All the while King looked to capitalise on the success of the boycott. In 1957 he helped to found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) an organization of black churches and ministers that aimed to challenge racial segregation. As president, King became the organisation’s dominant personality and its primary intellectual influence. The SCLC sought to compliment the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People’s (NAACP) legal efforts to dismantle segregation through the courts, with King and the other SCLC leaders encouraging the use of non-violent methods such as marches, demonstrations and boycotts. The violent reactions from whites helped to gain media attention and help from the federal government. In the early 1960s King led the SCLC in a series of protest campaigns that gained national attention, however none of which were started by him. The first was in Albany, Georgia, where the SCLC joined local demonstrators against segregated restaurants, housing and hotels. The aim was to create so much dissent and disorder that local white officials would be forced to end segregation to restore normal business relations. The strategy did not work, here, and soon the protesters’ energy and money for bail ran out.
This strategy did work in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963 however, when the SCLC joined a local protest led by another SCLC organiser. King encouraged children to join in with the marches, hoping that the police chief would meet them with violence. They were not disappointed. Eugene ‘Bull’ Connor ordered that police officers with dogs and high pressure water hoses were to be used against the protesters. Scenes of the young people being attacked by dogs and pinned against walls by water were shown around the world. During the protest King was arrested and wrote a letter from his jail cell to ministers who had criticised him for creating disorder in their city. His ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail’ which said that individuals had the moral right and responsibility to disobey unjust laws, was widely read and increased his standing as a moral leader.
The years between 1963 and 1965 represented the high point of King’s career. In august 1963 the civil rights movement staged its largest gathering ever, with as many as 250, 000 participants (20% of which were white) marching on Washington for jobs and freedom. King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech was the most memorable event of the day and confirmed him as black America’s most prominent spokesperson. In 1964 Martin Luther King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway. However this good time was not to continue. Full of his success in the south, King decided to try his luck in the northern states of the USA and focused on Chicago.
King and the SCLC used tactics similar to those used in Birmingham and Alabama in Chicago and in 1966 they decided to attack the segregation in housing. However, northern blacks were more concerned with economic and social problems which showed little sign of going away rather than formal desegregation and the right to vote. They knew little of King’s exploits in the south and shared less in his Christian faith. As a result they were less convinced of the idea of non-violent protest. King lacked a coherent strategy and was less familiar with the conditions and outlooks of the north. His campaign was a total failure, with whites openly shouting racial comments and throwing fireworks. In January 1967 King’s denunciation of the Vietnam War brought still more difficulties for his leadership. A brave move on his part, it brought some tension to the SCLC. Vietnam showed up King’s difficulty in holding together an increasingly fragmented Civil Rights Movement.
In the few years between 1965 and his death in 1968, King suffered from increasing challenges to his role as leader of the Civil Rights movement by younger blacks. They argued that his non-violent protests and appeals to moral idealism were useless in the face of sustained violence from whites. In addition, many organisers of the Student Non-violent Co-ordinating Committee (SNCC) resented King, feeling that they had put in the hard work of planning and organising protests, only to have the charismatic King arrive later and receive much of the credit. In 1966 the ‘Black Power’ movement captured the nation’s attention and suggested that King’s influence among Blacks was waning.
So how good was Martin Luther King as a leader? He acted as a ‘vital centre’ between radicals and conservatives, was followed in his method of non-violence by protesters across the southern states and his protests dramatised the black freedom struggle to the watching media. 95% of black southerners saw King as the most effective spokesperson. Rufus Lewis, chair of the Montgomery bus boycott steering committee said that Kings greatest contribution was his, ‘interpreting the situation to the mass of the people’. However he did not initiate the black protest, or the bus boycott in Montgomery. He was involved in only a handful of the thousands of protests across the Southern states, many of which were sparked off by students.
Overall, there were many leaders of the Civil Rights struggle, but Martin Luther King was more than just the most conspicuous of them, and more than just and eloquent speaker. His non-violence inspired some support, but it also appealed to neutrals in a way that negated more conservative voices. From the outset of his career in Montgomery in 1955, right through to his death in 1968, King had a remarkable ability to get people who would otherwise be constantly feuding to work together. No one matched his leadership of targeted, orchestrated campaigns that strengthened national political strategy. After 1965 his ideas may have been challenged more but he continued to campaign for peace and justice. Made famous by a movement which was opposed by many, he is still the only Black American to be commemorated with a national holiday, on the third Monday of January.
