King has since become a legendary figure within civil rights history and his powerful speeches mark him as one of the best orators of all time. From his early engagement with the Christian faith until his untimely assassination in Tennesse, here are 10 key facts about the extraordinary life and legacy of Martin Luther King Jr.

1. King was born into a house of religion and activism

Micheal (later Martin Luther) King Sr. was a devout Christian and Baptist minister. In fact, Michael was so impressed by the 16th century Protestant Reformer, Martin Luther, he changed both his and his son’s names. King’s father was also a civil rights activist, leading hundreds of Black Americans protesting lack of voting rights to Atlanta City Hall in 1936.

2. King started university at 15 years old

In 1944, as many young Black men were enlisted into the war depriving universities of their students, 15 year old King started at Morehouse College – an historically all-Black and male school. He graduated at the age of 19 with a BA in Sociology.

King then decided to enter the ministry, where he felt he could best answer his “inner urge to serve humanity”. He would later go on to achieve a PhD in theology in 1955, becoming Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

3. He was married to Coretta Scott

Coretta met King while he was studying in Boston. In 1953 they were married in Alabama and would go on to have 4 children together.

Photograph of Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta, his wife, in 1964.

Image Credit: CC / Herman Hiller

Despite being attracted to her involvement in civil rights activism, after they married King restricted Coretta’s involvement in the movement. He believed her energy was best spent as a housewife and mother, demonstrating how the intersection of race and gender shaped Black women’s fight for civil rights.

4. He advocated for non-violent activism

Inspired by Biblical stories of Jesus ‘turning the other cheek’ and the Indian independence activist Mahatma Gandhi’s principle of ‘satyagraha’, King believed civil disobedience and non-violence were the only ways to sustainably advance the cause of Black Americans.

5. King led the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott

Only in his twenties, King took the leading role in the bus boycott that began with Rosa Parks refusing her bus seat to a white passenger. His role gained him so much media attention that King’s house was threatened with bombing. The boycott lasted 385 days, ending when the US District Court ruled that racial segregation was not allowed on Montgomery buses.

6. King was arrested 29 times

Martin Luther King Jr. being arrested in Montgomery for ‘loitering’, 1958.

Image Credit: Associated Press / Public Domain

During the Birmingham campaign of 1963, King was arrested for the 13th time – on purpose. Led by King, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) occupied public spaces to protest segregation, hoping that mass arrests would provoke negotiations with officials.

From his jail cell he composed the now-famous “Letter from Birmingham Jail”, rejecting calls to pursue legal channels for social change, referencing the illegal and revolutionary 1773 Boston Tea Party.

7. He was one of the best orators in modern history

On 28 August 1963, between 200,000 and 300,000 people marched on Washington DC advocating for the civil and economic rights of Black Americans. King was the event’s final speaker and gave his “I Have A Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, describing his dreams of equality within a land built upon slavery and inequity.

Leaders of the Washington DC. March posing in front of the statue of Abraham Lincoln at the Lincoln Memorial, 28 August 1963. Martin Luther King, Jr. looks directly at the camera.

Image Credit: CC / Rowland Scherman

The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom was one of the largest political rallies in US history, and was influential in passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

8. King opposed the Vietnam War

Fearing it would hinder the civil rights campaign, King had to be urged by the SCLC to speak out on the war in Vietnam. Yet he vehemently opposed the conflict, arguing the war cost the United States not only too many lives but money that was better spent on welfare.

As he predicted, speaking out lost King valuable white supporters, including Lyndon Johnson and powerful publishers such as The Washington Post.

9. He was assassinated on Thursday 4 April 1968

King was fatally shot by James Earl while standing outside his room at the Lorraine Motel in Tennessee. Rushed to hospital, King died later that day. With the news of his death, uprisings erupted across the country, particularly in Washington DC, Baltimore, Louisville, Kansas City and Chicago. These events came to be known as the Holy Week Uprisings and continued into May 1968.

