Martin Luther King Jr. was an American Baptist minister and activist who became the most visible spokesperson and leader in the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968. Born in Atlanta, King is best known for advancing civil rights through nonviolence and civil disobedience, tactics his Christian beliefs and the nonviolent activism of Mahatma Gandhi helped inspire.
The Montgomery bus boycott was a political and social protest campaign against the policy of racial segregation on the public transit system of Montgomery, Alabama. It was a seminal event in the civil rights movement. The campaign lasted from December 5, 1955 — the Monday after Rosa Parks, an African-American woman, was arrested for refusing to surrender her seat to a white person — to December 20, 1956, when the federal ruling Browder v. Gayle took effect, and led to a United States Supreme Court decision that declared the Alabama and Montgomery laws that segregated buses were unconstitutional. Many important figures in the civil rights movement took part in the boycott, including Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and Ralph Abernathy.
Martin Luther King Jr. Day is an American federal holiday marking the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. It is observed on the third Monday of January each year, which is around King's birthday, January 15. The holiday is similar to holidays set under the Uniform Monday Holiday Act. The earliest Monday for this holiday is January 15 and the latest is January 21.
Ralph David Abernathy Sr. was an American civil rights activist and Christian minister. As a leader of the Civil Rights Movement, he was a close friend and mentor of Martin Luther King Jr. He collaborated with King to create the Montgomery Improvement Association which led to the Montgomery bus boycott. He also co-founded and was an executive board member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). He became president of the SCLC following the assassination of King in 1968, where he led the Poor People's Campaign in Washington, D.C. among other marches and demonstrations for disenfranchised Americans. He also served as an advisory committee member of the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE).
The Big Six refer to the chairmen, presidents, and leaders of six prominent civil rights organizations active during the height of the Civil Rights Movement who were instrumental in the organization of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963.
Yolanda Denise King was an African American activist and first-born child of civil rights leaders Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Coretta Scott King. She was also known for her artistic and entertainment endeavors and public speaking. Her childhood experience was greatly influenced by her father's highly public and influential activism.
The Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) was formed on December 5, 1955 by black ministers and community leaders in Montgomery, Alabama. Under the leadership of Ralph Abernathy, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Edgar Nixon, the MIA was instrumental in guiding the Montgomery bus boycott, a successful campaign that focused national attention on racial segregation in the South and catapulted King into the national spotlight.
King is a 1978 American television miniseries based on the life of Martin Luther King Jr., the American civil rights leader and 1964 Nobel laureate. It aired for three consecutive nights on NBC from February 12 through 14, 1978. The miniseries earned nine Emmy Award nominations, including nominations for actors Paul Winfield, Cicely Tyson and Ossie Davis. Several real-life figures from the Civil Rights Movement had minor roles in the production, including then-Atlanta mayor Maynard Jackson, King's sister Christine King Farris, his niece Alveda King, and his four children: Yolanda, Martin III, Dexter and Bernice. Donzaleigh Abernathy, Tony Bennett, Julian Bond and Ramsey Clark each portrayed themselves.
David J. Garrow is an American historian and author. He wrote the book Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (1986), which won the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for Biography. He also wrote Liberty and Sexuality (1994), a history of the legal struggles over abortion and reproductive rights in the U.S. prior to the Roe v. Wade decision, Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama (2017), and other works.
Clayborne Carson is an African-American professor of history at Stanford University, and director of the Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute. Since 1985 he has directed the Martin Luther King Papers Project, a long-term project to edit and publish the papers of Martin Luther King, Jr.
No Name in the Street is American writer and poet James Baldwin's fourth non-fiction book and was first published in 1972. It depicts several historical events and figures from Baldwin's perspective: Francisco Franco, McCarthyism and Martin Luther King's death, as well as Malcolm X, Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, Eldridge Cleaver, and the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The book also covers the Algerian War and Albert Camus's take on it.
Adam Fairclough is a British historian of the United States. He is the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Professor of American History at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. Between 2008 and 2014, he served as the chair of the Netherlands American Studies Association. He has written on a number of subjects, and specializes in the Civil Rights Movement and the period of Reconstruction. His best known work is To Redeem the Soul of America: The Southern Christian Leadership Conference and Martin Luther King, Jr. Fairclough is a qualified expert in the field of American History, but specializes in the Civil Rights Movement.
Bernard Lee was an activist and member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference during the Civil Rights Movement. He was key associate of Martin Luther King Jr.
America in the King Years is a three-volume history of Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement by Taylor Branch, which he wrote between 1982 and 2006. The three individual volumes have won a variety of awards, including the 1989 Pulitzer Prize for History.
David Howard-Pitney is an American historian, notable for his works on the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.
Robert Abbott Sengstacke, also known as Bobby Sengstacke, was an African-American photojournalist during the Civil Rights Movement for the Chicago Defender in Chicago, Illinois. Sengstacke was well known for his famous portraits of Martin Luther King Jr. and other prominent civil rights leaders. Sengstacke inherited the family–owned Sengstacke Newspaper Company. After retiring from journalism in 2015, Sengstacke moved to Hammond, Indiana where he lived until his death due to a Respiratory illness in 2017 at age 73.
And the Walls Came Tumbling Down is a 1989 autobiography written by civil rights leader Ralph David Abernathy. The book charts his life and work with his best friend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in their leadership of the Civil Rights Movement to help African Americans obtain equal rights with white Americans. His book engendered much controversy due to Abernathy's allegations of King's infidelity the night before he was assassinated.
