Martin Luther King.

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Chapter II

                                Martin Luther King

In 1940s, the Civil Rights Movement appeared as a challenge to end up racial discrimination and segregation as a system that tended to separate blacks from all aspects of life. Though granted their freedom, blacks were still treated as some subordinate species to the white race: they were denied the chance to be promoted in their jobs and most of them suffered from a low income compared with white workers. Blacks had to live in separate neighborhoods under appalling conditions and were "confined to the central city and notably dirty and unpaved slums".1

 Martin Luther King (1929-1968) was born in Atlanta Georgia to grow up and become one of the greatest heroes of American history. As a boy, Martin was always taught to respect people and to settle disagreements with love, not hate. Martin's best friend was a white boy whose mother did not allow him to play any longer with Martin who was so astonished and bewildered that he ran to his mother and asked for an explanation. His mother told him that this was because he was black. He became very upset and could not understand how the color of someone's skin could make all the difference. Martin's mother laid him in her lap and said" you must never feel that you are less than anybody else. You must always feel that you are somebody"2. From that time on, Martin never forgot what his mother had told him and grew up determined that he would make the difference. Indeed, Martin Luther King became one of the principle leaders of Civil Rights Movement and the symbol of nonviolent protest in the struggle for racial justice (exemplified in the boycotts and sit-ins that he organized). King's view towards racism symbolized the voice of a generation and of a human being who saw in slavery an end to man's humanity:

I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality. 3

        In Montgomery, black community endured the mistreatment of white bus drivers who cursed the black riders, humiliated them, and forced them to sit in the back of buses and even give up their seats to white passengers. On December 1, 1955, a black woman named Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat in the bus to a white man. Her rebellious action caused her imprisonment for disobeying the city law of segregation, but at the same time stimulated many blacks to stand up against racial discrimination demanding their equality and freedom. Almost three months of her arrest, Mrs. Rosa Parks explained why she refused to obey the city law of segregation, and why she decided to sit down in the "white" section of the bus:

        Well, in the first place, I had been working all day on the job. I was quite tired after spending a full day working. I handle and work on clothing that white people wear. That did not come in my mind, but this is what I wanted to know, when and how would we determine our rights as human beings? It just happened that the driver made a demand and I just did not feel like obeying his demand. He called a policeman and I was arrested and placed in jail…4

        This incident and the "long- standing grievances about the mistreatment of blacks on city buses"5 resulted in the organization of the famous "Montgomery Bus Boycott" that "marked the birth of a new era of African American history…and signaled the beginning of a new phase of King's life"6. It all began when Montgomery blacks called a mass meeting and voted to boycott all city buses. Thus, hundreds of car pools were organized to take negroes to work; while most people walked. At the meeting, King viewed Rosa's arrest as the beginning of a series of passive protests against the whites' degrading treatment of all blacks in America and made a speech that thrilled millions of people and urged them to call for racial equality and desegregation using the weapon of love …compassion and understanding:

                

Just the other day…one of the finest citizens in Montgomery was … arrested because she refused to get up to give her seat to a white person…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…when people get tired of being flung across the abyss of humiliation…There comes a time when people get tired of being pushed out of the glittering sunlight of life's July and left standing amidst the piercing chill of an Alpine November…

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On the first day of the boycott, King envisioned such a passive initiative as the "beginning" on the long road towards emancipation and freedom. In Montgomery, King believed that a new history was written- a history that added new meanings to the life of every human being, to every American negro who was stumbling alone on the shore of life:

Right here in Montgomery, when the history books are written in the future, somebody will say, "there lived a race of people, a black people, fleecy flocks and black complexion, but a people who had the moral courage ...

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