10. King’s assassination spurred the passing of the landmark 1968 Civil Rights Act and a legacy of civil rights activism

Combined with the pressure of the uprisings and decades of campaigning, on 11 April the Civil Rights Act was passed into law by President Lyndon Johnson, signalling a move towards ending racial discrimination.

In 1983, President Ronald Reagan created a federal holiday honouring King for his commitment to justice and equal rights for all. Martin Luther King Jr. Day was observed for the first time on January 20, 1986.

Although the act was the culmination of the American civil rights movement as a whole, historians agree that it was ultimately sparked by the so-called “Birmingham campaign” which had taken place the year before.

The Birmingham campaign

Birmingham, in the state of Alabama, was a flagship city of the policy of racial segregation in schools, employment and public accommodation. It lay in the American South, where in centuries gone by, most of the country’s black population had worked as slaves and where their white compatriots had gone to war over the issue of slavery in 1861.

Although black people were theoretically emancipated after the north’s victory in the Civil War, their lot did not improve much in the century that followed. Southern states enacted ‘Jim Crow’ laws which enforced racial segregation through formal and informal policies.

By the early 1960s, riots, discontent and violent police reprisals had given rise to a relatively minor movement asking for equal rights in Birmingham, which had been founded by local black reverend Fred Shuttlesworth.

In early 1963, Shuttlesworth invited the star of the civil rights movement, Martin Luther King Jr., to bring his Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to the city, saying “if you win in Birmingham, as Birmingham goes, so goes the nation”.

Once the SCLC’s members were in town, Shuttlesworth launched the Birmingham campaign in April 1963, beginning with a boycott of industries that refused to employ black workers.

Non-violent protests

When local leaders resisted and condemned the boycott, King and Shuttlesworth changed their tactics and organised peaceful marches and sit-ins, knowing that the inevitable mass arrests of non-violent protesters would gain international recognition for their cause.

It was slow going at first. But a turning point came when the campaign decided to seek support from Birmingham’s large student population, who suffered from segregation in the city more than most.

This policy was a huge success, and images of teenagers being brutally hosed by police or having attack dogs set on them brought widespread international condemnation. With recognition came support, and peaceful demonstrations soon broke out across the south as Birmingham’s segregation laws began to weaken under the pressure.

Kennedy’s assassination

Civil rights leaders meet with President John F. Kennedy in the Oval Office of the White House after the March on Washington, D.C.

President John F. Kennedy was in the midst of trying to get the civil rights bill through Congress when he was assassinated in Dallas, Texas on 22 November 1963.

Kennedy was replaced by his deputy, Lyndon B. Johnson, who told members of Congress in his first speech to them as president that “no memorial oration or eulogy could more eloquently honor President Kennedy’s memory than the earliest possible passage of the civil rights bill for which he fought so long”.

Despite the efforts of numerous dissenters, the bill was passed by the House of Representatives in February 1964 and moved on to the Senate shortly after. There it ran out of momentum, however; a group of 18 mostly southern Democratic senators obstructed a vote by extending the debating time in a move known as “filibustering” or “talking a bill to death”.

Watching this debate on 26 March were Luther King and Malcolm X: the only time these two titans of the civil rights movement ever met.

Martin Luther King and Malcolm X waiting for a press conference together on Capitol Hill in 1964.

Image Credit: Library of Congress / Public Domain

The waiting is over

After months of talking and waiting under the watchful eye of the rest of the world (including the Soviet Union, which had been greatly enjoying the easy propaganda victories America’s racial problems provided it), a new, slightly weaker version of the bill was proposed. And this bill gained enough Republican votes to end the filibuster.

The Civil Rights Act was eventually passed by a crushing 73 votes to 27. Martin Luther King Jr. and Johnson had won, and now racial integration would be enforced by the law.

Aside from the obvious social changes that the bill brought about, which continue to be felt to this day, it also had profound political effect. The south became a stronghold of the Republican party for the first time in history and has remained so ever since, while Johnson won that year’s presidential election by a landslide – despite being warned that support for the Civil Rights Act might cost him the vote.

