When the Reverend M. L. K. J.
stepped up to the microphone at the Lincoln
Memorial, he faced a sea of thousands people who
had come to support his march for
rights. Beginning to speak, Dr. K began
to talk about the dream he had for a unified nation
free of racism and blind to color. This famous "
Dream" speech was followed in 1964 by L. Johnson's
signing of the C. R. Act, and the awarding of the
Nobel Peace award to Dr. K later that same year.
Born in 1929 to a minister, and
himself a Baptist minister from Montgomery,
Alabama, King galvanized the rights movement,
beginning with the bus boycott in 1955. Preaching the ways of
nonviolence as practiced by Gandhi in India, Dr.
King led
many marches
for desegregation in the southern towns and cities that had
always discriminated against them.
Facing FBI dogs,government, water, and hostile crowd Dr. King and his followers calmly continued to walk for their beliefs.
While King preached no violence, violence sometimes did occur as those who opposed him attacked and, on occasion, killed civil rights workers. King also attracted the following of many Northern college students, who were taken with his doctrine of equality and justice. Busloads of students, colored of all sorts poured into the Southern states during the summers and the holidays to support the local blacks in their efforts for civil rights.
In addition to open seating on buses, King fought for desegregation in all realms of life: fast food, homes, schools, and the voting, where taxes and other devices were used to prevent blacks from voting.
On April,1968, Dr. K was assassinated while standing on the balcony of his Memphis,TN hotel. His killer was James Ray, an escaped convict. King's legacy and stature survive him. In 1983, Dr. King's B -day was designated a holiday.
Rosa Parks a woman of peace and
freedom was born in 1913 in Tuskegee. She attended
Alabama State College in 1932 she married Raymond
Parks and was active serving youth adviser and a
secretary in the NAACP from 1943 to 1956. The world
came to notice her when she refused her seat in the
white section of a Montgomery bus. She was arrested
promptly, and this led to a boycott of the city bus
system organized by two local ministers, Martin
Luther King Jr., and Ralph Abernathy. The
Montgomery Improvement Association ignored the 14
month long boycott that ended segregation in the
bus system. Since then she has earned many
including honors and awards Springarn Medal
News paper clipping about bus boycott from
Library of Congress.
of NAACP and the Martin Luther King
Jr. Award. She won the Nonviolent Peace Prize and has ten
other honorary degrees including one awarded by Shaw
College.
Her Mount Holyoke degree reads as part of her citation "When you led, you had no way of knowing if anyone would follow." She received the Eleanor Roosevelt Woman of Courage Award in 1984. Her seventy-seventh birthday was held at Kennedy Center in 1990. There attending were three thousand black leaders, government officials, and others celebrating her life.
In 1884 in New York, an
important girl was born. Little did Eleanor
Roosevelt's parents know their child would marry a
president and change the role of first lady. Only
at the age of eight, her alcoholic father and her
disapproving mother had died. At the age of
fifteen, she was sent to a finishing school in
England. This school helped Eleanor in a lot of
ways. She returned to New York at the
age of seventeen, refusing to live in high society.
Instead she chose to work toward social
reforms. Eleanor Roosevelt was related to
many great people such as her uncle, Theodore
Roosevelt. Her husband and her fifth cousin both
became presidents. She made great accomplishments
that were as good or even better than her
husband's, the president. These accomplishments
made her one the most admired and most known women
of the world. In 1932, she became the first lady.
She held weekly press conferences only speaking to
women mostly about women's issues. She started
writing a column called , "My Day," mainly focusing
on women's issues.
Many people will remember Eleanor Roosevelt for her great accomplishments and her role of first lady. She changed the role of first lady forever. She didn't just sit there in the White House and think about what she could do. She actually got out and did something about what she believed in.