America in the King Years 1954-1963 - Essay Example

‘Parting the waters: America in the King years 1954-1963’ The aspect parting the waters is a historical view of the civil rights movements that occurred during the period between1954 to 1963, with its major focus being on the role that Martin Luther King Jr played. King was termed as one of the key civil rights leaders. However during this period, a number of civil stories, personalities and organizations sprang up with leaders emerging with different styles and techniques of leadership. An example of such organizations formed during this period is the First Baptist for Negros that was a church founded in Montgomery Alabama in the year 1867 by a number of rebellious groups of Negros. This led to a number of literatures on Kings Events and occasions (Taylor, 4). One family known as the Rockefeller family created a major impact on King’s early life. It started in 1882, when a plea was raised at Ohio church for donation or a help fund. This plea was made by two women who intended for the Atlanta Female Baptist Seminary and Negro School for girls to be funded. During the event of the plea, the Rockefeller family was present, with the two women being teachers to Mrs Rockefeller. As a result, the family responded positively and agreed to come to the aid. In conjunction with Dr. Henry Morehouse the school was funded and set up and continued to operate. The Rockefeller’s family efforts continued and they saw the need to create a fund that will be able to cater for the needs of the minority group. This witnessed the birth of the Rockefeller fund, which in the later years, become a corner stone to majority of beneficiaries which included King. The fund did support King’s early education with a number of other civil rights activists. The foundation became an empowering tool to encourage majority of black Negros to embrace education (Taylor, 11). Years later when Martin Luther King Jr arrived at Crozer theological Seminary, he was amazed by what he found out; there were pool tables on one of the rooms in the basement. This was contrary to his past perception of associating pool social halls and places as scenes for immoral and bad behaviors. Secondly, he found ten Negro students out of a total of thirty five students, which came as a surprise to him as he was expecting a handful of them. One learning activity that surprised him was that there was no lock at the door and students were encouraged to actively participate in any free thinking and sharing of ideas. In the seminary, King’s first year was predominantly occupied with course work which took much of his time and attention and it covered topics like philosophy, the bible and religious faiths. But the next years saw King being a dominant figure questioning every particular aspect or teachings. The life in the institution provided him with a wider knowledge on Christianity (Taylor, 24). King started to make visits to church leaders, pastors and church functions. One particular day he picked Johns and headed to Montgomery to a particular pastor known as Ralph Abernathy of the First Baptist Church. He was welcomed by Mr. and Mrs. Brooks. This visit was highly beneficial to King as he was able to discuss in details, with his hosts, about the Negro churches and their challenges. It then brought a clear insight on what needed to be addressed or implemented to promote their existence. It is through such findings during the discussion that King, in the later years, used in reshaping the churches. Churches came up and continued discussing about civil rights (Taylor, 35). In the years that followed, it became an unfair scene to see majority of the Negros in Montgomery having to walk for long and impossible walks to and from work as the bus fares were too high and so was racial discrimination. As a result, city taxis cabs emerged and tried to cater for such needs and help out, but this was directly quashed out by the police commissioner who then arrested taxi drivers who overloaded the cabs smoothly putting an end to the taxi affair and a return to the old predicament. Despite numerous consultations this did not change. King then consulted a friend in Baton and together they organized a pool of volunteers to offer their cars and drivers. Before the day of bus boycott, he held a meeting to present the demands to the white authorities by that was not achieved. During the Montgomery bus boycott the volunteered private cars were used and the buses were entirely ignored. It lasted for a period of time when the authorities gave in to the demands including changing transport terminals and routes and charging fair prices. The boycott had created a momentum among the Negros (Taylor, 86). After seeing the Montgomery bus boycott, King saw the need to keep the momentum of the movement ongoing. As a result he made a decision to form his own organization that would have a non violent army and registered voters, this saw the creation of the civil rights movement. During this period King was able to get two friends who became beneficial to him they include; Harris Wofford (a Gandhian) and Stanley Levinson (White Lawyer). Together the triumvirate became key pillars in the fight of civil rights. Levinson was a member of communist party, which split into two and was faced with the problem of extinction. King then continued recruiting members to his movement by sending written letters as part of recruiting campaign. Greensboro sits which was a success led to college students joining up and forming sit ups in other towns and cities. Levinson took a major task of educating students’ non violent techniques; this was also supported by King. King was also arrested on tax evasion cases but was later released because of increased number of protests and sit-in (Taylor, 95). During Kennedy’s campaign, King, Wofford and Chester did draft an ideal civil rights for demographic platform. It however, elicited a sharp reaction from Congressman Adam Clayton who threatened King and Rustin to abandon plans of the democratic convention .He intended to label them as homosexual’s lovers, but King and his ally fought out the threat and overcame it by upholding the democratic convention. President Kennedy started to distance himself from King’s violent acts. The various sit ins and protests led to a supreme court’s ruling on racial discrimination. This was followed by a speech that was issued by Robert Kennedy in Georgia declaring that is it was now official that no racial discrimination should take place and disallowing racial tensions among the Negros and whites (Taylor, 103). However, trouble started in Rock Hill where freedom riders were attacked and confronted by white youths, racially abusing and beating them up. This unfortunate event created more uproar and tensions between the Negros and the Whites. The emergence of Moses saw King recruit volunteers in Negro Masonic temples to learn court issues and register as a voters but the process did not take long as Moses was arrested in Kansas City. In Albany was the work of Cordell Reagan who started a school aimed at spreading the mission work to the Negros, but they faced resistance (Taylor ,145) In Albany King and Abernathy’s movement supporters were arrested at a local church and this witnessed the church followers’ matching towards ails followed by riots. Consequently King was released. In Mississippi, a new organization, a Council of Federated Organizations was created to raise money in support of the church development. Due to the Cuba Missile of 1962, investigations were carried out to investigate King as fuelling chaos of missile crisis to justify his actions. In April 6th at Birmingham campaign, King was highly disappointed at how the Negros’ were not participating in the process (Taylor, 167). The stories illustrated shows the different characters and behaviors that King Martin Luther Jr. portrayed during the civil rights movement. These stories crystallize the characters of the Civil Rights Movements and their leaders. The Civil Rights Movements in 1954-1963 brought great freedom to Negros rights in a number of aspect like education, property ownership and leadership positions. Work cited Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters: America in the King’s Years 1954-63. New York: Simon & Schuster publishers, 1989.Print. Read More