6A | SATURDAY, JANUARY 16, 2021 | SIUSLAW NEWS
KING from page 1A
He decided to follow in
his father’s footsteps and be-
came a pastor at the Dexter
Avenue King Memorial Bap-
tist Church, serving there
from 1954 to 1960. During
this time, King worked with
members of the Southern
Christian Leadership Coun-
cil (SCLC) to formulate a
long-term strategy for com-
bating racism without the
use of violence.
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One of the most well-
known incidents in the
timeline of the civil rights
movement is the 1955
Montgomery bus boycott.
In March of that year,
15-year-old Claudette Col-
vin refused to give up her
seat to a white man, which
was against the law at the
time.
Nine months later, Rosa
Parks was arrested in Mont-
gomery for refusing to give
up her seat on a public bus.
Parks’ case became the basis
for the decision rendered
in Browder v. Gayle, which
found the Alabama and
Montgomery segregation
laws unconstitutional.
These two incidents led
to a boycott of the public
transit system coordinated
by King and others at the
SCLC. The boycott last-
ed 385 days and sparked a
series of violent reprisals
against the group’s leaders,
including the bombing of
King’s house.
However, King’s high-
profile role in the boycott
elevated him to national
prominence and to the un-
disputed leadership of the
civil rights movement in
America. King became pres-
ident of the SCLC in 1957,
propelling that organization
to the forefront of the strug-
gle for civil rights for all
Americans.
This was not without fur-
ther hardship. In 1958, King
was signing copies of his
book, “Stride towards Free-
dom, The Montgomery Sto-
ry” when he was stabbed by
a woman named Izola Cur-
ry. King nearly died from
the attack and was in the
hospital for several weeks
following surgery. Curry
was found incompetent to
stand trial and was placed in
a psychiatric institution.
Central to the message
King shared with members
of his congregation was the
idea of nonviolence — or
“Ahimsa” — taken from an
earlier leader in the civil
rights movement, Mahatma
Ghandi.
King came to greatly ap-
preciate the non-violent
approach taken by Ghandi
and worked diligently to
convince other members of
the movement that violence
would only serve to frighten
and alienate large numbers
of the public.
His position on the use
of violence had shifted over
the years and he implored
his brethren to reject vio-
lence, even as he was the
target of derision and hate
for his efforts to facilitate a
movement from subjuga-
tion to integration.
Threats
of
violence
against his person and his
family were common, yet
King remained steadfast in
his opposition to violence.
He made an impassioned
plea for calm after his house
was bombed by members of
the Ku Klux Klan in 1956:
“If you have weapons, take
them home; if you do not
have them, please do not
seek to get them. We cannot
solve this problem through
retaliatory violence. We
must meet violence with
nonviolence. Remember the
words of Jesus: ‘He who lives
by the sword will perish by
the sword.’ We must love
our white brothers, no mat-
ter what they do to us. We
must make them know that
we love them.”
In 1964, King became the
youngest person ever to re-
ceive the Nobel Peace Prize
for his work combatting ra-
cial inequality.
One of the most signifi-
cant civil rights protests of
the era took place in Selma,
Ala., in 1965. Again, King
was a central participant.
Selma had been the site
of a voter registration effort
in 1964 when a local judge
issued an action which was
later found to be unconsti-
tutional.
King attended a meeting
with officials of President
Lyndon B. Johnson’s admin-
istration on that March to
request an injunction from
the Justice Department pre-
venting protesters from be-
ing arrested for participat-
ing in the scheduled march.
He was unsuccessful in this
attempt.
Other leaders of the
movement led a truncated
march, which ended with
police and residents beating
and vilifying marchers.
The reaction to the vio-
lence, which was broadcast
into American homes on
the evening news, was sig-
nificant and credited with
changing the way the civil
rights struggle was viewed
by many in the country.
King was also heavily in-
volved with another of the
most polarizing issues of the
1960s — the war in Vietnam.
King believed the millions of
dollars being spent on arms
and bombs should be put to
use in the African American
community to provide job
training and housing for the
underprivileged, regardless
of ethnicity.
He also believed there
was a connection between
war and social injustice
and made that argument in
speeches and interviews.
“A nation that contin-
ues year after year to spend
more money on military de-
fense than on programs of
social uplift is approaching
spiritual death,” he argued.
