“People in Action: Turning Point of Civil Rights”
Author: King, Martin Luther, Jr.
Date: February 3, 1962
Location: New York, N.Y.
Genre: Published Article
Topic: Albany Movement
Brown v. Board of Education
Freedom Rides
Martin Luther King, Jr. - Political and Social Views
Montgomery Bus Boycott
Student movements
Details
In King’s first biweekly column in the New York Amsterdam News he identifies two turning points in the civil rights struggle.1 He describes the Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education as the “inevitable culmination of the years of spirit-breaking legal battles.” Following the legal victory came a “psychological turning point” with the wave of direct action protest, most notably the Montgomery bus boycott, the student sit-in movement of the 1960s, the Freedom Rides, and the Albany Movement. Acknowledging that the legal battles will continue, King remains optimistic that the “fight for full freedom will surely be won.”
Within the last decade, we have reached two significant turning points in the civil rights movement. The first was the legal turning point which took place on May 17, 1954, when the United States Supreme Court rendered its precedent-making school desegregation decision.
This decision was the inevitable culmination of the years of spirit-breaking legal battles fought throughout the length and breadth of these United States. This history-making decision paved the way for all future action. In effect, the Supreme Court dealt the coup de grace to the Plessy doctrine which held Negroes to be less deserving of any legal rights than any of the beasts of the field.2
Court decisions (rendered from no matter how a source), cannot deliver rights; they can only chart the paths along which they can be truly achieved.
Turning Point
What was obviously indicated immediately after the May 17, 1954 decision, was a psychological turning point that would spell out, make indisputedly clear, and irrevocably permanent, the fact that Negroes were the equal of all other men.
The Negro peoples of Montgomery provided the prime impetus for this psychological change. Stung into action by the decisively defiant stand of Mrs. Rosa Park when the Montgomery city and transit authority pushed her one point past the limit of human dignity, they gathered together in a protesting boycott that fired the imagination of the entire world.3
Bear in mind that these were the so called “little people.” These were the traditionally disenfranchised, the down trodden, the historically fearful, and historically humble.
But from somewhere within their vitals, they mustered the strength and God gave them the spirit to stand fast and stand together to defeat the forces of injustice and discrimination.
Non Violent
Bear in mind that these were non violent, serene human instruments of decisive action who demonstrated once and for all time, the Negro’s ability to animate himself and create a climate in which justice would be rendered without benefit of skin coloration.
The young people, who first participated in the sit-ins demonstrations, were still another instant of the Negro’s initiative imagination in non violently challenging structures which could not be breached by routine court cases.4
No honest historian of the future can possibly continue the history of those who made America great and ignore the names of those young people.
The freedom rides which were also begun by the young, grew to such proportion that they eventually encompassed people of all ages, and the halt, lame and blind.
Not even the mad dogs of southern sheriffs were able to deter these brave peoples from their chosen destinations, and the bombs of the would-be murderers stopped not one Freedom Rider until it was completed, or its participants were in jail.5
It must be clear to even the most biased observer, that the dramatic Albany Movement protest was the climax to this phychological forward thrust.
This most recent drive by Negroes to highlight the injustices wrecked by those who, even in this enlightened day, strive to be their master, cut clear across sex, age and class lines.
It brought together in one mighty army domestics, doctors of medicine, law and philosophy to stand 700-odd strong and say, “We are willing to go to jail for our rights—because we know, deep in our hearts, we shall overcome!”6
The legal battles are by no means over. They will continue in every southern state, but coupled now with this indomitable spirit, the fight for full freedom will surely be won.
1. On 15 January 1962, Clilan B. Powell, president and editor of the New York Amsterdam News, expressed his delight that King agreed to write the column. Powell noted that other civil rights leaders, including Lester Granger, Roy Wilkins, and Jackie Robinson, would contribute columns as well. From 1962 to 1966 King wrote articles for the newspaper highlighting his views on contemporary issues, including the efficacy of nonviolence, the state of the civil rights movement, and the role of the church in the freedom struggle.
2. The Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896 declared that public facilities could be segregated along racial lines as long as the quality of facilities was equal.
3. After Rosa Parks was arrested on 1 December 1955 for refusing to give up her seat for a white man on a city bus, the Women’s Political Council organized a day-long protest of the Montgomery bus system. Motivated by the success of this boycott, the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) was formed to coordinate a more long-term movement. Black residents of Montgomery refused to ride the city’s buses for 381 days before the U.S. District Court stated that bus segregation was unconstitutional.
4. The sit-in movement began on 1 February 1960 when four black students sat at the Woolworth’s lunch counter reserved for white customers in Greensboro, North Carolina. Similar protests quickly followed along with workshops on nonviolent action, which ultimately resulted in the creation of SNCC (see Introduction in Papers 5:23).
5. In May 1961, student activists began traveling on buses throughout the South, confronting segregation both on interstate buses and terminals. The riders were met with violent opposition, prompting international press coverage. The Kennedy administration eventually pressured the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) to ban segregation from all of their facilities. For more on the Kennedy administration’s influence on the ICC ruling, see Introduction, p. 15 in this volume.
6. In late 1961, the Albany Movement, a coalition of civil rights organizations, was founded to deal with racial issues in Albany, Georgia. The movement’s mission was broad in scope and its activities utilized a wide range of methods to target discrimination and segregation in a number of public arenas. For more on the founding of the Albany Movement and its goals, see Introduction, pp. 23–24 in this volume.
Source: New York Amsterdam News, 3 February 1962.