history for a decade (SCLC/NH, National Conventions, 1980).Local leaders of the NAACP, especially Edgar D. Nixon, recognized that the arrest of the popular and highly respected Parks was the point that could rally local blacks to a bus protest. Nixonalsobelievedthat a citywide protest should be led by someone who could unify the community. Unlike Nixon and other leaders in Montgomerys black community, the recently arrived King had no enemies. Furthermore, Nixon saw Kings public-speaking gifts as great assets in the battle for black civil rights in Montgomery. King was curtly chosen as president of the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), the organization that directed the bus boycott. By the time the Supreme Court upheld the lower motor hotel decision in November 1956, King prominence elevated him to become leading black national figure. His memoir of the bus boycott, Stride Towa rd Freedom (1958), provided a thoughtful account of that experience and further extended Kings national influence.Another important contribution of King is the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), an organization of black churches and ministers that aimed to challenge racial segregation. As SCLCs president, King became the organizations dominant personality and its primary intellectual