Martin Luther King Jr. and the Struggle to March Forward

Martin Luther King Jr. was born in Atlanta in 1929. He earned his doctorate from Boston University where he met his future wife. Coretta Scott was born in Alabama in 1927 and studied music at the New England Conservatory of Music.

Shortly after the Kings moved back to the South in 1955, Dr. King became the pastor of Dexter Baptist Church and began supporting the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

Two years after the success of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) was established to unite civic, religious, and protest groups with Dr. King as its president.

Having learned from the Albany Movement's lack of strategy and inability to force confrontation, King and the SCLC were more successful in their 1963 campaign to integrate Birmingham, Alabama.

Here, King promotes his book "Why We Can't Wait" that was based on his famous "Letter from Birmingham Jail."

Activists from around the country came to support the goals of the March on Washington, including the SCLC-affiliated Savannah Freedom Now Movement.

Dr. King delivered his historic "I Have a Dream" speech on the steps of the Washington Memorial, propelling him to the forefront of the national Civil Rights Movement.

He extolled the "promissory note" of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence "that all men — yes black men as well as white men — would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." It was on that promise that King said, "we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check."

Although the most prominent figure in the civil rights movement, Dr. King was not the only voice for African-American rights. Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. met only this once in 1964.

Their beliefs about the right approach to combating injustice differed greatly, with Dr. King advocating nonviolence and Malcolm X encouraging a more militant approach.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 banned discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, or gender in a variety of settings, including public facilities and work environments.

It also granted the United States Attorney General permission to bring suits against entities that violated Constitutional protections in education and other public spaces.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was enacted the following year to dismantle practices that prevented African Americans from voting. These disenfranchisement efforts included literacy tests and the grandfather clause.