The act failed to bring about equality for minorities in America overnight, however, and structural, institutionalised racism remains a pervasive problem. Racism remains a contentious topic in contemporary politics. Despite this, the 1964 Civil Rights Act was still a watershed moment for not only the US, but also the world.

While others had resisted the segregation of Montgomery’s buses in similar ways and been arrested for it, Park’s single act of civil disobedience against the state’s racist laws attracted the special attention of prominent civil rights activists, including the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., and sparked an organised boycott of the Montgomery public bus network.

‘I was tired of giving in’

In 1955, African Americans riding the bus in Montgomery, Alabama, were required by city law to sit in the rear half of the bus and to give up their seats to whites if the front half was full. Returning home from her work as a seamstress on 1 December 1955, Rosa Parks was one of three African-Americans asked to leave their seats on a busy bus to allow white passengers to sit down.

While the two other passengers complied, Rosa Parks refused. She was arrested and fined for her actions.

The fingerprints of Rosa Parks taken at her arrest.

People always say that I didn’t give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn’t true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.

—Rosa Parks

The mother of the civil rights movement

Similar protests to Parks’ include that of Claudette Colvin, a 15-year-old high school student in Montgomery, who was arrested less than a year earlier, and famous ground-breaking athlete Jackie Robinson, who, while serving in the US Army in Texas, was court-martialled, but acquitted, for refusing to move to the back of a military bus when told to by a fellow officer.

Several activist groups in Alabama, and Montgomery in particular, had already petitioned the mayor, but previous political actions and arrests had not sufficiently mobilised the community to engage in a large enough boycott of the city’s bus system to produce meaningful results.

But there was something special about Rosa Parks that galvanised Montgomery’s black population. She was considered ‘beyond reproach’, had displayed dignity in her protest and was known as a fine member of her community and a good Christian.

Already a long-time NAACP member and activist and the secretary for its Montgomery branch, her act catapulted her into the limelight and a life of political involvement.

There was also something special about Martin Luther King, who local NAACP president ED Nixon chose — subject to a vote — as the leader for the bus boycott. For one thing, King was new to Montgomery and had not yet faced intimidation or made enemies there.

Rosa Parks with Martin Luther King Jr. in the background. Image public domain.

The Montgomery Bus Boycott

Soon after her arrest African American civil rights groups began calling for a boycott of the bus system on 5 December, the day Rosa Parks was due to appear in court. The boycott quickly gathered support and approximately 40,000 African American citizens participated.

On the same day, black leaders gathered to form the Montgomery Improvement Association to oversee the continuation of the boycott. A 26-year-old pastor from Montgomery’s Dexter Avenue Baptist Church was elected as the MIA’s president. His name was Martin Luther King Jnr.

Martin Luther King addressed the crowd of several thousand present:

And you know, my friends, there comes a time when people get tired of being trampled over by the iron feet of oppression. There comes a time, my friends, when people get tired of being plunged across the abyss of humiliation, where they experience the bleakness of nagging despair. There comes a time when people get tired of being pushed out of the glittering sunlight of life’s July and left standing amid the piercing chill of an alpine November. There comes a time.

—Martin Luther King Jr.

The city would not back down and the boycott continued through 1956, with the authorities penalising black taxi drivers and the African American community responding with a well-organised carpool system, which was subsequently stopped via legal injunction.

On 22 March of ’56, King was convicted of organising an ‘illegal boycott’ and fined $500, a conviction which was changed, upon his lawyers’ announced intention to appeal, to a 368-day prison sentence. The appeal was rejected and King later paid the fine.

The end of bus segregation

The federal district court ruled on 5 June 1956 that the segregation of buses was unconstitutional, a ruling which was affirmed the following November by the US Supreme Court. Bus segregation came to an end on 20 December 1956 and the next morning, along with fellow activists, Martin Luther King boarded an integrated bus in the city of Montgomery.

