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Martin Luther King In 1955 the Southern custom of segregating blacks at the back of public buses triggered a widespread protest.

Under the leadership of Dr. King, a boycott of all city buses was organized in Montgomery, Alabama. Old and young blacks walked for miles, refusing to ride a bus. As the boycott continued, the bus company suffered serious financial loss, and so did local merchants, whose black customers had stopped travelling to their stores. Finally the United States Supreme Court settled the issue by ruling that such segregation violates the Constitution of the United States. As a result, the bus company ended its practice of having blacks sit only at the back of a bus. It also began to hire some blacks as drivers. After this experience, King and other leaders used non-violent methods in various anti-segregation efforts in the South. There were protest marches; the most impressive of these was a civil rights march in Washington, D.C., in August, 1963, in which hundreds of thousands of blacks and whites participated. In 1964 Martin Luther King was greatly honored by being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his contribution to the cause of human rights. On April 4, 1972, the whole country was shocked by the news of his murder by a sniper. He is remembered and honored by people all over the world as a fighter for human rights.

Êu-Klux-Klan The organization is related in time to the Civil War between the North and the South. Originally it was created as a club by a few officers of the Confederate Army of the South and looked quite innocent. It was organized in 1865. The main purpose was to oppose radical Republican Reconstruction and maintain "white supremacy". It spread very fast in the Southern States and absorbed many smaller groups of former slave traders. Its practices played upon fears and superstitions of the Afro-Americans. Their main weapon was intimidation and murder. The policy of intimidation was successful in keeping the Afro-Amer­icans from the polls and it enabled the ex-confederates to gain political control in many states despite the disbandment of the Ku-Klux-Klan ordered in 1869.

 

 


Date: 2015-01-02; view: 891


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