His antiwar stance alien-
ated some of King’s main-
stream supporters, like the
Reverend Billy Graham, but
this did not deter him from
continuing to oppose the
Vietnam war until his assas-
sination.
It was discovered years
later, during the Congres-
sional investigations under-
taken by the Church Com-
mittee, that King had been
the target of a coordinated
campaign ordered by FBI
Director J. Edgar Hoover
to surveil King and use the
information to discredit
him. Hundreds of recorded
conversations in the FBI ar-
chives detailed the thoughts
and plans of the leadership
of the civil rights movement
and memos on how these
recordings could be used
to control the leaders of the
SCLC and others involved
in active protests against the
federal government.
King gave perhaps his
most famous speech at the
“March on Washington for
Jobs and Freedom” held on
the Washington Mall, Aug.
28, 1963. King was one of
the primary organizers of
the march, which made
specific demands including
a law prohibiting racial dis-
crimination in employment
and an end to segregation in
public schools.
King’s impassioned plea
to the half million people
who attended the march is
now considered by scholars
and historians to be one of
the most important speech-
es in American history.
“I say to you today, my
friends, even though we
face the difficulties of today
and tomorrow, I still have a
dream. It is a dream deep-
ly rooted in the American
dream…” said King. “…
We hold these truths to be
self-evident: that all men
are created equal … I have
a dream that my four little
children will one day live
in a nation where they will
not be judged by the color of
their skin but by the content
of their character…”
In March 1968, King was
in Memphis to support
black public works em-
ployees. The workers were
on strike for higher wages
and better working condi-
tions. King addressed a ral-
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Honoring MLK Jr. National Day of Service
This year, the Baha’i com- KXCR and the Bahai com- Facebook pages after the
munity of Florence Ore- munity of Florence Oregon’s broadcast.
gon is collaborating with
KXCR radio 90.7 to host a
live broadcast in place of an
SWANSON’S PEST MANAGEMENT
in-person gathering, honor-
ing the late Rev, Martin Lu-
INSPECT – CORRECT – PROTECT
ther King.
The event will take place
SUSTAINED PEST MANAGEMENT SOLUTIONS
Monday, Jan. 18, from 4 to 5
FOR YOUR HOME AND BUSINESS
p.m. on 90.7 FM.
SOME OF THE PESTS THAT WE TREAT:
MLK Jr. Day is the only
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as a national day of service.
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It encourages all Americans
to volunteer to improve
their communities. It brings
to light Dr. King’s vision and
legacy of truth, love and
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justice in how people serve
www.swansonspm.com
“Since 1983”
their communities.
Monday’s MLK radio pro-
gram will feature “Voices of
Our Community,” young
and old residents who will
speak, recite poetry and
play music.
Presenters will be doing
a live Zoom call which will
be streamed on KXCR 90.7
FM between 4 and 5 p.m.
(KXCR’s Grab Bag Hour).
The Zoom program will be
available to view on both
541-997-4027
1-800-622-8993
SUPPORT
ly in support of the striking
workers where he seemed
to be eerily speculating on
his own demise, saying “…
Like anybody, I would like
to live a long life. Longevi-
ty has its place. But I’m not
concerned about that now.
I just want to do God’s will.
He’s allowed me to go up
to the mountain. And I’ve
looked over. And I’ve seen
the promised land. I may
not get there with you. But
I want you to know tonight,
that we, as a people, will get
to the promised land …”
King was assassinated on
April 4, 1968, at the Loraine
Motel as he was in the pro-
cess of planning a national
occupation of Washington
D.C. to be called the Poor
People’s Campaign. He was
39 years old.
Just days after King’s
assassination,
Congress
passed the Civil Rights Act
of 1968.
The FBI and local law en-
forcement officers had King
and his colleagues under
surveillance at the time of
the assassination and were
unable to identify the lo-
cation of the shooter at the
time. Riots erupted in more
than 100 cities across the
country in the wake of King’s
assassination and James Earl
Ray was eventually arrested
and convicted of the crime,
although members of King’s
family and inner circle be-
lieve there were other indi-
viduals or groups involved
in the killing.
Martin Luther King Jr.
received the Presidential
Medal of Freedom posthu-
mously from President Jim-
my Carter in 1977 and Pres-
ident Ronald Reagan signed
a bill creating a federal hol-
iday to honor King in 1983.
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