A major event in the history of American civil rights, the Montgomery Bus Boycott stands as a testament to the power of organised civil disobedience in the face of state opposition and illegal oppression.

These brought unprecedented pressure to act on civil rights to bear on the federal government, and so set the legislative process in motion.

It also proved the turning point in public opinion, swaying the hitherto silent majority into action. It exposed southern segregationist brutality to an international audience.

For too long the passive white moderate had stood in the way of advancing civil rights. Although Birmingham was by no means a total remedy, it invigorated and drew support to a flagging cause.

Ultimately it created a confluence of forces that compelled the Kennedy administration to introduce Civil Rights legislation.

Why Birmingham?

By 1963 the Civil Rights movement had stalled. The Albany Movement had failed, and the Kennedy administration was unmoved on the possibility of introducing legislation.

However, a co-ordinated protest in Birmingham, Alabama had the potential to ignite racial tensions and stir the national consciousness.

On 2 April the moderate Albert Boutwell had won a decisive 8,000 vote victory over Eugene ‘Bull’ Connor in the run-off mayoral election. However, the victory was disputed and Connor remained as Police Commissioner. A publicity-seeking segregationist, Connor was liable to meet a large demonstration with a high profile display of force.

A coalition of Civil Rights groups, led by Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, resolved to orchestrate sit-ins to bring about de-segregation of lunch counters at downtown stores.

Although blacks in Birmingham didn’t have the numbers to effect political change, as Martin Luther King Jr noted, ‘Negroes… had enough buying power to make the difference between profit and loss in downtown stores.’

Some urged delay, for the odd situation of two competing city governments didn’t seem conducive to a direct protest. Father Albert Foley among others also believed that voluntary desegregation was imminent. However, as Wyatt Walker said, ‘We didn’t want to march after Bull was gone.’

What happened? – A timeline of the protests

3 April – The first protesters entered five downtown stores. Four stopped serving immediately and at the fifth thirteen protesters were arrested. After a week there had been around 150 arrests.

10 April – ‘Bull’ Connor obtains an injunction barring protests, but this is ignored by King and the protests continue.

12 April – King is arrested for demonstrating, and from his jail cell pens his ‘Letter From a Birmingham Jail’, a riposte to the charge levelled by eight white clergymen that King was impeding rather than prompting change. This emotive plea to the inert white moderates brought Birmingham into the national spotlight.

2 May – In a D-Day demonstration over a thousand students marched on the city centre. Connor’s police sprung an ambush from Kelly Ingram Park, arresting over 600 and filling the city’s jails to capacity.

3 May – As demonstrators took to the streets once more, Connor ordered the fire hoses turned up to lethal intensity and police dogs to be used with devastating impunity. Protests concluded at 3pm but the media storm had just begun. As the demonstrators were ‘jumping up and down…’ and shouting ‘we had some police brutality! They brought out the dogs!’

Images of bloodied, beaten protesters were broadcast globally. Robert Kennedy publicly sympathised that, ‘These demonstrations are understandable expressions of resentment and hurt.’

He also criticized the use of children, but the bulk of public horror was directed at the police brutality. An Associated Press photograph showing a large dog lunging at a peaceful protester vividly crystallised the event and the Huntington Advisor reported that the fire hoses were able to peel bark off trees.

7 May – The fire hoses were turned on protesters once more. Reverend Shuttlesworth was hospitalised by a hose blast, and Connor was heard saying that he wished Shuttlesworth had been ‘carried away in a hearse.’

Robert Kennedy prepared to activate the Alabama National Guard, but the violence had reached a tipping point. Business in the downtown stores was completely frozen, and that night the Senior Citizens Committee, representing Birmingham’s white elite, agreed to negotiate.

8 May – At 4pm an agreement was reached and the President formally announced a ceasefire. However, later that day King was re-arrested and the fragile truce collapsed.

10 May – After some frantic behind-the-scenes work by the Kennedy administration, King’s bail was paid and a second truce agreed.

