Martin Luther King, Jr.

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Key Terms and Events

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Black Panthers
The Black Panthers were members of the Black Panther Party, a militant black political organization founded by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale in Oakland, California in 1966. Stokely Carmichael was also closely involved in the group's development. The P arty called for black self-defense and demanded equality for blacks in political, economic, and social arenas nation-wide. In their militancy, the Black Panthers differed with King and his non-violent direct action tactics.
Black Power
At a march in 1966 the chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Stokely Carmichael, used this slogan before a national audience, putting it into currency as a widely used term. "Black Power" came to denote a brand of civil rights activism more militant than that of King, and King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference refused to use or endorse the slogan for fear of alienating white sympathy.
Civil Rights Act of 1964
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed discrimination in employment and in public facilities, and gave the federal government greater power to enforce the desegregation of schools. Yet this Act could only pass in the right atmosphere, and the creation of such an atmosphere is generally attributed to one pivotal series of events and their repercussions: the civil rights protests in Birmingham in 1963, and the response of many white Americans to the white-on- black violence they provoked.
Congress of Racial Equality
The first organization in the Civil Rights Movement systematically to employ non-violent direct action, the Congress of Racial Equality, or CORE, was founded in Chicago in 1942. In the 1960s, it participated in activism in the South, providing support and supervisions to sit-ins and voter-registration campaigns, often cooperating with King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, or NAACP, had been struggling to secure civil rights for African Americans since 1909, long before the activism of the period symbolized by King. Its approach depended heavily on legal action and victories in court.
Non-Violent Direct Action
Inspired by methods developed by Mahatma Gandhi to protest colonial rule in India, non-violent direct action was a tactic in which protestors used their passive physical presence to provoke violence from authorities and thus the sympathy of a national audience.
Personalism
Personalism is a theological concept that emphasizes the personal nature of God and the importance of human personality as a reflection of that nature. Personalism was popular at Boston University when King was a doctoral student there, and it completed the picture of God that he had adopted from the Southern Baptist church.
Social Gospel
The idea of a "Social Gospel" was developed by German American theologian Walter Rauschenbusch, and adapted and practiced by King. It emphasized the importance of social action as part of a complete Christian faith.
Southern Christian Leadership Conference
Inspired by the success of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, sixty Southern clergypersons and activists formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, or SCLC, in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1957. King was elected president of the organization, which united Southern churches, ministers, and social activists, and which led a number of key civil rights protests in the 1950s and 1960s.
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, or SNCC (pronounced "Snick"), was organized in 1960 after four black college students in Greensboro, North Carolina received national attention for refusing to leave a whites-only lunch counter in an F.W. Woolworth store. At first merely a loose alliance of various local sit-in campaigns, SNCC grew in size and stature throughout the 1960s, making strides in the area of African American voting rights, and eventually assuming a more militant approach.
Voting Rights Act of 1965
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 resulted indirectly from the non-violent direct action of protestors in Selma, Alabama led by King. The Act rendered illegal all laws designed to prevent African Americans from registering to vote.

Events

Albany Movement of 1961

King went to Albany, Georgia in 1961 with the idea of transforming a Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee voter-registration drive into a full-fledged call for desegregation. However, the power of King's non-violent tactics was entirely diffused by local police, who did not respond with violence. Albany consequently attracted little media attention and failed to achieve its goals– but it trained King for the success of the Birmingham Protests of 1963.
Assassination

On April 4, 1968, a sniper shot King as he stood on the balcony of a Memphis, Tennessee motel room. King had come to town to lend his support to a strike among black sanitation workers. His death caused national outrage, shock, and sorrow, and triggered riots in over one hundred U.S. cities.
Birmingham Protests of 1963

In Birmingham, Alabama, the non-violent direct actions headed by King provoked the violence of local police under Commissioner Eugene "Bull" Conner. Televised footage of blacks being attacked by dogs and with fire- hoses alerted the nation to the terrible conditions in the South, and ultimately led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Freedom Sunday

On "Freedom Sunday" in 1966 King addressed a crowd of 45,000 in Chicago, and then nailed a list of grievances on the door of City Hall. The event reflected King's turn to Northern cities after his successful campaigns in the south.
Meredith March of 1966

When James H. Meredith, organizer of a 225-mile "walk against fear" from Memphis, Tennessee to Jackson, Mississippi, was shot on the second day of the event, both the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee arrived to complete the march. SNCC member Stokely Carmichael invoked the slogan "Black Power", which the SCLC, under King, refused to use.
Montgomery Bus Boycott

Triggered by the bravery of Rosa Parks, the Montgomery Bus Boycott lasted from December 1955 to December 1956 and in that time brought King–and the movement he represented–to national attention. The Boycott resulted in a 1956 United States Supreme Court decision banning segregated seating on buses.
1963 March on Washington

The March on Washington was a peaceful civil rights demonstration, coordinated with the city, which attracted roughly 250,000 people, black and white. Speakers at the concluding rally articulated the hopes and beliefs of the Civil Rights Movement to a national audience. King was among these speakers, and his remarks were particular powerful.
Poor People's March 1968

King's dream of a Poor People's March on Washington was still in the planning stages when he was assassinated. King had envisioned a mass rally of economically disadvantaged people, which would shut down Washington, D.C., until legislators promised solutions to poverty. The march took place on 19 June 1968 without King, but on a smaller scale than he had imagined.
Selma Voter-Registration Drive

What began in Selma, Alabama as a local voter-registration drive headed by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee became an event of national renown when King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference appeared on the scene in 1965. When King attempted to lead a march, marchers were clubbed by police. Outrage over footage of this violence created a political atmosphere in which the Voting Rights Act of 1965 could become law.
Vietnam War

As the Johnson Administration was escalating the Vietnam War, King was expanding his outlook from local political problems to national economic ones. He saw in the war what he considered America's worst tendencies: militarism, economic exploitation, and racism. King's stance lost him favor with other civil rights leaders, as well as with Lyndon Johnson himself. (For more information, see the History SparkNote on the Vietnam War.)

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