Martin Luther King Jr.
Most visible spokesman of the Civil Rights Movement Movement
DECEMBER OF THE YEAR OF EMMETT TILL’S DEATH, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat in the “colored people” section of the bus to a white man, defying the southern custom of black people letting white sit in the bus when their section is full. This led to a transport boycott in Montgomery, Alabama led by a reverend, Martin Luther King Jr.
He Had A Dream
King, who was just practicing to become a baptist priest in Alabama, became one of the known figures of the Civil Rights Movement as well as its spokesperson. Before delivering his iconic speech in front of thousands of people in Washington D.C, he promoted his segregation propaganda in his small town of Montgomery, leading what was once a small group. He then becomes president of the SCLC or the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, making his following larger, projecting his beliefs and stance in the Civil Rights Movement to a bigger audience. He bases his principles regarding the movement on nonviolence and civil disobedience (Bogen 2013), believing that making hate part of the reasons of the movement, will make them low same as the racists and hatemongers that opposes their stance, saying "We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline,". King was arrested and jailed during a series of anti-segregation protests in Birmingham, leaving him to write his seminal “A Letter from Birmingham Jail”, where he argued people should be allowed to disobey unjust laws.