11 May – 3 bombings (2 at King’s brother’s house and one at the Gaston motel) prompted an angry black mob to gather and rampage through the city, destroying vehicles and razing 6 stores to the ground.

13 May – JFK orders 3,000 troops deployed to Birmingham. He also gave a neutral statement, saying ‘the Government will do whatever it can to preserve order.’

15 May – After further negotiations the Senior Citizen’s Committee reiterated its commitments to the points established in the first agreement, and eventually 4 Points for Progress were established. From that point the crisis steadily wound down until Connor left office.

Political fallout from Birmingham

Birmingham precipitated a sea change on the racial issue. From May to late August there were 1,340 demonstrations in over 200 cities across 34 states. It seemed that nonviolent protest had run its course.

JFK had received a letter from several celebrities berating, ‘the total, moral collapse of your response to the pleas of millions of Americans.’

On 17 May a memorandum summarising global opinion to the crisis found that Moscow had, unleashed a propaganda blast on Birmingham’ with ‘most attention given to use of brutality and dogs.’

Legislation now constituted a remedy for the social conflict, a damaged international reputation and an historic injustice.

Malcolm X Shot to Death at Rally Here
Three Other Negroes Wounded – One is Held in Killing

This is how The New York Times reported the assassination of Malcolm X. One of the most influential figures of the civil rights movement, Malcolm X was shot dead as he took the stage to address a packed audience at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem on 21 February 1965.

Early years

Born Malcolm Little in 1925 in Nebraska, Malcolm X was inculcated with black nationalist ideals from an early age. His father was a Baptist preacher who advocated the ideals set out by Marcus Garvey.

Threats from the Ku Klux Klan were a constant feature of Malcolm X’s early life, and in 1935 his father was murdered by the white supremacist organization ‘Black Legion.’ The culprits were never held responsible.

At the age of 21 Malcolm X was sent to prison for burglary. There he encountered the the teachings Elijah Mohammed, the leader of the Nation of Islam. On his release from Prison, he became an effective minister for the Nation of Islam in Harlem, New York. His fiery oratory set him apart from more peaceful civil rights leaders, such as Martin Luther King Jr.

“I am for violence if non violence means we continue postponing a solution American black man’s problem just to avoid violence.”

Divergence

By the early 1960s Malcolm X was becoming increasingly militant and outspoken. His divergence from the line taken by Elijah Muhammad was illustrated by his comments about the assassination of JFK – it was a matter of ‘the chickens coming home to roost.’

Malcolm X was formally suspended from the Nation of Islam a few months later. This provided him the opportunity to embark on a pilgrimage to Mecca. Profoundly affected by the unity and peace he found on his journey, he returned to the US as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz. In 1964 he founded the Organization of Afro-American Unity.

The organization’s philosophy was fairly moderate, holding racism, not the white race, as the enemy. It gained significant social traction and Malcolm X’s stock rose massively. His success, however, invited attacks from competing black nationalist movements.

Assassination

Shortly before his assassination, Malcolm X reported a fire-bombing at his house:

My house was bombed. It was bombed by the Black Muslim movement upon the orders of Elijah Muhammad. Now, they had come around to—they had planned to do it from the front and the back so that I couldn’t get out. They covered the front completely, the front door. Then they had come to the back, but instead of getting directly in back of the house and throwing it this way, they stood at a 45-degree angle and tossed it at the window so it glanced and went onto the ground. And the fire hit the window, and it woke up my second-oldest baby. And then it—but the fire burned on the outside of the house.

Elijah Muhammad.

On 21 February, as he was about to address the crowd in Harlem, a member of audience shouted “Nigger! Get your hand outta my pocket!” A man then charged out the audience and shot Malcolm X in the chest with a sawn-off shotgun. Two others opened fire with semi-automatic handguns.

Malcolm X was pronounced dead at 3.30pm. The autopsy identified 21 gunshot wounds.

Talmadge Hayer, who was the first to open fire, was held by the crowd.  The other two gunmen – Norman 3X Butler and Thomas 15X Johnson – were also detained. All three were members of the Nation of Islam, and it was clear that they were acting on orders of that organization.

