When? Where?

After becoming the pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, King became a member of of the executive committee of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (Bowling, 116). He mobilized the black community during a 382-day boycott of the city's bus lines. He overcame arrest and violent harassment (the thing he was trying so hard to stop. His work paid off however, when the US Supreme Court decided that the segregation of public buses was unconstitutional. In 1957 King was elected president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which provided leadership for the civil rights movement.


For the next eleven years King was speaking anywhere that injustice or protest occurred relating to the civil rights movement. He traveled over six million miles and spoke over twenty-five hundred times all across the country. He also managed to finish five books and many other articles on the subject. He tooks his ideals for leadership from his strong Christian background, and operated in his organizations using the Gandhi’s techniques. His famous “I Have a Dream” speech took place in Washington, DC, where he led a peacful march that some 250,000 people participated in (Martin).

Bowling, Lawson. Shapers of the Great Debate on the Great Society; A Biographical Dictionary. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2005.
"Martin Luther King." NobelPrize.Org. 6 Feb. 2007 .