How Did Martin Luther King Contribute To The Civil Rights Movement

The focus of this investigation will be “How did the Montgomery Bus Boycott lead to the rise of Martin Luther King Jr? In this process I will analyze the effects in which Martin Luther King had on his audience, as well as how other members of the nonviolence protest group, Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), assisted in his emergence as a prominent leader of the American civil rights movement. For this investigation, it will be important to mention other leaders, such as Malcolm X or Rosa Parks, that gave King this leader image that he himself could not portray alone during the non violent protests, as well as how they set the “step stool” towards King’s rise to power during the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

Source 1 Source 1,
“We Shall Overcome: Peter Ling Analyses Martin Luther King's Involvement with Non-Violent Protest in the USA” was published in March 2003 by Peter Ling. The source intends to inform the American people of Martin Luther King Jr’s involvement in non-violent protests such as the Montgomery Bus Boycott. This could be of value to historians looking for a journal article on Martin Luther King Jr and how he was a major symbol on this aspect of the Montgomery Bus Boycott movement due to his practice of nonviolence. This entry examines the role of these said practices as well over Martin Luther King Jr’s career. Ling quotes a fellow civil rights activist who claimed "Martin didn't make the movement, the movement made Martin". The whole journal appears to be an attempt to assess that statement - of whether King really was the saviour and hero he is perceived as being today, or whether he was simply swept along in a media ride and has been immortalised since his early death. Although it is never explicitly stated, Ling appears to lean toward the latter argument, but never does so without denying King's greatness or without credible evidence.

Source 2 Source 2, “The Montgomery Bus Boycott: A History and Reference Guide” was published in 2009 in Santa Barbara California by Cheryl Phibbs. The source intends to inform the American people on the actions Martin Luther King Jr took in protesting against discrimination. This could be of value to historians studying only the Montgomery Bus Boycott and its event in depth for the book was a revealing, comprehensive, and detailed account focusing on the people and personalities behind the Montgomery, Alabama, Bus Boycott in 1955-1956, which became the catalyst for a national civil rights movement. The book also discusses Martin Luther King Jr. as the main “leader” of the Bus Boycott. The question that is addressed throughout the article is how did Dr. King’s past experiences in life affect the way that he led the Montgomery bus boycott. Although the book was very informative and organized in the sense that it was alphabetically arranged, The reading is more of statements of the way in which the black community was treated and how Martin Luther King Jr and Rosa Parks stirred these new ideas and views to be seen as someone finally standing up for them.

Section B: Investigation

The Montgomery Bus Boycott ( 1955-1956) was a civil rights protest in which African Americans refused to ride the Montgomery buses in order to object segregated seatings.
But, before the boycott even began, four days previous, an African American woman named Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on the bus for a white male. Ultimately, the Supreme Court directed Montgomery to unify their buses, in this occurrence arose a pastor named Martin Luther King Jr as the prominent leader of this boycott in which it further lead to his rise with many other non violent American civil rights movements. Some historians would argue that it was Martin Luther King Jr’s background as a pastor that made him the powerful and successful leader he was and not just this event specifically but because of the way he could interact with the people of Montgomery as
well. The NAACP, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, thus protested the arrest of official Rosa Parks and selected King to head the new group. While maintaining his spokesperson role, King used his abilities as a pastor and from his academic training in order to construct a protest strategy that involved religious supporters. King’s abilities to represent the black community not only put a spotlight on the problem of segregation but upon the black community as a whole and that they “meant business”. His words of religion and of emotion brought an uproar to this community in which he “challenged the black community to create a legacy of honor during the protest, so history would remember them as a people with self-respect who were willing to stand up for their personal rights as American citizens.” Although King’s words were very influential for the African American community in Montgomery, the event itself, being that it was a woman of high rank in the African American community, was married and employed that caused the movement, is what really brought King into the spotlight.
With Rosa Parks status and Martin Luther King fairly new to Montgomery during this time, for him to be representing Rosa Parks position as spokesperson and the rest of the NAACP, the African American community were fairly dependent on him to provide a better and fair system throughout, starting with the bus system. The people of Montgomery needed someone to confide in and trust and because Rosa had been arrested, King was there hope in the corrupt and unfair system they lived in. King’s timing was just perfect, him fairly just moving to Montgomery, being a pastor at the time there too and during the Jim Crow Laws impacted his rank even more. The more King spoke about the event itself and how he, and many other members of the NAACP, could help to “fix” the problems in Montgomery starting with this boycott because it was the first incident in which sparked major response. This event not only demonstrated a protest against segregation but an emergence of a leader who spoke for the African American community that was afraid to do so, illustrated the struggle to commence the American dream of freedom and equality. King’s approaches in resolving the boycott were proven to be functional and
appropriate during this time. He was able to capture the people of Montgomery and put himself in such a huge evangelical spotlight. “The Montgomery Bus Boycott certainly drew on the repertoire of non-violence in that it was an act of non-cooperation, but it was essentially a strategic withdrawal. In contrast, the sit-in was an act of engagement: you put yourself in harm's way”. King’s strategy in dealing with the boycott brought among more supporters and more participants within his protests.
The Montgomery Bus Boycott was significant on many levels. First, it is widely considered as the earliest widespread protest for civil rights in the United States, the foundation for additional large-scale measure outside the court system bringing about equal treatment for African Americans. Second, in his leadership of the MIA (Montgomery Improvement Association) , Martin Luther King surfaced as a notable national leader of and during the civil rights movement while also reinforcing his dedication to nonviolent protests. King’s approach continued to exist as an indication of the civil rights movement throughout the 1960s.
Shortly after the boycott ended, he contributed in funding the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), an organization that strived to end segregation throughout the South. The SCLC was crucial in the civil rights campaign in Birmingham, Alabama, during the spring of 1963, and during the March on Washington in August of that same year, in which King read his “I Have a Dream” speech.

Section C: Reflection

Historians are fairly challenged with providing arguments in many of their investigations for it is what makes their sources valuable or not so valuable. For example, within my investigation, some of the sources I used were mostly first hand documents and evidence with the authors being very passive and lacked a bit of argumentation. This was especially the case for Stewart Burns in Daybreak of Freedom: The Montgomery Bus Boycott and Cheryl Phibbs in The Montgomery Bus Boycott: A History and Reference Guide. Although Burns raised no questions throughout his evaluation, the author was able to further investigate how Martin Luther King jr’s inner circle impacted his leadership during the Montgomery Bus Boycott. As for Phibbs, the author lacked a bit of argumentation and questioned how Dr. King’s past experiences in life affected the way in which he led the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Both authors were unable to focus on a sole argument and rather provided statements that supplied a summary of the event. Although there were two historians mentioned, Stewart Burns and Troy Jackson, that solely based their argument on the fact that Martin Luther King’s abilities as a pastor contributed to his rise in power during the Montgomery Boycott, they lacked to provide evidence on other protests that he lead that contributed to this idea, it is not wrong for it did contribute to the boycott but it was not the sole reason behind why Martin Luther King rose to power. Historians generally need to seek patterns, explanations, causes and effects and questions that help them compare or contrast with other historians evaluation of the event and draw conclusions about past. Moreover, a challenge faced by historians is how to address a past entirely, given the process of excluding certain people from accounts of the past. In order to achieve a complete understanding of the people that were apart of the event being discussed and addressing the past in an unbiased way, a historian would need to use primary sources, secondary sources, and oral histories as well as examining evidence that can lead to a new answer to a question.