Malcolm X’s more moderate philosophy was siphoning support from the Nation of Islam, and diluting black militancy. Of the three assailants, two are alive and free today.

The public viewing preceding the funeral was attended by between 15,000 and 30,000 people. At the funeral itself eulogies were delivered by a variety of leading figures in the civil rights struggle.

Martin Luther King wasn’t in attendance, but did send a telegram to Malcolm X’s widow:

While we did not always see eye to eye on methods to solve the race problem, I always had a deep affection for Malcolm and felt that he had a great ability to put his finger on the existence and root of the problem. He was an eloquent spokesman for his point of view and no one can honestly doubt that Malcolm had a great concern for the problems that we face as a race.

Elijah Muhammad didn’t express any regret at the assassination, but denied any involvement:

We didn’t want to kill Malcolm and didn’t try to kill him. We know such ignorant, foolish teachings would bring him to his own end.”

Throughout the day several major civil rights leaders delivered speeches, but the undoubted highlight was that given by Martin Luther King Jr., the head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

His rallying cry for universal justice and peace resonated throughout the subsequent struggle for equal rights, and 50 years later still has the capacity to stir profound emotion.

Full text version:

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.

In a sense we have come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked “insufficient funds.”

But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check — a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quick sands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual.

There will be neither rest nor tranquillity in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.

We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.

The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. They have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.

As we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, “When will you be satisfied?” We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied, as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities.

We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro’s basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating “For Whites Only”. We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.

Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.

I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.”

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.
This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with a new meaning, “My country, ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.”
And if America is to be a great nation this must become true.

So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!
Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!
Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California!
But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!
Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee!
Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual,

“Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

6 oppositionists

Richard Russell

The patriarch of the obstructionist Southern caucus, and long-serving Senator for Georgia. Russell repeatedly marshalled the conservative Southern Democrats into opposing any Civil Rights legislation.

George Wallace

Tuscaloosa Mayor George Wallace publicly resisted JFK’s integration of the University of Alabama, and would later run in the 1968 Presidential Election as an independent, winning 10% of the popular vote.

Eugene ‘Bull’ Connor

As Police Commissioner of Birmingham, Alabama, ‘Bull’ Connor decided to crush the ‘Project C’ protest and so inflamed popular opposition to segregation. JFK called the Civil Rights Act he introduced in June 1963 ‘Bull Connor’s bill.’

Strom Thurmond

Thurmond served for 48 years as Senator for South Carolina, switching parties in opposition to the 1964 Civil Rights Act. He was a key member of the obstructionist Southern caucus.

James O’Eastland

Senator for Mississippi, patron of Lyndon Johnson and enthusiatic proponent of racist rhetoric. Eastland was renowned for scapegoating Mississippi’s black community, and opposed the Freedom Rides and the admission of James Meredith to Ole Miss.

Ross Barnett

Governor of Mississippi who headed the resistance to the registration of James Meredith at the University of Mississippi.

4 unsung heroes

Ella Baker

Perhaps the most influential woman in the Civil Rights movement after Rosa Parks, whom Baker mentored in the before her Montgomery stand. She largely worked behind the scenes, but associated closely with the major activists, including Randolph and King.

James Meredith

James Meredith is largely remembered as a pawn at the centre of the 1962 Ole Miss crisis, but Meredith consciously pressured the Kennedy administration, forcing it to confront Southern prejudice directly.

Bayard Rustin

Rustin was an early advocate for the non-violent resistance model, a direct influence on King. He was the chief organizer of the March on Washington, but rarely shared the spotlight with his more illustrious comrades.

Senator Everett Dirksen

As Senator for Illinois Dirksen was an essential figure in passing the 64′ act. His support for the Bill undermined the traditional alliance between Southern Democrats and Western Republicans over Civil Rights.

8 activists

AA Phillip Randolph

Head of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, and an equally prominent labour and civil rights activist, Randolph played a central role in Project C and the March on Washington.

