Martin Luther King Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Martin Luther King - Essay Example He was ready, to accept the leadership of the first great Negro nonviolent demonstration of contemporary times in the United States, abruptly a boycott was met by fury in Montgomery's white community and that brought national attention to the problem of segregation. King helped lead Montgomery's blacks on a yearlong nonviolent boycott of the bus system, the boycott ended after 382 days only when the U.S. Supreme Court intervened and declared Alabama's segregation laws unconstitutional on buses. After the verdict of the Supreme Court, Negroes and whites rode the buses as equals. During these days of boycott, King was arrested, his home was bombed, he was subjected to personal abuse, but it was at that time he emerged as a Negro leader of the first rank. Two events in January 1956-his arrest and incarceration for allegedly speeding and the bombing of his house-brought King's personal life into the larger context of Black America's struggle for justice and dignity. In my opinion this was the time in King's life, which created a leader out of him. This leader who contributed towards the Black-Americans was the outcome of all his frustrations, this was the result of his personal sufferings that led him onto the road of leadership. Though the political situation is at times dark and tense, we experience a certain vicarious thrill in witnessing the growing self-confidence with which King engineers a successful resolution of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Another incident occurred in Birmingham on the 16th Street Baptist Church where Martin Luther King, Jr., and hundreds of other African-Americans met and planned sittings and demonstrations for equal rights when one of the most horrific events in the long struggle for African-American civil rights took place. Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley, and Addie Mae Collins were preparing for Sunday services in the basement dressing room of the Baptist Church when a dynamite bomb planted outside exploded, killing four girls and blinding another in one eye. Two of their killers remained beyond the grasp of the law for nearly 40 years. King was convicted here as a killer of those four girls just because of the fact he was disliked by the then director J. Edgar Hoover due to no others reasons but he was 'Black American'. The wheels of justice proved to move slower than the dismantling of segregation. It wasn't until 1977 that Robert (bomber) was found guilty for his role in the bom bing and sentenced to life in prison, where he later died. The tragedy galvanized the civil rights movement and helped lead to enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Progress did not come easily, however. King was a frequent target of violence. On multiple occasions he was physically assaulted, and his home was bombed several times by vigilantes. Almost daily he received death threats and hate mail. Yet he and the movement persevered even with the