CIVIL RIGHTS LEADER
Symbol and Leader.
Martin Luther King, Jr., became the symbol of the civil rights movement after leading the Montgomery bus boycott (1955-1956), which attracted the nation's attention to the growing dissatisfaction of southern blacks with the system of legal segregation. Along with a group of black Baptist preachers he helped form the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and in his books and sermons he laid the foundation of nonviolent direct action as a way of securing for southern blacks their rights guaranteed in the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments.
...Source: American Decades: 1960-1969, ©1994 Gale Cengage. All Rights Reserved. Full copyright.
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