Rosa Parks

In Montgomery, Alabama on December 1 1955 Rosa Park’s single act of defiance – refusing to obey a bus driver’s order that she give up her seat in the coloured section of the bus to a white passenger – sparked the first major co-ordinated civil rights protest – the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

Although this failed in its immediate aims it precipitated subsequent protests, and Parks became an emblem for peaceful stoicism in the face of white oppression. Her act of civil disobedience set an example for future protests.

James Farmer

As Head of the Congress of Racial Equality, Farmer co-ordinated the Freedom Rides and other emblematic protests.

John Lewis

The last surviving leading member of the Big Six Civil Rights organizations, Lewis was head of the Student NonViolent Coordination Committee from 1963 to 1966 and helped organize the March on Washington. He was also one of the Freedom Riders.

Roy Wilkins

Wilkins was Executive Secretary and later Executive Director of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People. He was an articulate and well-respected activist who helped organize the March on Washington and the Selma-to-Montgomery marches of 1965.

Whitney Young

Whitney Moore Young Jr. entered the National Urban League’s Omaha, Nebraska chapter in 1950, and rose to become the organization’s Executive Director in 1961.

Under his leadership it evolved from passive protest toward aggressively lobbying large businesses to increase black employment, and Young himself acted as a direct advisor to Presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon until his death in 1971.

Fred Shuttlesworth

As head of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, Shuttlesworth orchestrated the era’s most significant civil rights protest – Project C in Birmingham, Alabama. He also helped organize the March On Washington For Freedom And Jobs.

Martin Luther King Jr.

Chairman of the Southern Christian Leadership Council, Baptist minister, Nobel Prize winner and figurehead of the civil-rights movement. King embodies black activism in modern memory.

Despite this, organized labour was the background for towering figures in the movement – A Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin and Walter Reuther in particular. All played elemental roles in the acceleration of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, and belong in the pantheon of great civil rights leaders.

Philip Randolph.

Early 20th century

In the early 1900s many labour unions refused to admit blacks. The American Federation of Labour started out in the late nineteenth century with a nominal nondiscrimination policy, but founder Samuel Gompers later came to see blacks as, in his own words, a “convenient whip placed in the hands of the employers to cow the white man.” Where there were legal restrictions to prejudicial activity, they were usually flouted.

Gradually black workers began to organize and lobby for change. By sheer numbers alone they began to command recognition. The fact, for example, that 85,000 steelworkers were blacks could not be ignored by the CIO. The language of these lobbies – for example calling each other ‘brother’ and ‘sister’- echoed that of the black equality movement.

That black and white workers shared common grievances also worked in favour of greater unity. Black workers cemented a fruitful alliance with the United Auto Workers when, in 1941, many joined the white workers protest to win recognition from the company.

Post World War Two civil rights

World War Two helped to further dissolve racial iniquities in unions, and soon it became commonplace for union contracts decreed that black workers were treated equally. The chances of arbitrary dismissal on implicit racial grounds were drastically diminished, and subsequently black workers became solidly pro-union.

Simultaneously, blacks formed and grew their own unions. Perhaps the most famous was the Brotherhood of the Sleeping Car Porters, founded by A Philip Randolph in 1925, and won formal recognition in 1937.

By the 1960s, when the civil rights movement was in full swing, blacks and minorities accounted for 25% of union membership. However, the AFL-CIO, whilst nominally in favour of civil rights, was still lax when it came to preventing unions from forbidding black involvement.

Even so, unions had a crucial hand in the emblematic protests of this era. ED Nixon, a regular member of the BSCP, brought the young Reverend Martin Luther King Jr to the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955. 8 years later, in Birmingham, Alabama, Walter Reuther, the head of United Auto Workers, helped bail King out of jail.

Martin Luther King addresses the crowd during the March on Washington.

And most significantly, labour unions were heavily involved in orchestrating and populating the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the occasion of Martin Luther King Jr.’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech.