persona
a unique content
(cont.)
• Mourning address to the mur-
der of four black girls during
Sunday School, at the 16th
Street Church in Birmingham,
and to the murder of Presi-
dent Kennedy
• 1964 Nobel Peace Prize ac-
ceptance speech, at the Oslo
University Conference
• Several remarks connected to
the events in Selma, Alabama
and the Chicago Campaign.
• Appeals against the Vietnam
War
• Poor People’s Campaign and
the March on Memphis
• Last speech at the temple of
Bishop Charles J. Mason in
Memphis, a day prior to King’s
death.
22 ISSUE #8
The bus boycott in Montgomery
(where there was an anti-boycott law
at the time!) lasted thirteen weeks,
throughout which the city’s black
inhabitants walked everywhere, often-
times being intimidated, persecuted
and arrested for not using public trans-
portation. Planning and improvising
an ingenious system of alternative
transportation, those who adhered to
the boycott endured the revolt until
they had won: at the end of 1956, the
US Supreme Court declared the bus
segregation laws as unconstitutional.
King soon became known as a
young and brave African-American
with his leadership actions within the
movement. Montgomery contributed
with a new tool for the African-Ame-
rican revolution, a social instrument of
non-violent resistance. The movement
unveiled to the world a person who
the whites would have to listen to and
respect, even if grudgingly. Someone
who the blacks admired, who had left
the “paralyzing passivity and numbing
complacency,” emerged with a new
sense of dignity and destiny. The
young and brave African-American
from Montgomery acquired a new
determination to attain freedom and
human dignity, despite the grievous
cost.